Introverts on the 'Net

Working with Harold Henderson of the Chicago Reader (who also blogs, and although I normally don't approve of journalists blogging, Harold is one of Chicago's better journalists, which is to say one of the best, period) at Chicago's Green Fest yesterday -- which was quite busy, huge turnout, very enthusiastic crowd, more power to 'em -- and the subject came up of introverts when I happened to remark to Harold that it wasn't that I don't like people, they just take so much energy to deal with.

My comment was from my memory of this piece by Jonathan Rauch from several years back. The Atlantic has also put up a couple of follow-up pieces worth reading. (Read the interview with Rauch, for sure: it put me in total "been there" mode.)

So of course I started thinking about introverts and the Internet, and why I spend so much time on the Web and so little talking to other people, and came to a sort of surprising, or maybe not so, conclusion: given the usual reaction people have when you admit that you spend hours every day online (and the base canards from the left blogosphere about Cheetos and pajamas -- Cheetos are one of my favorite comfort foods, and I don't even own a pair of pajamas, so stick it, Atrios), it took me a while to think my way through to this, because people who spend that much time online are supposed, in the popular imagination, to be either geeky kids or otherwise socially maladjusted.

Not so. They are merely introverts.

(Well, OK, there may be some who fit the stereotype, but we're not talking about them.)

Take me, for example -- I have superb social skills. After fifteen years on the front lines at a major auction house and many more years among the denizens of the art world in general -- than whom there are none more prickly -- I have developed the ability to be charming, gracious, entertaining, attentive, and all those other signature characteristics of a good companion on demand. Usually. But Rauch is right -- it really exhausts me and for every cocktail reception successfully negotitated, I have to spend at least a day of near-total silence recovering. My idea of a terrific party is four close friends for dinner, especially if they are introverts themselves. (I am also a phenomenally early riser, which is why my posts here are always in the morning, but I am not your basic, chipper "morning person." I used to talk to Ben, but we were together for nearly eighteen years, and I didn't have to talk unless I wanted to -- he was fine with it, as long as there was room on my lap.)

I really do like people, although sometimes in the aggregate they are pretty appalling. I enjoy being around them, I just don't necessarily want to be engaging with them all the time. I like to be among them, but not with them, if you get what I mean. (This general rule excludes grocery stores and street fairs, which tend to be populated by genetic suburbanites who don't know how to negotiate a crowd. We're all sharing the universe, you know -- act like it. My most recent experience along these lines was the lovely young lady who very carefully parked her shopping cart so as to block all the yogurt except the yogurt she was looking at, which was not the yogurt I wanted to look at, which, of course, she was in front of anyway.)

The advantage of the Internet is that I can keep up with people, make new acquaintances, maintain relationships long-distance, and it doesn't wear me out. Plus, of course, the distinct advantage of actually being able to think about what I'm communicating before I communicate it. And it is completely at my discretion.

So it seems that the Internet is the logical place for an introvert to socialize. Maybe I'll try online dating next.