Writing is networking for introverts

https://byrnehobart.medium.com/writing-is-networking-for-introverts-5cac14ad4c77

by whoisnnamdi • 5 years ago

335 89 5 years ago

byrnehobart.medium.com

This sounds more like "socially awkward but want to talk to lots of people" than strictly introverted (which itself generally gets used to mean many things). I have some "introvert" traits: talking to people tires me out, I have no interest in low quality conversations - I dont like chit-chatting with strangers. If this is what's going to happen at an event I'd rather avoid it altogether than have a pretext for people to come talk to me.

But I'm not socially awkward really (imo) more just conserving my energy because I do find talking tiring.

So all that to say I'd rather focus on high quality interaction - smaller groups with mutual interests, vs make bulk unsolicited networking easier for me. I can see the article makes sense for the author and would work for people who for some reason want to have idle banter with others.

blowski4• 5 years ago

I agree. The whole introvert thing is so loosely defined that it covers everyone to some degree.

For example, I find smalltalk with people I don’t really know to be extremely challenging and tiring. And yet with people I do know, or in conversations on topics where I feel confident, I struggle to shut myself up.

I wouldn’t consider myself to be either introvert or extrovert, merely some set of personality traits.

nicoburns• 5 years ago

I find smalltalk with people I don’t really know to be extremely challenging and tiring. And yet with people I do know, or in conversations on topics where I feel confident, I struggle to shut myself up.

FWIW, this pretty much exactly describes an introvert. Being introverted doesn't mean you don't like socialising at all.

watwut• 5 years ago

I agree. The whole introvert thing is so loosely defined that it covers everyone to some degree.

Well of course. Because majority of people is exactly in the middle between extroverts and introverts. The extremes are fairly rare. Most of us are a mix of introvert and extrovert traits, because it is normal distribution.

The way people talk about it, you would think there are two distinct species with no overlap.

Scarblac• 5 years ago

It's a skill though, that can be trained like any other. You don't have enough practice.

I always thought my father was just like me, no nonsense, no chit chat, just to the point. Until I went with him when he was looking for storage space, and had heard an 80-year old farmer a bit outside of our town had some.

They talked about essentially nothing for twenty minutes but if you listened very carefully, somewhere in between the farmer had asked what my father was looking for, and a few minutes later my father had spent a few sentences on it, and then later it was mentioned that Xx who is the brother of Y you may know him has that company and he is using storage now but in a month half of it will be free and who knows and the rest depends on what Z does in the spring. In the end my dad kept a lot of stuff there for years paying hardly anything.

And in the meantime they understood exactly who the other was, what kind of people they were from, and so on.

I was in awe (I just stood there listening), they just had a whole type of conversation that I couldn't do.

So now I try to practice when I have the chance.

vincentmarle2• 5 years ago

I find smalltalk with people I don’t really know to be extremely challenging and tiring. And yet with people I do know, or in conversations on topics where I feel confident, I struggle to shut myself up.

This sounds more like ADHD.

soco2• 5 years ago

At least from the comments, I kind of see the attitude pairing: people defining themselves as introverts think about themselves being smarter and generally superior to the extroverts. The self-defined extroverts on the other hand only criticize the social awkwardness of the introverts, no quality judgement otherwise. Conclusion: as usual, rationalization doesn't help much.

xvector2• 5 years ago

I have no interest in low quality conversations

These are typically a gateway/warm-up to high quality conversations.

introaway2• 5 years ago

"Typically" is a bit overly optimistic IMO. "Possibly" seems more accurate - low quality conversations (e.g. the weather, sports, etc.) are typically just psychological glue so folks don't feel awkward during silence.

And I think it's fair to say that extroverts value that glue more than introverts, generally speaking. For an introvert, the value of the glue may even be exceeded by the cost of discussing some random nonsense they don't really care about.

makeitdouble• 5 years ago

I think parent would still go through those warm-ups if there was a legitimate chance for the conversation to go further.

Speaking for myself, if I was sitting at a social gathering I'd totally bear through any length of ice breaking to get to the meat of the conversation. If it was on a queue at the grocery store I'd bail out at the first 5 seconds. It's a matter of expectations.

b0rsuk• 5 years ago

What you call "low-quality conversation", smalltalk, is particularly disliked by people with Aspergers.

Chris2048• 5 years ago

I think the difference is:

- is energised by interacting with people

- is de-energised by interacting with people

But there is a social skills / anxiety aspect to this.

Some people aren't particularly inherently energised by social interaction, so will always be introverted. That doesn't mean some social interaction isn't beneficial though - It might mean that they need a lot less though, like how some people biologically need less sleep than others, or degrade slower when deprived of it.

Incidentally, I wonder whether "coping mechanisms" are the difference - that introverts develop stronger internal dialogues that substitute for normal (external) social interaction(s).

jstx12• 5 years ago

I change my opinions way too frequently for it. Reading stuff that I wrote as recently as a year ago is mildly painful and annoying.

nawgz5• 5 years ago

How do you hold an opinion if it has no basis that can persist over time? I personally imagine for reading one's own writing, just like listening to my own singing, the exact "pain points" you feel would also be felt by any audience and therefore are the most valuable feedback you could possibly receive...

jstx12• 5 years ago

It's mostly due to learning more things and having different interests. Sometimes it's a change of opinion, other times it's more like "is this even worth talking about" or "I would phrase things differently if I was writing this now".

belval• 5 years ago

Not the person you replied to, but it's usually more of a shift in desired tone/writing style than just a general objective evaluation.

For example I can write a post and feel the tone is good, then come back to it and find it too informal, not expert-y enough. Then I'll write a new article and some time later find it too academic and not engaging enough.

That might just be me though.

Ralo• 5 years ago

People learn new facts about topics and change their minds all the time. A 5 year old may be of the opinion that eating candy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is a well balanced meal until they have their first candy "hangover".

goldenchrome• 5 years ago

I imagine you're someone who finds honor in the truth. If you are, then you would benefit from writing. Here are two things you get from writing: 1) it forces you to clarify your thoughts, and 2) it enables you to create new thoughts. Writing is a very effective means to discovering powerful truths.

I think you understand the power of the truth, which is why you're uncomfortable being exposed to it too regularly.

heavyset_go• 5 years ago

I change my opinions way too frequently for it. Reading stuff that I wrote as recently as a year ago is mildly painful and annoying.

This is why I treat most of my non-commissioned writing as living documents, especially in the software space as things change all of the time.

robocat• 5 years ago

I change my opinions way too frequently

If that is because you have learnt something, great!

So many amazing people have written that they actively seek finding out where they are wrong: they revel in it, because they recognise that they have become smarter by understanding their own mistakes.

If your opinions are static, then you are not thinking. 99% of what we know is wrong (subtly or dramatically).

Ginden2• 5 years ago

I change my opinions way too frequently for it.

That's interesting, though. I rarely change my opinions, but I noticed one thing - I often say "I don't know about this subject enough to have strong opinion".

I feel like if I change your opinions frequently, these opinions weren't built on good enough basis.

Kvasier• 5 years ago

I would argue, that the basic discussion about introverts and extroverts is to easy. I think it is way more complex than just two groups. And when we use these two categories, than please JUST to distinguish the basics. But you can not argue with it it this case.

I personaly do not know any "classic" intro- or extrovert...

scottcodie• 5 years ago

This can be better said as 'Writing as communication to an anonymous audience is an introverted activity', which is almost a tautology.

m0zg• 5 years ago

I don't see how it would be - most of what's written is never read.

bitxbitxbitcoin• 5 years ago

Speaking from personal experience, writing something once increases the chance that future me will say something in direct conversation with at least one other person. So for me, there is a positive, non zero benefit.

codazoda4• 5 years ago

I’m not sure that’s true for all forms of writing but I’d love to hear more about it.

Publishing a blog, for example, is pretty likely to be read by at least a small group of people. Same with a book. If I’m writing in a personal notebook, than no, it’s not likely to be read. On the whole, the statement is probably true, but for specific forms, I suspect it’s false.

prionassembly• 5 years ago

Publishing a blog, for example, is pretty likely to be read by at least a small group of people.

No it isn't.

AussieWog93• 5 years ago

most of what's written is never read

Most of what is spoken isn't really listened to, either.

sanat3• 5 years ago

If you see it the other way around - you just need one person to discover your writing to unlock the depth of your thinking as a person.

Writing for the internet > Doing that one on one through networking IRL

codazoda4• 5 years ago

I wonder how people recognize you from your writing since your face isn’t attached to it.

I do see the micro-celebrity in action with my adult son, who is a YouTuber. People recognize him pretty often, so his small following must be relatively local and has this effect. But that’s video where he can easily be recognized.

On a related note, I often wonder how people are so sure it’s him. If I see a video of someone, I’m not likely to recognize them in public. Perhaps I have a bit of this condition of an inability to recognize faces mentioned in the article.

kall• 5 years ago

Depending on the kinds of videos he makes, people may have spend more hours focused on his face, and paying attention to his mannerisms, than some friends of theirs.

andreyk• 5 years ago

It depends on how you publish - on medium the face is hidden, but if you have a personal blog it's easy to make your face and name up front (eg my own https://www.andreykurenkov.com/writing/life/lessons-learned-...).

rhizome2• 5 years ago

tl;dr: faces usually don't matter

I read blogs from authors I have no idea what they look like or where they live or anything, some for almost 20 years, and longer than even that with ppl on IRC. All you need is some consistent identity for people to internalize, which in a lot of cases is a nickname, username, or whatever. Heck, I'm certain a site that used only database IDs to identify users would see (stronger, perhaps) connections form just the same as you see on LinkedIn. "On 11/21/21, 384372 wrote:..." Furthermore I'd bet that there are people who still think to themselves something like "I wonder what happened to 'gardenfloot' on Napster."

On a related note, I often wonder how people are so sure it’s him.

It's him because it's his (I assume) channel and username. That's a reasonable assumption under the social contract such that any aberration would likely be an emergency or a successful hack or something. There have also been groups of people who act as a single online identity, but yours doesn't sound like it's that at all.

I also think celebrity itself is transforming into something a little less oriented around mobbing and paparazzi, and that being recognized is something relative nobodies can get and somebodies can lose, increasing the number of doppelgangers and diluting the entire celebrity industry.

spoonjim2• 5 years ago

Most YouTubers are not geographically scoped. How do you know he has a small audience? His views or his subscribers?

muglug• 5 years ago

I see writing slightly differently: it's a way to present your ideas without any performance-related anxiety getting in the way.

To prepare a good conference talk generally takes a long time, and an otherwise solid talk can be made less engaging by poor delivery.

Writing a comparable article can take the same amount of time, but it's much easier to get feedback on it, and it's far easier to track updates. There's no single moment where you can really screw it up.

lumenwrites2• 5 years ago

The biggest challenge is getting people to read what you wrote, and care enough to respond.

I started a blog recently where I want to write notes for my writing practice and explore different subjects I'm interested in. Of course it'd be nice if someone had actually read it, for my personal vanity, and all those conversations and opportunities people claim blogging leads to.

But it's not the kind of project it would make sense to drive ads to, or even to niche down and grow an audience around a specific topic, since the whole point is to write whatever "gratifies my intellectual curiosity". But you can't really submit this kind of thing to reddit or to forums, they ban "blogspam" for very good reasons. There's no obvious way to promote it and put it in front of people.

Instead of blogging I could try engaging in conversations here and on reddit (and maybe on discord or twitter), and that, at least HN and reddit, works amazingly well for having good discussions (if not for making personal connections).

But the biggest problem with engaging in social media is that it quickly becomes extremely unhealthy and addictive (in the way that blogging doesn't). I want to write, and I want to talk to people, but I don't want to get addicted to refreshing my profile page to look for upvotes and comment notifications (I do have a big problem with the internet addiction).

I'm not sure what the right solution to that would be. Does anyone have good ideas? How do you make actual human connection over the internet and engage in intelligent conversations, without getting your dopamine hijacked and skinnerboxed by the social media algorithms?

Maybe there's a space for a platform that would encourage thoughtful discussion somehow, and limit the immediate rewards that make social media so addictive. But then nobody would use that platform, right?

pddpro• 5 years ago

Maybe someone somewhere will come up with a NLP based solution which will cluster people with similar ideas (by means of their blogs) so that you may find people who share your interests within the cluster or explore other idea clusters. Would be a great way of making friends if nothing else.

lumenwrites2• 5 years ago

I think that subreddits work extremely well for finding people with similar interests, they're basically the perfect tool for that. Discord servers too. If anything, the issue is that they're too good, so I get addicted, and have to force myself to stop.

There could be some kind of solution, based on NLP, or maybe even just finding patterns and clusters in links. But it'd suffer from the same problem subreddits and google do - instantly getting hijacked by the spammers and SEO people trying to promote their stuff.

To the degree that having a popular blog is valuable, people will be motivated to find ways to promote it. And when people want to promote stuff, they'll try game whatever system is available. And so the system will have to implement the anti-spam measures, leading to moderation and probably banning most of the blogs.

Hmm... Maybe that's why we ended up with HN comments and subreddit text-posts working so well. Yes, you can't get the "networking" value out of them (because nobody cares about your username, and there's no such thing as subscribers), but it's not a bug, but a feature - without the personal value there's no incentive to game the system, so you just have people posting for the sake of the conversation.

But that would also mean that becoming even a "micro" celebrity will always be at least somewhat difficult - to the extent that it's valuable, there will be people trying to game the system, and measures trying to stop that, and competition.

rhizome2• 5 years ago

I think this could be achieved by indexing only tags on blog posts. Aside from having to groom the tag corpus (maintaining sets of synonyms would probably be a big part), this would seem to be a fairly pain-free way of deriving some of these associations. It could be extended into "hmm, what other things are the people I share this with also interested in," which happens to be just about where I think the entire field of recommendation engine research should have ended. But I digress.

Yes, you would have to use tags to participate if you weren't already, but that just makes it opt-in.

smoldesu• 5 years ago

Integrate it with ActivityPub and make an account on a service like Mastodon/Plerona/Misskey/etc so you can federate with everyone else. Then, when you publish a new blog post it can be automatically pushed onto other people's feeds if they're following you. I do this, but I also don't really have that big of a desire to find thousands of readers at once. I'm mostly contented with sharing my writing to a few friends and technologically sophisticated peers, so ymmv.

darkteflon• 5 years ago

I took my love of gaming and parlayed it into a YouTube channel. It’s been a fantastic experience.

Making videos is hard work and the learning curve is steep if you don’t have a background in video and (more importantly) audio. But to your point about an audience: on YT, if you build it, they will come. Most interactions in the comments have been pleasant and interesting.

If you’re at all that way inclined, I recommend you consider it or - even better - try it.

EDIT: Forgot to add, although it might have been clear from the context - I’m heavily introverted.

YossarianFrPrez• 5 years ago

I feel very similarly. I like longform essays -- reading them, and writing them -- as well as SSC-like blog posts. Most of that is too long for the typical internet user. Also, I too hate the feeling of my writing contributing to my internet addiction by causing me to be hyper-attuned to online performance indicators.

I don't have an internet-based solution for you, short of trying to get your stuff published in publications. They say that building an online audience is hard, and the best time to start was five years ago.

This being said, my favorite solution and suggestion is to join a local writer's workshop if you haven't already. Many workshops concentrate on fiction, but there is a growing interest in "creative non-fiction" as well. That's where I've found a decent level of discussion about both the content and form of my writing. A second suggestion would be to take a non-fiction writing class through a local university extension. I've gotten a ton out of doing that; there are few things like a small community of supportive writers and readers.

bluecheese33• 5 years ago

I relate to this. I'm writing whatever scratches my itch, and most of the value comes from the writing itself.

But, of course it'd be nice if some people read what I wrote? When I post to reddit or hn I get good traffic and some discussion, but that has all the problems you discuss.

There are probably only a few dozen people who enjoy regularly reading this sort of content, they probably write too. I'd love to find them and start a private chat server where we could read each other's pieces.

tayo42• 5 years ago

But you can't really submit this kind of thing to reddit or to forums, they ban "blogspam" for very good reasons.

As long as your tasteful about sharing, like you already participate in the community idk if you should feel bad or feel like your blog spamming.

3rd party sites are often just a better format for something long form. Blog spam is just drive by dumping shit on a message board expecting likes, follows etc ... With no participation and the content being shared is low quality

BlueTemplar• 5 years ago

That's what signatures are for ?

As long as you don't abuse those and are interesting enough in your everyday forum conversation, people are going to check those out ?

4monthsaway• 5 years ago

Interesting idea, but yea, your last point would probably be the outcome, sadly.

jraby3• 5 years ago

Try /r/hnblogs. It was created specifically to promote contributors of hacker news.

I’ve never submitted anything but I’ve read and commented on quite a few articles I’ve read from that subreddit.

Ginden2• 5 years ago

I write, because it makes my arguments reusable for like-minded people, with sources, quotes etc.

wly_cdgr• 5 years ago

More like, networking is writing for extroverts

codegladiator• 5 years ago

decebalus1• 5 years ago

You know what really enhances your networking via writing endeavor? Not using medium.

hntddt1• 5 years ago

komi can't communicate is a good demonstration in anime

fnord77• 5 years ago

As an introvert, I think introversion is a legitimate disorder.

Anyway, so where besides medium and f*cebook are good places to write?

sanat3• 5 years ago

Twitter, Linkedin, your own website

urthor• 5 years ago

It is. It's also more than that.

Writing is a communication medium.

For some of the reasons we want to communicate, it's the perfect tool for the job. For some of the reasons we want to communicate it's a bit rubbish.

Writing is extremely abstract. It has less of a connection to our subconscious, it's a long, long way from the real world. Humans are creatures driven by human shaped, in person interaction.

Quieter cats love writing for exactly that reason, the emotional ups and downs are much more mellow.

I find though, many people use writing and other tools as a band-aid for how they deal with their emotions. Instead of exploring them.

Instead of seeking, enjoying, laughing, crying, being curious about at all the joys of life, they use multiple abstractions to control their emotions.

Rather than throwing themselves into an emotional whirlwind and growing as a person, they throw up safety barriers. They never figure out how they, themselves actually work.

They'll happily devote years of their lives towards optimizing language compilers, without even thinking to learn what makes the Mountain Dew compiler tick.

sanat3• 5 years ago

I used to run a services business, and thought that attending conferences and meet-ups would give me business. Networking (in real life) is not something I enjoyed - but had to do to get more business.

Some of the best business and personal relationships I've had IRL, have been a byproduct of writing something online.

Some the advantages that I can think of 1. Putting yourself out there has a lot more scale when you broadcast your thoughts by writing online. Even reaching 10s of people takes more time in real life. 2. Cumulative and compounding - someone can find out a lot more about you by just reading more of the things that you've written about in the past. 3. Pull vs Push - It lets the best connections come to you - instead of putting the impetus on you finding the best connection.

rootsudo• 5 years ago

That's a nice way to put it.

I guess it is.

I also feel much more appreciated when someone reaches out to me because of something I wrote and it's easier to make a connection - it acts as a great filter, straight to the point and can be a jumping point to more conversation.

rStar• 5 years ago

but what if i’m good at both?

cblconfederate• 5 years ago

Apart from natural inclinations one needs to account the time it takes. Networking is boring and slow process , and nerds are impatient. It seems like there is a problem to solve there, rather than considering it an unfixable natural handicap. Writing (becoming famous) may be one way but it still too indirect, hard if you re not good writer, and probably hit-or-miss way to succeed in.

The problem with the global and centralizing nature of our current social instruments is that markets in every niche are global, which means that all buyers and all sellers are in the same spot trying to network. This is monolithic. It is good for finding global optima, but it misses all the value that exists in local optima.

Borrible• 5 years ago

Don't know if it's networking for introverts, but it is asynchronous, can be anonymized, is much easier to distribute, has a wider audience, can be used as a playground, supports the thought process, reduces social pressure in and gives more control over face to face situations, pleases the ego and so on.

You can use it as a shell.

You might use it as a sting.

arvinsim• 5 years ago

I am interested in how to improve one's writing, especially in creative nonfiction. Unlike programming where you can get feedback immediately from the computer if you make a mistake, it's usually not easy to find a mentor to give feedback if one's writing is improving or regressing.

9387367• 5 years ago

I’ll curse your writing style for free and will rewrite it for $1 a word plus $5 for each word I can eliminate.

spoonjim2• 5 years ago

How do you get your writing seen though? It’s largely by being promoted by your friends and acquaintances when you post something, which requires... networking.

Writing is networking for introverts

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