Not all failure in public is due to the fact that you never learned the rules or never learned to figure people out or read social cues. I have met people who told me that they were just about the world’s greatest social actors until they got hit by a mental illness, for instance an anxiety disorder. They would go out in public with their anxiety stuff going on and they would experience near-total rejection. Why? Because people can’t stand nervous or anxious people. Now this is someone who knows the rules, what to say, when to say it, can read people perfectly, can pick up social cues… and yet he is failing socially due to something that he feels is outside of his control.
What about people with schizophrenia? Do they have “poor social skills?” Of course not, that’s not their problem. Their problem is that they are nucking futs. You go out into the world with a wild psychotic disorder and continuous auditory hallucinations and I guarantee you that you will fail. Because you can’t pick up cues? Because you are too shy? Because you don’t know the rules? Hell no. Because when you have a disorder like this, it makes you seem and behave in a completely bizarre way that turns off just about 100% of the population.
Manics can also fail socially when in the midst of a full-blown mania. Depressives probably fail socially, that is if you could somehow manage to drag out them out of the house and somehow force them to attend a social gathering. Because they are social clods? Of course not. It’s because they are profoundly depressed!
As an introvert, I resent all of these silly “social skills” arguments. They are all written by extroverts. No introvert would ever write about something so stupid.
Let’s get real here for a second. Extroverts simply do not like us. I have made friends with extroverts my whole life, but there were usually problems in the relationship.
Yet I can be extroverted. If I am with a girlfriend, I might spend the whole day with her for weeks on end, with ten of fifteen feet of each other. The only time we are apart is when we are going to the bathroom, literally. Does it make me uncomfortable? Of course not. I can be surgically attached to a hot looking babe for weeks on end. It’s not a problem!
And with some of these women, we run around doing things all day, go out to dinner every night and to bars to drink very late at night. Because I can play that game too. I don’t really prefer it, but if I have to, I can do it because that is part of my personality, especially my personality as a young man, when I was one of the wildest extroverts this side of the Rockies. That’s not a part of you that is going to go away.
Extroverts think introverts are sick, weird and mentally ill. A lot of them think we are evil. Why are we evil? Because we all have “low self-esteem.”
How do we know we have low self-esteem? Because we are shy. Because we are introverted.
How do we know we are shy or introverted or shy? Because we have low self-esteem!
And the tautalogical sphere is now complete.
Extroverts think a person who doesn’t think too highly of themselves is evil. They have extreme contempt for them.
But this is a fallacy. There are introverts who have very high self-esteem or who even have narcissistic traits – you are reading an article written by one right now. A lot of just don’t mind being alone. It drives extroverts nearly psychotic, but personally I can spend the whole day in my apartment never leaving once, never having anyone ever, and not talking to anyone on the phone. And I can be happy as a pig in shit.
Because I like myself so much that I can be all alone with myself easily. After all, if I am alone, I am hanging out with one of the greatest people on Earth, and that’s got to be a blast, right?
There are shy people who have good self-esteem. It all depends on why you are avoiding people. Did it ever occur to you that some folks might have a perfectly sensible reason for not wanting to socialize a lot? Such as that most people you meet are not only retarded, but worse than that, they are dangerously retarded?
And introverts can be very healthy. Even some extreme introverts, introverted to the point where they nearly meet criteria for Schizoid Personality Disorder, can be immaculately, even striking healthy psychologically. Just because you’re alone isn’t necessarily going to make you nuts. Some people can be shockingly healthy in their heads and still be hermits.
Extroverts have this idiot notion that if all these shy introverts would just acquire some “social skills,” all of their problems will just go away. Why will it work? Because it worked so well for them, but they were never shy in the first place so it’s a stupid comparison.
This is arrogance. Sure, extroverts have good social skills. So what? Is that going to get you into Heaven or something?
Most introverts I have met have excellent social skills also. They are not awkward, klutzy or lame socially. They know what to say and when and how to say it, they monitor their emotions and thoughts very closely – often with precision – they are masterful at reading others, they adjust their conversation and emotion throughout the conversation in response to the emotional cues and conversational style of the other. They are just a bit inhibited is all.
Being inhibited means you have “poor social skills”? Bull.
Actually, I think a lot of introverts have better “social skills” than a lot of extroverts.
Extroverts are often uninhibited, and they often do or say stupid things, but they put across a good image and people like them, so everyone just laughs when they mess up or thinks it’s an act of social mastery. If people like you, they go blind to 90% of your errors and often transform them into perfect scores.
Actually, extroverts screw up socially quite often, usually due to their lack of inhibition. Not that they care.
They blow up all the time, they make big scenes for little or no reason, and the females regularly burst into tears and plunge into depressions on emotional rollercoaster rides.
While the introvert is often quite calm and controls his emotions very well.
This is why I am dubious about this “social skills” BS. It’s just another scam by extroverts to beat up on us introverts. Most people don’t need social skills training, and those that do are often too far gone for it to do any good (Aspies) or could care less and don’t want to change (disinhibited extroverts).
I haven’t met a lot of social retards who turned into social chessmasters. When does this social alchemy ever take place?
Nor does it work the other way around. Once you get the skills, you have them for life. They are not going anywhere. Winners of social Academy Awards do not turn into stumbling dorks over time? Why would they?
The problem with shy people is usually an anxiety issue, not a problem that they don’t read social cues well or know how the play conversation tennis. How in the Hell does “social skills training” help someone with Social Phobia.
This person has an emotional dysregulation issue somewhere in their brain. Their anxiety level goes nuts when they get around people, particularly members of the opposite sex. That’s their problem, not being a social loser. They probably needs a tranquilizer or some other drug to re-regulate his emotions and reset their brains.
The same extroverts who so arrogantly beat us with rhetorical clubs over this social skills BS have now taken their supremely overbearing mindset online.
PS: What right do I have to talk about these things? Well, for one thing, I work in mental health. That’s how I earn part of my income.
