[bootsz]

> I would say that I'm an introvert who's really good at pretending to be an extrovert for small amounts of time

In other words: an introvert. There seems to be a widespread misconception that introversion means being "shy" and not talking to people, when in reality it is more about where you draw energy from. The result is tons of people self-identifying as "extroverted introverts"[1], presumably in an attempt to signal that they are not totally devoid of social skills, when in reality introversion has nothing to do with that.

[1] When I was single I saw this surprisingly often in online dating profiles. Interestingly, for all the many people I've seen identify this way, I've never seen a single person self-identify as the opposite: an "introverted extrovert".

[nkrisc]

It's a very common misconception. One I even held myself until recently. The more I thought about it, I realized that while I am introverted, I do like being around people. I'm perfectly happy to be with and socialize with people - as long as I don't have to be the center of attention or life of the party. Interestingly it was a 3 month stint doing full-time remote work that made me realize this.

Luckily when socializing with other introverts, they're generally OK with silence and gaps in the conversation, it's not awkward. And when socializing with extroverts they're happy to dominate the conversation and I'm happy to let them and just listen.

[brokenmachine]

I'd call myself an introvert, but I definitely get a bit awkward with silences in conversation, except when I'm with good friends.

When there's an extrovert dominating and thus no silence at all, I just get tired of listening.

[nkrisc]

Sure, I feel that too sometimes. Sometimes it's because I don't know the other person well so I don't know how they feel about it, so I start to worry that it feels awkward to them and that makes me want to alleviate it for their sake. Often I'm probably just overthinking it.

It can also be tiring when someone dominates a conversation, it really just depends who it is. I have some friends who I could listen to all day, and they'd happily talk all day.

[brokenmachine]

>I have some friends who I could listen to all day, and they'd happily talk all day.

I have those friends too, but unfortunately I also have some acquaintances that I can only listen to for a minute, yet they happily talk all day.

Sometimes their extrovert nature can override recognition of the audience's engagement level.

[mycall]

You tapped into something here. I think for some people, like myself, it depends who I am with and my relationship with them. It can be extrovert and they have a constant stream of interesting things which is mostly fun, so it flows naturally... or there are awkward thoughts or moments that lead to "when will this person shut up".

I wouldn't limit and label myself a certain way based on a few situations with a few people. Keep exploring folks!

[cedex12]

I don't see how being OK with silences and gaps matches this "introvert" trait mentioned in the parent.

To my ears, this usual "introverts are not made uncomfortable by silences" refrain sounds condescending.

[BurningFrog]

I think the reality is that the word has two established meanings. One is the professional clinician meaning you describe here, and the other is the more popular meaning of "shy".

The bigger point is that when you try to communicate with people, if they're using the word as introvert(2), you're being a jerk if you're pretending they meant introvert(1), because that's the "correct" meaning.

[wool_gather]

Not to turn this into a culture war, but as introverts in a world of extraversion, the more people who understand the distinction and recognize that introverts don't need to "just get out there", or reform themselves to be "less shy", or any of that nonsense, the happier everyone will be. So it's worth raising this. The misunderstanding may be broad, but it's not necessarily a fixed state.

And, to be frank, people who insist on labeling an acquaintance as introvert(2) are not exactly engaging in non-jerk behavior either. In fact, it's that very thing that leads young introverted people to self-describe as "shy" and then do their unconscious best to fulfill that description, to their detriment.

[BurningFrog]

This is a prescriptive vs descriptive language debate. I'm personally a staunch descriptivist.

Fact is that in common usage the word "introvert" primarily means "shy".

To me, fighting to change the definition of words, is among the least productive of all things.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/introvert https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/intro...

> And, to be frank, people who insist on labeling an acquaintance as introvert(2) are not exactly engaging in non-jerk behavior either. In fact, it's that very thing that leads young introverted people to self-describe as "shy" and then do their unconscious best to fulfill that description, to their detriment.

This seems a very unlikely chain of events!

[derefr]

Descriptivism breaks down when encountering jargon.

Consider the phrase "begging the question", for example. The phrase means something specific when discussing logical syllogisms, and was coined by academics as a piece of jargon to refer to that particular concept.

Even if everyone who doesn't know what a logical syllogism is, now thinks that "begging the question" means something entirely different from what those academics mean, that doesn't mean that the phrase has lost its jargon meaning. You can't redefine away jargon. Jargon gets written down into scientific papers and people continue to read and cite those indefinitely, so the jargon use of the term gets promulgated in academia indefinitely in order to understand those papers.

Yes, there is a lay-term "introvert" that now means something pretty much non-differentiable from "shy." But that's irrelevant when the useful term isn't the lay-term, but the jargon term.

To think otherwise would be like expecting a biblical scholar to stop using the word "apocalypse" to refer to the set of apocryphal texts of the Bible, just because the lay-term refers to an eschaton event.

Yes, lay-people will think you mean the wrong thing. But the solution to that is not to abandon the jargon word, but rather to specify that you're speaking academically and that you intend words to have their jargon meaning; and to terminate the conversation (or, grudgingly, teach an entire intro course to the academic subject to your interlocutor) if they don't know the appropriate jargon.

[bootsz]

I don't entirely disagree, but my main gripe is that the former definition is extremely useful so it is unfortunate to have it subsumed by the concept of "shy" (for which we already have a widely-understood word), since it then becomes difficult to communicate and reason about the former. Maybe the solution is that we need yet another word to use for the former meaning, although I wonder how long will it take until such a word would yet again become co-opted to mean "shy"...

[wool_gather]

> This seems a very unlikely chain of events!

No, not even remotely. It is a real problem.

[fourthark]

How so? Of course we are affected by what we are called, and an introvert will go along with it to avoid arguing.

(I agree with you that it's pointless to try to change how people use words.)

[Jarwain]

I sometimes identify as a socially-anxious extrovert. I gain energy from being around people, but sometimes the idea of interaction or going up & meeting new people makes me anxious enough that I just stick to the wall