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Notes -
I just spent my Saturday doing a winery tour out in the countryside with close friends.
I'm an introvert, but sometimes I really appreciate extroverts dragging me out into the right environment. We actually managed to fit 5 adults into a sedan to get out there (to avoid drink driving). There was just the right amount of degenerate day drinking, which was kind of ok because two among us had Summer dresses.
I think there might be something to 'touching grass'.
I suspect that the whole Introvert/Extrovert thing basically doesn't exist. It seems to me that pretty much everyone wants to be social and around other people sometimes and quiet and alone at other times. There's some variation on exactly how much of each and at what intensity any person wants, but virtually nobody is at the extremes suggested by the Introvert/Extrovert framing.
There does seem to be more variation in desire to plan and organize events. Relatively few people seem to have the desire or inclination to create a plan, even a really simple and vague one like, let's all meet at a bar at roughly some particular time, and invite a bunch of people to it. But at least those relative few seem to be really into it, so it's good to have them around. Many others seem to be happy to show up to an event that somebody else organized, but have little interest in organizing things themselves.
I model the Introvert-Extrovert distinction as those who like to form relatively few connections, but the connections they do form are strong and last a long time, vs. those who like to form many loose and 'weak' connections, and is constantly severing some and forming new ones based on various criteria.
And thus, where do they put their efforts? Introverts put effort into trying to maintain their existing friendships, extroverts put efforts into forming more, more, more and, almost by definition, can only devote small amounts of efforts to any given relationship (although they may have some they focus on more!).
So the result is that once the introvert has formed a decent number of strong connections, the thought of spending MORE effort on finding more relationships just doesn't make sense, to the extent it will take effort away from their existing relationships. And to the extrovert, being stuck with the same handful of people and unable to find new connections might seem unbearable.
Maybe its about novelty-seeking vs. preference for the familiar.
And thus, the thought of going to a party with tons of strangers might make the introvert miserable, while it would excite the extrovert.
Maybe, but have you ever met any actual people who would meet those definitions?
I don't think I've ever met or known anyone who I know to be extroverted by that definition. Though to be fair, maybe it would be hard to know because by definition such a person would be very difficult to get to know well enough to know that they're actually doing that. But then who are the people who actually know for sure that someone they know is behaving like that?
I like theory-crafting as much as the next possibly vaguely autistic Mottizan, but I've also gotten somewhat self-conscious about the tendency to build imaginary castles that aren't demonstrated to correspond to actual people or real-world situations.
I knew a guy who would talk to someone in a foreign country for perhaps five minutes and subsequently say that they "made a friend". On the other hand, I could count my friends on one hand.
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