You’ve got to love YouTube comments. On my extremely micro, and only sort of live, YouTube channel I get sporadic comments that are usually complimentary. It’s often around being a significant part of persuading introverts to try solo travel.
Occasionally I get a random negative one. Never anything like the truly toxic ones other people get, but they do appear. This is about one of those posts.
The similar video
This video discusses similar topics but from a different starting point and in a different way.
You say you’re an introvert
you say you’re an introvert? But are you really one? And then you make a youtube video about it? Seems like you are looking for attention. Sorry but someone that wants to take a vacation around 4000 guests isn’t really a true introvert. A true introvert would take vacations away from large crowds. I’m guessing want to meet people but just haven’t found the right group. I take solo cruisers all the time, while I don’t talk much to people on the ship, but I am open to it and don’t mind large crowds here and there. I would not consider myself an introvert.
– A Random ‘Dave’
This is the comment in question. It was posted on my An Introvert On A Cruise Ship video which has 10.2K views, an astronomically large number for my YouTube channel. So it’s not surprising it draws comments. As I say, usually of the you have tipped me over into doing this kind.
Anyway, the central premise of the comment is I can’t be an introvert because I was on a cruise ship that also happened to have 4K other guests on it and I made a YouTube video about it. I’m going to argue why this makes no sense in a moment, but first a couple of things.
I don’t care that someone thinks I’m not an introvert, what I care about is the misconceptions of being an introvert generally. I don’t attach labels to myself. In fact, introvert is the only label I’ve tended to use because it very much defines and helps me understand how I interact with the world. In my life I use labels to increase understanding not to seek belonging. I think it’s worth pointing that out.
Anyone challenging who is an introvert should read Quiet by Susan Cain as it’s pretty much the singular (or one of a few) defining books on the subject. Understand it and then talk about the subject as it means you’re approaching it from a position of understanding rather than just what bundle of social anxieties or identify labels you like or don’t like to adopt.
What is an introvert?
Being an introvert has nothing to do with needing to isolate oneself. All being an introvert means can be summed up by the infographic below.
That is all it means..period. You may, to various degrees, be shy or socially anxious or a whole host of other things but those are things that may correlate with being an introvert but are adjacent to it. It’s even possible for people to be extroverts but be socially anxious! A truly challenging situation.
I can use myself as an example here. I used to be shy, almost crippling so. Yet over the course of my life being shy has diminished as I’ve got older due to various hobbies, my career and life experience. This hasn’t changed my defining characteristics as an introvert based on the true definition above.
So, let’s go back to the comment now.
The comment’s invalid statements
We can break the central arguments in the comments down into three areas.
I went on a cruise with 4K other people
I get it. It does seem odd that an introvert would go on a holiday where 4K other people were also at. If you think about it though it makes no sense. Is the argument really being made an introvert would never go on a holiday where lots of other people congregate?
So, does this mean no introvert goes to a popular all-inclusive holiday resort? What about Disney World? What about a concert? Are all people going to big stadium concerts extroverts? I can assure you, statistically, they are not.
It makes no sense at all.
If we just take the Disney World fandom as an example, since we mentioned it, a whole host of those people are introverts! Yet they go to highly congested theme parks? Yeah, a single theme park is a wide geographic area but believe me at any particular time you’re crammed up against a lot of those people.
The main reason it makes no sense is there were 4K other guests on the ship but it wasn’t a social occasion on which I needed to socialise with them. Being anxious in a crowd is social anxiety. All those other deadbeats can be on that cruise as long as they largely leave me alone and interact with me on my own terms. Those 4K other people drained no energy at all because 90% of the time they just happened to be around (and never remotely all around at once) while I read seven books in as many days!
Yeah, I conversed with my fellow guests occasionally but I didn’t seek it out as a need, it would just happen in context as we shared an experience and it was also 1-1 to or close to it. Alone in this respect doesn’t literally mean no one within sight it can just mean being left to yourself.
I made a YouTube video
I hate to reveal a big secret, but a lot of people doing YouTube are introverts. Once you get out of a certain bracket of YouTube content that is based on being an exuberant entertainer (and even then be careful, a lot of actors are introverts outside of their performance) many are introverts. It’s easy to see why.
- No audience it’s a deep 1-1 conversation with the camera
- Content is based on self-reflection or deep understanding of a topic
- It can be about imparting knowledge as much as it is to entertain
- Outside of writing a novel, you’re not going to find as an isolated way to spend your time
The perception of what it means ‘to do YouTube’ is that it demands you’re an extrovert. It is often the opposite. Anyone who thinks ‘doing YouTube’ means you’re an extrovert hasn’t watched many of the great videos on succeeding on YouTube because a lot of it appeals to an introvert’s view of the world and how they think and exist.
The honest truth is making YouTube content is an activity for an isolationist and one who likes talking to themselves as the camera doesn’t count!
I’m looking for attention
This brings us neatly to the assumption one is seeking attention due to making YouTube videos. This is the assumption in a lot of places and people form opinions on all people making videos founded on that premise.
It’s not true or what is true is there are many different forms of attention. The assumed form of attention is celebrity, but celebrity attention is not what all people, some might say not even the majority, are seeking. It might be a form of attention based on different values: –
- In the sense of having a community to talk about a topic of interest?
- In the form of being recognised as an authority in a subject, you are really interested in?
- In the form of being able to see you’re helping people?
All the above are very introverted things to do. Especially when you consider YouTube allows for these things to happen in a very controlled (you create the content alone and have extreme control over its form and all the people experiencing it are ‘distant’) and process orientated (the feedback is by comments which you have control over and is interaction on the creator’s terms) way.
Outside of celebrity attention, many other forms of attention based on knowledge, discussion and helping people via that knowledge and being very introspective are very introverted ways of getting value out of life.
Are we really saying introverts don’t like helping people with their knowledge?
The purity of introversion
Like a lot of things being an introvert or extrovert is going to be a scale, but it bugs me that anyone not at the far end of introversion or, as is more likely true, experiencing a whole host of things that are not specifically about being an introvert like social anxiety and shyness, are called out. Not because I give a shit what other people think but it doesn’t help with understanding, self-reflection and other people seeking to navigate the landscape.
The truth is many an introvert can do some crazy shit as long as it’s done in bursts, not continuously and in a controlled way often about subjects they know a lot about. As an example, I can run role-playing games which some might define as a bit extroverted but ideally only bi-weekly and I’m knackered afterwards. Similarly, I can give presentations fine, but I want time to prepare, reflect and articulate what I am going to say and it has to be something I’ve confidence in. Again I am totally knackered afterwards as I am not gaining energy from the buzz of doing it.
Let’s say this: do you really think all teachers, professors and people doing profound TED talks are extroverts? I can assure you they ain’t, often quite the opposite.
And, Finally…
Ultimately, I find the comment fascinating and it bugs me how it doesn’t help with true understanding via getting the labels and taxonomy of things right. Now, that’s dead on introvert thinking! I did try to engage in an interesting manner but as you might be able to predict my opposing number engaged on the premise that I was delusional.
What I find interesting is why does the author of the comment care so much that I’ve ‘got it wrong’? Especially when I can point to things I’ve read and assessed to make my judgement when they cannot. When I encounter these things I usually end up thinking it’s something to do with how it makes them feel about themselves.
I also wonder if they actually watched the video, as it’s not a walk-and-talk vlog of me on the ship but me informing people how I found an introvert experience and spaces on a cruise ship to the camera on my own after having spent hours over days writing the script on my own!