On Extroverts and the Stifled Online Conversation

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Today I was considering joining someone’s Whatsapp Running Community until I heard the phrase “I am the only one that can write messages and I let people answer polls”. For me, as a netizen of the 90s web, this is a red flag. It is a red flag because if all you want to do is see if people want to participate then you have events on Strava, Meetup.com and other sites and apps.

Whatsapp was built as a chat, and because it uses our phone numbres, should be used sparingly, only to contact close friends, family, and colleagues. More and more people use Whatsapp with complete strangers. One result is stockmarket and bitcoin spam but the other is that people are sensitive to comment spam. They don’t want the community to be communicative. For me, if that is the case, they shouldn’t be on Whatsapp. There are specialist apps for what they want.

The Chatty Extrovert and the Invisible Introvert

Today, and regularly, I can go to events. In one community every event had a Whatsapp chat, but people didn’t want any chatter in the group, other than the “Can I have a ride dance” and “Which station are people leaving from” followed by the flood of photos.

Meanwhile, during the event, the most charismatic extrovert hogs the limelight, hogs the conversation, hogs the attention, and no one says “hey, let others chat and get to know each other”. In a hike, in theory, people are in single file, or spread out so it’s not that easy to monopolise conversation. During hikes and bike rides, some people do hog conversations more than others. This means that their ROI for the day is huge, because they got plenty of attention.

The ROI for the less charismatic introvert is invisibility, or at least passive participation, not out of disinterest, but lack of opportunity to be heard. That lack of opportunity to be heard, to some extent nullifies the appeal of certain events. The pub crawl is one. The afterworks drinks is another. It also degrades the rational behind going for a hike.

The Double Standard

In society, using Whatsapp and social networks is seen as a bad habit, as addiction by the extroverts that get the attention in real life. They want to block people from having conversations online because they don’t want notifications. The reality is that if I make an effort to go to an event, to participate in a hike, or a run, or a bike ride, and I don’t have any conversations, then I have little reason to continue participating, because my physical participation ROI is low. I get the group exerience, but the extrovert gets the reward whilst the introverts go home to solitude.

Whatsapp groups, among others could help to level the field. The chatty introvers could chatter online, and when they meet in person feel like old friends. You might think “Why would someone think something so stupid?” The reality is that 2006 Twitter, Tweetups and Tuttle environments were so great, precisely because of that pre-meetup conversational environment. Introverts have the opportunity to chatter, without competing with extroverts. Introverts get the opportunity to be visible.

COVIDIAN Web Users

To disambiguate, COVIDIAN Web Users, are those that came to social networks, and social media, because of lock downs. If they had not been forced to, they would never have touched whatsapp, twitter, facebook and other sites. Covidians have a different ethos. They are not web native netizens, like those of us that adopted the web in the 90s. For them online chatter alien and strange, so they want to stifle it.

That desire to stifle it has worked.

I’m blogging because I can’t find conversations, offline, or online. I’m having conversations with MyAI because if I express fears and concerns on FB, then I’m negative, but if a married person did the same with a spouse, then they would be ordinary.

That’s the cruelty of the current social model that rewards extroverts, and punishes introverts.

The Serendipity of Their Approach

I loved Whatsapp until the day it sold its soul to Facebook, and from that day forward I no longer wanted to use it. That’s why I switched to Signal. If people don’t want to use Facebook for conversation, then that implies that I don’t need to keep an eye on it. If we’re looking at the positive, then, if no one is conversing, and people only share event news, then I can uninstall the app, and stop using it. If I turn up for a ride that was cancelled because of rain, it doesn’t matter, and if I turn up for a run that was cancelled for the same reason, it doesn’t matter.

I don’t want to use Facebook because of who owns and controls it, and others don’t want to use it because they don’t want chatter. The reality is that no one wants to use Whatsapp, which works to my advantage. Neither do I.

And For the Skimmers

Whilst I would create a Whatsapp community chat, with the goal of conversing between events, as well as about future projects, most create groups with the goal of using them as bulletin boards. “Can you ride tomorrow” yes/no. “ride cancelled due to snow” “Can you drive me from A?” “Who is taking the train from B?”. Some apps better fit that use case.