Extroverts: Five Ways You Can Dial It Back at the Holiday Party This Year!

Flipping the script on one of click-journalism's most annoying holiday tropes

I debated writing this, mostly because too many folks believe that a tendency toward introversion amounts to either a disability or a character flaw, especially in the marcomm trade. A friend of mine in the media business was even called out by a boss for describing herself as an introvert on social media. After all, who wants to listen to an introvert’s podcast, amirite?

However, to the surprise of many, I consider myself an introvert. Hasn’t really held me back, I don’t think. To any degree it has, I count it as a tradeoff in favor of my mental health. A lot of us feel the same way.

Contrary to the stereotype, an introvert’s default state isn’t chewing on their nails while while listening to The Smiths and sitting in a dimly lit corner with a blanket and a bottle of peach schnapps. Quiet and solitude is just how we “recharge our batteries,” as they say. And many of us do have the gift-of-gab; it’s just that it takes a bit more effort.

Anyway, given that the Media-Conformity Complex reliably tries to “cure” introverts around this time each year, I thought I’d take the mirror-universe approach: What if introversion was the factory setting of Americans during the holidays?

So here’s my own list:

1. There is absolutely nothing about us that you need to “fix”: Let’s start here. You have been lied to and indeed comforted by the MCC this whole time. In fact, there’s a strong possibility that you might be the “weird” one.

2. Mind the booze: Look. I used to run a booze blog. I even apprenticed at a Brazilian distillery. So, I’m not trying to harsh your mellow or insist that you alter your habits on my account. But booze very quickly gets you from “Where are you headed for the holidays?” to “Man… There was this time sophomore year in college when… WOOOOO!!! MAAAAAANN…”

3. Only you find silence uncomfortable: Introverts are fine with silence. Seriously, don’t feel like you need to fill air-time on their account. They don’t need the high-twitch dialogue in order to be entertained. Observing how frequently the accounting department heads towards the shrimp cocktail table relative to the other groups is entertainment enough.

4. Question: While I did once hear that introverts communicate by wanting to be asked questions, this doesn’t come from a place of narcissism or ego. Sometimes they just need a prompt to start a conversation and this is one good way to do it.

5. Listen: We get it. There’s a lot going on at the party. But once you get an introvert to start talking (easier than you think) then maybe stay with it for about a minute or two before accosting seeking out your next conversation partner.

Introversion is neither feature, nor bug, but it is more akin to a different operating system. So far, though, most of the suggested interoperability protocols have been written to flow in only one direction — forcing introvertOS to communicate with extrovertOS while treating the converse as an edge case. It has been long past time that the system priorities were rebalanced.

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AI will no doubt jeopardize certain jobs. It will just as quickly create new ones. Hell… Just look at what’s going on with Sam Altman himself just this past weekend.