Ask HN: Why aren’t introverts better at messaging?
My friend says he gets social panic when he’s facing people. As the medium is a chat app shouldn’t the going be easier (for introverts)? Replying in controlled env etc.
3 comments
Annecdotally, as an ambivert, my experience with chat apps (versus physical life) results in even more social anxiety. The amount of criticism on Slack is higher than I experience in physical life. When you see a person, you can pick up on queues that they are being sarcastic or recognize their individual speech pattern as something to minimize. Text looks far more uniform in terms of interpreting emotion/personality. Even when I post on HN, I’m not sure if some comment I tried to write in a measured way will be harshly criticized. When I say something similar in person, the hearer has a moment pause before saying something adversarial because they can see my face and humanize me.
Anecdotally, as an introvert, I prefer text to f2f, precisely because I know it will be judged on the words as chosen, and not on any extraneous cues. Criticism and adversarial responses are welcome; what annoys me no end in f2f is when people attempt to introduce some inaccurate interpretation of information from a paracommunicative channel to the discussion, instead of bothering to parse and respond to what I have actually said.
Fair enough, seems conflict resolution is better in person. What could we do to make our voices level and spread contagious intellect and positive discussions?