November 01, 2004

• I got exactly a 50% loner rating....however some of those questions are geared more torwards adults. As a very average 17 year-old,it isn't likely that I would be able to take a vacation by myself, or spend a major holiday by myself. When you live with your parents those things often aren't really possible.
• Thought that the quiz had too few questions to be of much use. Plus, some questions allowed for only answers of one extreme or another. I think that "loner" has negative connotations because people associate the term with motive-less murder. I love to be alone, but I love social interaction just as much.
• I got a score of 40:

  You enjoy socializing, but you also have your moods when you'd rather be alone.

• I'm a hermit.
• You're a happy medium on the loner scale. You enjoy socializing, but you also have your moods when you'd rather be alone. Social interaction is important for forming human bonds, getting support and affirming your own personal identity. (As Charles Augustin Sainte-Beauve said, "Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.") But it's equally important to do things for yourself, have time to reflect and explore the world in your own way. In fact, doing things on your own makes you a stronger, more interesting person. Whether or not you consciously aspired to this state of harmony between independence and human bonding, you seem to have achieved it! I think they end every result paragraph with an exclam. I agree with bernockle, some of the answers were a little too specific. The "seeing someone you know on the street" answers didn't leave any room for variation. If it's during my morning commute, I will do everything to avoid a person and hide. If I'm out in a casual environment, I'll at least say hi, if not invite them over. nice post, btw.
• I scored a 60%, for what its worth. I'm not sure I feel the test to be particularly valid, but I do find this subject very interesting, especially the question as to the negative connotation of desiring to be alone... I am best described as a social loner. I have a LOT of friends, close friends. I go out all the time and socialize a lot. my husband is a social slut, always on, ready to entertain, make the scene etc., however, I need and cherish all the alone time that I get each day. too much time around others drains me and I need to be alone to recharge. I understand this about myself and have no problem with it, but BOY!, do I have a hard time with other people. not only is there a limited amount of understanding, but even less acceptance. there is NOTHING wrong with being a person who prefers to spend some, a lot or even most/all of their time with themselves, books, movies, their computer or pet. if they are satisfied and feel that they are getting their own emotional needs met how can it be a bad thing? perhaps others are threatened by the "loner" because they sense that the "loner" may not require them in any way. OOoohhh!!
• I answered honestly, and told 'em my real sex and age. I got an 80. Then I left the sex where it was, and told 'em I was 100. I got an 80. So then, same sex, I told 'em I was 6. Got an 80. Changed to female, got an 80. And they were wrong every time. I'm at least a 90, and I haven't been an 80 since December 12, 2000. And if things don't go the way I want them to tomorrow, I may well become a 120. Vote goat!
• This reminds me of the attention this article received when it was published. (Sorry, I couldn't find a full version of it). I think a lot of people appreciated someone acknowledging that being introverted is not by default a bad thing. Our culture seems to be set up for those who enjoy / thrive on being extraverted, and those of us who are on the quieter side tend to be ignored or dismissed.
• I got happy medium, too, but I think that's just because I swing wildly between social butterfly and hermit, depending on my mood. I'm dating a dedicated loner. It took a while to get used to that, but I realized that I like to be close to loners. Somehow, it's more rewarding when they're willing to spend time with you.
• Heh...I got a 70. Also, the book "Party of One:The Loner's Manifesto" is great - the writer really gets into the idea of the loner in our society.
• Loneliness is bad (for you) when there is a direspectancy between how much significant social contact you have, and how much you want. Some people have, say, 1 significant contact, and are perfectly happy this way. Others have 100, but really, they'd prefer to have 1000. I have very few. I'm happy this way. My brother has a lot. He's happy this way.
• Post to the rabbit blog by author of the book moneyjane mentions.
• Naturesgreatestmiracle, that article was the first thing I thought of too. Well, the second thing after Myers Briggs generalities. The article in full.
• I think being a loner has contributed greatly to my enjoyment of escorting because 90% of the time I get to hang out at home and do all kinds of cool brainy weirdo stuff, and then I dress up in my costume-y clothes, be wildly entertaining for a few hours, then take the loot home to the bat cave. Every other job, about 60% of the time, I was thinking,'For the love of God, get the fuck out of my face' about the people around me. Nothing personal, but being around too many people for too long is like being forced to listen to a static-y radio with the volume being slowly turned up.
• I don't know if it's the fault of "our culture". In modern societies, "It's not who you are, it's who you know" often holds true. Therefore, people who know a lot of other people are often at an advantage: they tend to hoard a lot of social capital. Of course, a little quality contact can go a great deal (if you're, say, friends with a big executive), but by and large, extroverts have an advantage in a democratic/capitalistic society. That means that people who like to have little social contacts must carve themselves niches where they can earn a living while not hating every moment of it.
• Also I think the smart loner/stupid extrovert image is wrong. Smart/stupid and introvert/extrovert are probably on independent Axis. You'll NEVER hear of Paul Stupid Introvert. He never talks to anyone anyway. Maybe Joe Smart Introvert will write a book or a piece of software, and you'll know him. Karl Smart Extrovert may be getting on your nerves, but he's doing all right. Now, Peter Dumbass Extrovert will make your life Hell, and you know it.
• I scored a 60.
• I agree. I don't think raw intelligence has much to do with introvert/extrovert. Introverts have an edge in the being perceived as smart category simply because whole lot of thinking time is going to produce something eventually. Usually really shitty indie bands, but sometimes even useful stuff. Dumbass introverts wander off and fall into wells or off cliffs and, for fear of attracting an annoying crowd, they do not call for help, and thusly expire.
• "You don't go out of your way to be with people, and actually prefer your own company to that of others!" Note the exclamation mark...is wanting to be by yourself truly that amazing to those who don't? No, the part that's truly amazing isn't that you enjoy being alone, it's that you enjoy your company. :P
• I found this book about 10 years ago. The personality categories are similar to Myers-Briggs, but I think that the descriptions are much more meaningful and directed more at one's full life than at working styles. They point out that we all have a mix of types within us. My strongest was loner, but they made me feel rather proud to be one - strong and independent, if sometimes misunderstood. Next strongest was eccentric ("logic is optional.") Graphing the results let me look at myself from the outside (to the extent that's possible) and make me think about how I'd gotten where I was. It was a nice change from blundering blindly along. The authors propose that the types are hard-wired, but I disagree. If I had taken the test at various stages in my life, the relative strengths of the different types would have been different. For example, the loner thing was probably always highest, but I don't think I got to eccentric till I got the self confidence to be a little cookoo at times. Anyway, for those of you who'd like a less one-dimensional analysis, I recommend this.
• Didn't bother with the test. I already know that I'm mainly a loner but I do like to hang out with friends on a regular basis. But, like MJ said, being forced to be around too many people at once really wears me down. I value my time alone. I really feel sorry for the people who need constant companionship and can't handle being by themselves. As somebody said, we're born alone and we die alone. Cheery bloody thought, eh? now fuck off and leave me alone
• moneyjane, I like your attitude. [!]
• I got 50, which is what I'd expect. However, I find I'm always attracted to loners. It hasn't worked out all that well for me yet, but I'm happy to see it has for meredithea.
• path, I too prefer Keirsey's approach, favoring the sequel which emphasizes Temperament. The hard-wired argument though: I agree that personality change is possible, even inevitable. But it seems that the range of possibilities is hard-wired. It's like unfrozen water sloshing around an icecube tray. Unlimited gradations of possibility, but still a finite number of slots. If it was otherwise, humanity would be too chaotic to see such patterns among people. ::goes back to lurking::
• Middle range results for me also, although I agree with the rest who said, the questions were to specific for extreme answers. There was no room for various situations, like meeting someone on the street. Would I hide or call out, it would depend if I liked the person or not. And the sex question, well that depends too. Sometimes sex is better by myself, sometimes not. Some days I like to be social, but they are few and far between. Most days I just want people to leave me alone and bother someone else. I am not a loner at work though, I can't be in my line of work. This doesn't bother me though, for some reason when I arrive at work, I go into extrovert mode. When I get home, I revert back to the *just leave me be* mode. This is probably due to the fact I work in a high stress job, and when I leave work I am just ready to go home and leave the world behind. I have never had a problem entertaining myself. I have always believed that those who can't stand to be alone are like they are because they are bored and never learned how to entertain themselves.
• I scored a 20, and it called me a social butterfly, which I'm not. I love hanging out with friends, and rarely pass up an opportunity to do so, but I don't see them as much as I'd like to, and find it very hard to make new friends. I'm actually very introverted and comfortable by myself. I enjoy my own company. It must be the questions they asked, because I expected to come in around 50.
• Maybe this is a stupid question, but why would loners participate in online discussion forums such as this? Or maybe the better question is, can you be a loner if you seek these things out? Is face to face interaction required for it to be a valid interaction? There is a majorly social vibe around here, so I was surprised to see so many self(and test)-described loners. It's not like you call up MoFi to go listen to music, obviously. But people are noted when they stop posting. There is a definite sense of community. I scored a 40, fwiw. rocket88--I agree about the questions. Lonerdom, schnomerdom. No self-respecting cheapskate turns down free tickets.
• Got a 20. I like the humans, and find them endlessly fascinating, what can I say?
• mandyman: I'm no expert, but I would guess that someone with social anxieties in the real world could feel comfortable in an online social setting. It's the same disassociation mechanism that allows otherwise meek and polite individuals to act like total assholes in an internet forum.
• ...why would loners participate in online discussion forums such as this... I'd say because it allows us to be in complete control of our level of participation. I'd say the internet is the single most amazing thing ever to happen to loners. Excluding witch trials, naturally. Those weren't so fun, turns out.
• a few people have commented on the difficulty of dating loners, so i'd just like to mention that dating is not very easy for the loners either (except with other loners, but when would you ever meet them?)
• Dating a loner hasn't been the easiest thing I've ever done, but (in this case, so far) it's been worth it. We just had to understand each other. He really means it when he says to go to the party by myself and have a great time (luckily, I can enjoy myself without him just fine, and he's not being passive-agressive boy wanting me to sit at home alone). I like it when he says "I don't want to be around people," but I don't count as "people" and he wants to hang with me. (it took a *long* time for me not to count as people, btw) I think it helps that I'm super independent... it would weird me out if we did everything everything together. Perhaps that's the loner in me!
• But catachresis - I think the changes occur slowly. Perhaps, if we could retroactively test current loners, we'd find that their inclinations were different at different stages. To a large degree, I'd say that my introversion was learned. I also think that I learned later that eccenticity allowed me to mitigate some of the isolation of introversion. In any case, neither of those happened suddenly - the time frame is decades. It would only be chaotic if we changed on a moment's notice. (Come on out, nice lurker. You seem to have thought about this, and I'd like a good discussion.) mandyman I was thinking the same thing about on-line socializing. Another great topic for pontificating. Perhaps, the answer is that we can pick what we respond to, and have time to think about our contributions more, in the more serious subjects. And, it's probably easier to let the wild horses out in a virtual environment when we're not being serious, especially if we're not in close contact with folks who would be up to either manifestation.
• 70. But I find it way too limited. "If you see someone on the street..." Well, I don't hide or whistle to call their attention, but rather go around and mind my own; they notice me, OK. I want to say 'Hi', then I initiate contact. Don't deny that part of yourself that craves human contact! /looks right in the eye of that sentence, bathed in the monitor's glow
• 'How can you be comfortable just by yourself? Don't you ever get lonely? Don't you ever get bored and need to talk with someone else?' Well, not so far, at least the bored part. In fact, and this is really scaring me, it's not boredom, but rather lack of energy what's been creeping up on my personality. But tat's another can of worms... While it's easy to dismiss the overly social as afraid of loneliness, needing aceptation and validation, no matter what the cost, the dangers of going the other extreme are real, and also something that builds up slowly in time. When you're on yourn own, there's no one to notice your foibles, your changes, your compromises, and when they're too evident it may be too late. Once, when cell phones began to get popular, someone told me it a gizmo to shut them off would be a great invention (if only we had patented it!). I told him, 'A greater one would be a remote wiht a single MUTE button, that would work on humans'. He looked at me as if I had invited him to a cannibal party.
• I got a 20, which is way lower than I was expecting. I think in reality I'm a schizophrenic loner - I want to be either totally alone or totally immersed in a group. I find I am very comfortable in either situation. I almost feel that I need to be a loner in order to be social. It makes for interesting Saturdays - I often spend the entire day alone at home and then the entire night out partying.
• For me, I think I was born a lone wolf pup. Even as a toddler, I'm told I would squirm and wriggle away from cuddlers. I really wanted to find out stuff by myself, and my mom had to take all the handles off the drawers in the kitchen because she would come in to find me perched on top of the refrigerator, happy as a clam. This was before I could walk - apparently I'd figured out how to pull drawers out to form steps, and I'd crawl up onto the counter, and then up on the breadbox and up to the top of the fridge, scaring the crap out of my mom. The only exception is with a boyfriend - then I'm as friendly and goofy as a Labrador puppy - all paws and ridiculousness.
• 90. But I protest their usage of "anti-social". "Asocial" would fit better. Loners do not necessarily desire the breakdown of society, we simply wish to unsubscribe from time to time.
• meredithea, your loner is one lucky fella.
• As Charles Augustin Sainte-Beauve said Did he? Or did Sainte-Beuve say it? Pretentious ass.
• Give yourself a little nudge occasionally to spend some quality time with others, and you'll probably discover you like it more than you expected. I have, and I didn't. Thanks, though. Path, speaking as a loner, the internet appeals to me because I can quickly fill up my social needs meter with virtually no effort on my part. And best of all, when I've had my fill, I just walk away from the computer. No muss, no fuss. I can carefully choose what I want to say and who I want to say it to, and spend as much time as I want crafting my response so that it comes out right. In real life, I always manage to say the wrong thing, and both parties leave the conversation confused and irritated. I've come to accept that I'm just one of those "awkward" girls, and try to tailor my life to suit. *previews and edits five or six times for good measure*
• Lurking allows you to retain your loner-ness 100%. Sometimes, reading old threads feels like being an archeologist, digging alone in a remote location. As a limited-social-circle person, I also find the (pretty limited, easy to get out of) social interaction the internet allows great. In fact, I've seen very few real-life people besides my parents in the past few months. But I still keep contact with my school friends and 100% virtual friends. And I'm quite happy with that situation.
• I answered one of these dumb surveys on here before, but I am parked right on fifty puss-ent. I swing both ways. Fifty by fifty.
• 80%. It's not easy living in a world that seems to be mostly filled with gregarious people. I go to Europe by myself and it's fun to see the reaction of people when I tell I do that. Most people are consternated, but some become indignant. I regularly eat alone in a restaurant in my neighborhood, and people actually come up to me and ask me how I can eat alone. This is people who see me there regularly but whom I don't know otherwise.
• Ah, well since you nudged me so friendly-like, path ;) I agree completely that the changes occur slowly (I might have done better to invoke a metaphor involving glaciers rather then icecubes, eh?). But my point is not that individuals would seem inconstant, but that humanity would. Considering the amazing variety of experience one can have, it seems remarkable to me that one can convincingly say "Helga is an INFJ, as is Kenji, and hey, Bob over there too--while Dacia is an INTP." If there was no ice cube tray of the mind, we'd be left trying to make comparisons between the random shapes of puddles, shaped exclusively through the scattering of experience. Patterns suggest that there are forces that make patterns. As for learning introversion... I find it useful to think of Type as exclusively being a set of values. In contrast, I see behavior as a learned reaction to the mix of that valuation and experience. Consider the draining/recharging model mentioned by Medusa above. I don't think we could learn to be exhausted by interacting with crowds, and reinvigorated by solitude. That doesn't seem to make sense. But learning that we are effected thus? Inventing strategies for dealing with the situation? Oh please yes! Hypothetical example: An introvert forced by society to be in constant contact with people would probably feel incredible amounts of irritableness and continued lack of energy, but would not be hit with a clear epiphany that getting away from people would improve things. The mystery to me is considering what forces cause changes in Type. Does the slothful pace suggest the hand of Nature? If so, then why do the changes occur seemingly at random? Is there some trigger of experience that starts gets the roll balling?
• Well-said, Catachresis. Is there anyone here who has switched from loner to social butterfly, or vice versa? I would love to hear about it. I've been a loner ever since I was a small child, so I can't speak to this issue. Personally, I think my loner-dom is the result of a cascade effect that started with a biological issue. I am quickly overwhelmed in the company of other people. There's just too much incoming data, in the form of verbal and nonverbal speech, the signals of dress and hairstyle and everything left unspoken. Because it's overwhelming, I have always avoided people as much as possible, in order to preserve my own sanity. Because I avoided people, I never learned all the right signals and codes and conversational delicacies. Because I never learned all the signals and codes and conversational delicacies, I come off "wrong" to other people, which drives me away from public life, and so on. I can see WHY someone would be a social butterfly. I just don't understand HOW. I actually like people well enough - they just really freak me out, is all. (And yet, I'm seriously considering going to the Seattle MoFi meetup this Saturday. Silly me!)
• I score introvert and extrovert on these things, it just depends how I feel on the day. I post to monkeyfilter on my non-loner days; on my loner days I lurk. I'd be lurking now but this is an intriguing thread. but don't go thinking I'm social at the moment, cos I'm NOT!
• mechagrue, I think I might fit the bill as a switch-over to lonerdom after being pretty social for most of my life. I'd guess that being 20 years old, a college student, and dating a "loner" all had a lot to do with this. But it's a weird change and I'm still having trouble adjusting to it, mainly because I thought, if anything, that college would be more socially stimulating than any other environment in my life. But sadly, I've discovered that the majority of college students are not suitable companions (frat parties, casual sex and compulsive tread-milling not really being my cup of tea). I've learned to take pleasure in various smaller communities and relationships (like MoFi!), but still find it depressing that, despite being someone who genuinely enjoys the company of others, I have such a hard time finding people to enjoy.
• While I've always had the ability to amuse and entertain myself, my amount of social involvement has been wildly inconsistent - from being involved in community activities and belonging to social clubs to having one, or even no, friends, to taking in several homeless young adults, to grocery shopping being the closest I came to being in contact with people outside my family. Each of the swings toward isolation were begun by a change in circumstances, like a move, and involved a bit of lonliness at first, but I learned to be comfortable with solitude. When the pendulum began to swing the other way, it would difficult, at first, to not be overwhelmed by too much social contact, but I eventually learned to deal with, and then to enjoy it. Those experiences have led me to believe that the ice cubes can melt and be re-frozen in different shapes. While there are syndromes like autism which make socializing difficult to impossible for some, for example, it seems to me that the persistence of "types", for most of us, is due more to having become accustomed to a life style than to predestination. Kind of like deeply engrained habits.
• I think the stigma attached to the term "loner" arises in part from a big misunderstanding; an ability to enjoy one's own company is hardly the same thing as timidity or an absence of social graces, but introversion and social phobia are routinely conflated in the public mind.
• I'd ascribe the stigma to the same thing that spawned the concept that all extroverts are stupid: the human failing of not bothering to understand other people. "I don't understand it, therefore it must be wrong and stupid! All right, that was easy!" Am introvert. Love the article about recharging (have read it before), even though it swings to the "all extroverts are stupid" stereotype, if I recall. But I do feel tired and stressed and, at times, violated after being out in public, and although I have friends/acquaintances who are insanely talkative I can only stand them in small doses. They are fine and lovely people, and I just can't take their constant chitchat. On introvert-smart: People tend to think I'm smarter than I am. I think they think that because I'm not yammering on and on, I must be thinking deep thoughts. Chances are just as good, however, that I am wondering if I left the iron on. Oddly enough, other introverts make me nervous. Even people I suspect are introverts make me nervous. I don't know why this is. Maybe because I think I'll be expected to carry the conversation, or I worry that they're actually paying attention to me and not just chattering on inanely about themselves. I don't like attention.
• posted by Goedel at 08:22PM UTC on November 02 I loved your incompleteness theorem. I found it to be not overly