
The Geography of the Room - less_penguiny
https://www.lesspenguiny.com/articles/the-geography-of-the-room
======
pidg
"Introvert" still doesn't mean "shy" or "socially awkward", however much shy
and socially awkward people want to redefine it as such.

As a confident introvert who doesn't flounder in social settings, this stuff
annoys the hell out of me.

~~~
puranjay
At what point does an "introvert" become a "loner"? Or are all introverts
loners by definition?

~~~
maxxxxx
No. Absolutely not. They are totally different things.

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Causality1
"But I can’t imagine that someone surrounded by people of a similar age and of
a similar background would prefer zero interaction to at least some
interaction."

This author's a damn fool who hasn't taken the slightest effort to understand
introverts on any level deeper than "how do I get the quiet people to fuel my
need for constant social stimulation?"

~~~
NikolaNovak
My friends and co-workers believe and see me as a highly outgoing, social,
talkative person.

Nevertheless, I'm an introvert at heart and can easily volunteer to help
people understand and imagine what it's like to be a person surrounded by
strangers of similar age & background and strognly prefer / find it easier to
have zero interaction.

Hint: "Strangers" is the weighted keyword, not "similar background/age".
[Heck, "Similar age" has, for most of my life, been a negative attribute -
Until late thirties I tended to socialize better with people slightly or
significantly older]

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StefanKarpinski
I’m curious how obvious vs non-obvious social positioning like this is to
people here. It all feels fairly obvious and intuitive to me, but I suspect
some of the lessons have been learned over time and didn’t actually come built
in but were learned gradually through observation. Thinking back on it, it was
probably in my mid 20s that I started paying conscious attention to how body
positioning affects people socially and making efforts to make sure that
everyone is physically included in conversations. Now I am acutely aware of it
all the time.

~~~
nihonde
Japanese business culture has an almost absurdly heightened sensitivity to
positioning, diction, and body language.

~~~
arethuza
I've heard of people getting upset about the ordering of email addresses in
messages (this was a successful law firm where ordering was supposed to be
based on "rank").

~~~
nihonde
This is a real thing. I’ve experienced it myself. I tried to explain that the
email client may reorder them, etc.

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ursusarcanum
It is probably telling of being online too long that lead me to feel the title
was wrong. I went into this thinking it would be an analysis of blocking and
character orientation in Wiseau's The Room.

~~~
fiala__
someone definitely needs to write that article

~~~
Joeboy
Not an article, but there's this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD-
YZbeajeY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD-YZbeajeY)

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Raphmedia
@less_penguiny, your newsletter popup opens over and over again when the user
clicks the grey space to close it.

It seems like only clicking the small text link inside it correctly sets the
cookie to remember that the user wanted it gone.

This is particularly annoying because it is binded to the scroll so it lets
you scroll a few line before displaying again.

~~~
less_penguiny
Thanks for the heads up, that sounds really annoying. Personally not getting
the same, but definitely want to ensure other people aren't affected.

What browser are you using? What adblockers? Any special browser settings?

Edit: I see a potential cause of issues in the scroll handler, and I just
deployed the change, so perhaps it's fixed on a refresh?

~~~
Raphmedia
Here is a video of it happening:
[https://imgur.com/a/txwwv22](https://imgur.com/a/txwwv22)

Chrome: Version 73.0.3683.86 (Official Build) (64-bit)

There's at least someone else with the same behavior:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19643824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19643824)

~~~
less_penguiny
AHHH thanks, you're a star. Able to reproduce.

I misunderstood your text description and now I know exactly what you mean. It
never occurred to me that people click outside the modal rather than on the
"x". In retrospect it seems obvious that they would. Will fix.

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mindgam3
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy a recent post discussing similar
themes in the context of investor meetings:
[https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/11/the-importance-of-
seating-...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/11/the-importance-of-seating-at-
the-investor-meeting)

Personally I love these kinds of body language/group dynamics analyses. I also
find it to be a good reality check - whenever we start thinking of ourselves
as these high and mighty enlightened beings, to realize that we still follow
these very basic scripts in social contexts. Human social behavior is
fascinating.

