I Looked Around and I Noticed There Wasn't a Chair

There was a time not that long ago when the Middle-Aged Internet* could be divided up entirely into three categories: coffee memes, mommy-likes-wine memes and Mondays memes. And even then, the overlap between the Mondays memes and the coffee memes were so broad, they might as well have been the same thing. And further, now that I think about it, all three of them were variations on the "look at us being hilarious about not wanting to go to the jobs we're chained to by the wage-slavery of late-stage capitalism" theme anyway. Was it repetitive, unoriginal and the same brand of socially-triggered pseudohumor that American adults inexplicably indulge in that allows us to lower the bar so far that we'll accept a guy in the office occasionally wearing a Hawaiian shirt as the equivalent of having a discernible personality? It sure is, internet. It sure is.

Yes, it's the same joke over and over again, the intended audience for which is determined by whether the picture behind the text is Clint Eastwood in Magnum Force or Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde.

In the last five years or so, however, some of that precious infinite and entirely unregulated space has been occupied by usually spare, spartan little two- or four-panel cartoons extolling the great virtues of introversion and the Sartrean hell that is other people. If you haven't seen them,** the major reliable tropes are: other people are exhausting! cancelling plans is welcome! what a liberation it is to wear sweatpants/remove one's bra! at parties I will talk to a dog! at parties alternately I will talk to a plant! and the level of associated amusement, well, you can only imagine it crescendos from there.

I put it to you, however, that this is a pose. It has to be. Want to know how I know? Because sometimes the people who draw these poignant and timely cartoons are out there spreading this message in public. Like, letting their work out into the world, inviting the gaze of other humans for scrutiny and/or adulation or (and this is the most damning) discussion. No actual introvert is going to engage in anything of the sort; it's the literal antithesis of the lifestyle. It's like defining yourself as a gay man by talking about how your homosexuality makes you that much more attractive to straight women. That's probably a bad example because straight women being drawn to gay men is actually a thing. I'm pretty sure it's mostly the dancing. And the willingness to watch award shows.

"Hypocrite!" I hear you crying out. "What kind of introvert are you, out here typing your words in places where people can both see and comment upon them!" And to that I say, ha! I'm still using a dumb pseudonym, a thing people gave up before MySpace got big. And I cold walked away from what was a vibrant and growing public writing venture in its moment, if only hyperlocally, to start this one with no warning or heads-up to a single person. You want to call yourself an introvert, I want to see some catastrophic social self-sabotage on your CV. I'll put my squirrelly-ass bona fides up against anybody.

In the age of COVID-19 and the Lockdown Era, where everyone is forced to stay home, now real, certified introverts have to deal with the nonstop barrage of varieties of the same "I've been practicing for social distancing my whole life!!!" bullshit jokes, usually over a picture of, like, Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands or some shit. Which everyone knows is stupid because that sensitive weirdo just wanted to be loved, but was cursed by having finger-knives. He would have hugged everybody if it weren't for all the tetanus and blood loss in the offing. It's already a nightmare from a liability point of view. Being locked in an attic your whole life by Vincent Price is demonstrably not the same as having social anxiety.

This whole isolation process has been as upsetting for introverts as it has been for everyone else. First of all, how are we supposed to find a place to hide out if the place we usually hide out now has everyone who also lives there in it all the fucking time? There's no quiet time in a stampede.

And more existentially, the borders between inside and outside have been scrubbed to erasure. There used to be two spheres in which to operate--within and without--one of which has now been obliterated by the threat of illness unto death. Introverts feel good when extroverts are out extroverting. If everyone is doing it, it no longer feels safe as the choice is taken away. It's not a personal move to safety as there's nothing to opt out of. It's like in the '90s when Nirvana turned alternative music into just music. Sure, it was still all the stuff I liked (except Smashing fucking Pumpkins, who suck) on the same radio stations, but it lost its allure by being touched by literally everyone else.

And having to touch something that's been touched by everyone else? That's exactly how you get coronavirus. Tell me that's a coincidence.

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*You know I mean facebook.

**You've fucking seen them.