Monthly Archives: May 2009

the Subtle sense of humor

Many who have met me have supposed that I lack a sense of humor.
Indeed the usual ‘humorous’ fare tends to do little for me, but my lifelong critics have failed to reallize that I enjoy another sort of humor.

I’ll sometimes pretend to laugh for the sake of sociability when someone tells a joke in a group situation.

I have no interest at all in sitcoms. They are after all exaggerated portrayals of a social life I’ve never really been a part of. I find that style of acting with the nasal speaking voice, overdone hand gestures, and laugh track in the background to be particularly obnoxious.

Light comedy films are entertaining on a basic level, but tend to leave the mind almost as soon as they are finished. Such films tend to be formulaic. I could be amused by one Sandler movie, but just wouldn’t have any need to see more.

Standup comedy usually doesn’t accomplish much for me. The person up on stage usually identifies with some ethnic group or category(i.e. rednecks) and uses his membership of said group to lampoon it endlessly. I shake my head as entire careers are built on mining out a single simple premise to exhaustion.

What then have I found to be truly humorous for myself and other introverted personalities I have come into contact with?
In short, humor that isn’t spoonfed. Jokes that exist in the subtext rather than on the surface. Irony and satire as opposed to slapstick.

I’ve sat taciturn through lots of ‘funny’ shows yet I’ve burst out into laughter while reading Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal.
I’ve been completely unmoved at jokes in social situations yet I still grin at the thought of a character in Dr. Strangelove saying “You’ll have to answer to the Coca-Cola company” with an intensely straight face. There is nothing particularly funny about the line itself, but the context is everything:
There is a man who is desperately trying to make a phone call that could save the world from nuclear destruction. He asks a soldier to break into a vending machine to get the change he needs to make the call. The soldier, hilariously unclear on the concept utters the line.
In this sort of situation, one doesn’t sit passively waiting for a punchline but must actively read meaning into the content. There is no one telling you when a joke is told or when to laugh. The jokes are not separate from, but rather embedded seamlessly in the content itself.

The defining trait of Loud humor is that you are laughing principally because everyone else is laughing. Humor is before all else a social tool used to promote group bonding.
Consider standup comedy. If enough people laugh at a joke, everyone laughs. Anyone who chose not to laugh would end up looking very awkward in a public place. Thus, standup is as much about reinforcing the audience’s sense of social belonging as it is about enjoying any actual humor.
Sitcoms typically have a laugh track that tells you exactly what moments you should find humorous. It even tells you by means of intensity just how humorous you should find them. Once again, it is a means viewers can bring their personal sense of humor into congruency with that which is promoted as being Correct for the whole. Since the humor itself is just an incidental packaging for a social experience, it leaves the mind as soon as one leaves.

The defining trait of Subtle humor is implicit personal respect for the audience. It is up to each individual to decide for themselves what is funny according to their personal taste. The medium rarely involves group situations and all the pressure that comes with them. The humor is not clearly demarcated in a series of structured jokes, but must be discovered by each individual. Oftentimes, one does not find certain things humorous until reflecting about them afterwards. One reflects on such humor because it is usually a means of illuminating an underlying point and inviting serious thought about human nature.

When exposed to group humor, one who doesn’t quite belong must always be under pressure to dissimulate and hide behind a smile. Not only is there nothing to laugh at, it is just another potential source of social censure in one’s life.
Subtle humor is more than just funny, it is an escape from the typical expectations. It makes no judgments of its audience. It is courteous invitation while its Loud counterpart is forced attendance.

How to Live With an Introvert Roommate

To comfortably share an abode with a Subtle sort of person, one must extend but one basic principle to all dealings:

-Reduce social obligation and friction of association.

I must begin by explaining the difference of one’s room to the introvert and the extrovert.

For an extrovert, a room is a place to crash in between episodes of social activity. It’s just a tool required for basic rest and shelter.

For the introvert, one’s room is home, sanctuary, and all important private kingdom. One who is Subtle deals with a world that neither accepts nor understands their ways. The room is often the one place in the world where they can really feel safe and relaxed.

An extroverted roommate is one of the introverted person’s greatest fears: The fear that one who is grounded in the orthodox society brings that society with them into the room, effectively eliminating the last haven.

For an introvert, being forced to immerse in the hostile society even in their home is one of the greatest imaginable violations. I imagine that many an extrovert has found themself with an introverted roommate who was constantly surly, closed, and hostile, seemingly without reason.

Some intial steps:
-Keep your movies and music on headphones unless you’re both explicitly watching or listening to it.
-Don’t snap fingers, tap, clap, or slap your knees while listening to music/movies. These noisy antics are worse than second hand smoke.
-For phone calls, take the cell phone out in the hallway, and don’t talk loudly, especially to someone who’s not actually in the room. Extremely rude!
-Don’t make your room an entertaining center for groups of friends, especially not late at night or while all of you are drunk. If you wish for peace with an introvert, just bring in one or two friends at a time and don’t pursue any particularly loud or obtrusive activities. Asking permission, negotiating first will get you far. Actually, just showing respect by giving some form of advance notice is usually good enough.

This might seem like a lot to ask, but consider what all these situations have in common. By doing any of these things in the room, you are imposing your values and lifestyle on your roommate. You are deciding what your roommate will listen to, who they have to live with, and exactly when they have to do these things. You have decided that you are vested with the natural authority to make life decisions for your roommate! As far as an introvert is concerned, you might as well jump across the room, ransack their belongings, and piss all over their mattress.

If you persist with typical extrovert habits when you have an introverted roommate, you will needlessly make an enemy! An enemy who perceives that you have given up all rights to your personal living preferences and belongings. You will be accorded no respect because you never gave any. Your roommate will be watching for any weakness or means of forcing you out.

Your introverted roommate’s essential needs are very simple: one half of one room as their respected and safe domain. From the Subtle perspective, this is not only a reasonable demand, it seems cruel and miserly that someone who has the entire outside world on their side cannot be bothered to spare one 5×12 foot rectangle.

Other than that,
-Do not always give/expect greetings and farewells when leaving or arriving.
-Don’t impose your social expectations on your roommate.
-If in doubt whether it needs to be said, don’t say it.
-If you leave your roommate alone, your introverted roommate will happily reciprocate.
-IMPORTANT! DON’T disturb your introverted roomate if they are clearly concentrating on something unless it is very important.

Once you’ve shown basic respect, chances are, your Subtle roommate will grow comfortable and eventually actually approach you.
The key is that you cannot make control of the room into a social power struggle as extroverts naturally do. You have to respect your introvert roommate as an equal or no deal. Introverts operate according to tacit understandings and unseen contracts. What is most important does not need to be said because it is self evident from the nature of the situation.

Only when friction of association and social obligation are reduced to mutually acceptable levels are there grounds for friendly and harmonious co-existence.

Redundancy Cushioning

Most Westerners hold mass society as the self evident highest virtue.

Yet mass society is a force of nature independent of human needs and desires.

Mass society can be considered independent from these human desires in part because of what I call ‘redundancy cushioning‘.

That is:
Any mass society is protected from deliberate human implemented change because against millions, a single person or handful of people can make no significant impact. In other words, the system is massively backed up; social protocols are proliferated across gigantic populations. A reigning social system persists not because of any inherent virtue but because it is impossible for any one person or group to cause meaningful change. Like collective checkmate, it is a phenomenon that arises from community in aggregate; a situation in which each individual ironically holds every other individual prisoner.

The Listener Test

“At work today, I was socializing with two extroverted co-workers. I wasn’t completely comfortable, but I was able to get a few words in every once in a while. Then, a third extrovert came up, and I found that whenever I wanted to say something one of the other girls beat me to it by one or two seconds. I started feeling extremely awkward, because I was just standing there and not contributing to the conversation.”

Full thread:

This forum poster described a phenomenon I’ve experienced very frequently. For one whom social interaction is competition for attention, one who enters the arena with other goals cannot possibly hope to compete. Those who talk at the competitive level are so saturated by Loud attention getting tactics that they don’t even notice someone who’s trying to talk normally any more. They’ve long forgotten that the main purpose of conversation is to convey meaningful information and have constructive discussions. The rat race has consumed them utterly.

Frustrated with being ignored, I resorted to a test while growing up to see if someone was worth my time. I would say something in a measured tone of voice at indoor volume. I would then monitor the response. Most of the time the eyes of the extrovert in question would remain glazed over with incomprehension, if indeed they were even aware of that I had been talking. They would quickly flit onto something they thought more stimulating. Appallingly few people passed this test and I would feel more alone than ever. But this test ultimately did help me find people who didn’t see people as advertising, who wanted more than shallow stimulation from conversation, and who wanted to be my allies, not my competitors.

The truth I have found is that most extroverts live amongst so much noise pollution that they quite simply can’t hear the spoken word until one keeps a sentence to no more than a few words, fires them out quickly, and puts great emphasis on all the stressed syllables. It seemed to me that to get a Loud person’s attention, I’d have to address them in much the same way as I’d address a pet dog. Such a realization was very discouraging indeed!

The Irony of Modern Individualism

Members of the modern industrialized world are typically individualists in the sense of each individual competing for maximum gain with every other and thereby raising overall standards for all.

This competitive ethic born of modernity is so pervasive that even social relations become competition. In this arena, one competes for quantity of popularity and attention. One does so most effectively by making oneself marketable to as many people as possible. This means achieving mastery of all things conventional and widespread.

The ironic result of this modern, material individualism is that a society tends towards massive scale uniformity.
In such an environment there can be no place for eccentricity. The true introvert is compelled to live in hiding.

Social Choreography

Quite simply, some of us never picked up basic social norms during childhood. Consider: one can almost tell a Brit and an American apart by their age lines. Each adheres to a different set of orthodox facial expressions. Any culture has what I call social choreography, a set of conventional body language that is for most people acquired and carried out subconsciously. When a career outsider like me walks into the room and is out of synch with the collective ‘rhythm’, those who belong perceive that something is ‘foreign’ about me without knowing why.