I’m not the kind of person who easily succumbs to film and TV addiction, partially because the majority of on-screen characters I’ve seen tend not to be very relatable. Although Lena Dunham’s Girls received a ton of hype for its biting, absurd, no-holds-barred satire of young adulthood, none of the characters reminded me of anyone I knew. You can imagine my delight when Rachel Tucker’s indie web series, Introverts, made its rounds to the relief of personality-conscious darlings internet-wide.
The series follows three quirky, introverted housemates, Amy, Waltra and Susan, as they navigate the awkward realm of dating, parties and overbearing extraverts who give TMI about their crazy sex lives. As an introvert, I've never had a problem with being respected from a distance or taken seriously, but it can be a struggle to deal with the perception that we're not all that fun to hang out with, especially when your twenties are all about growing through relationally defining rites of passages. Tucker believes that Hollywood paints shyness and introversion in a stereotypical, unhelpful and one-dimensional light, hoping the series will portray a more humorous side to introverts and the adorable idiosyncrasies they possess, even they're too nervous sometimes to order a pizza.
Why you shouldn't paint all introverts with the same brush:
There are at least eight different broad categories of introversion (and extraversion) according to the Myers-Briggs type indicator, with a multitude of individual variation in between. Introversion exists on a spectrum, and it is likely that in an extraverted culture like ours, a few of your introverted friends may easily be mistaken for extraverts. Introverts aren't necessarily shy to be themselves, as long as they aren't pressured to act like extraverts or made to feel defective for their preferred style of socialising.
Your E/I orientation doesn't determine how sociable, open or confident you are. It reflects the amount of energy you naturally invest in being either internally or externally centred, whether that concerns things, ideas or other people. To paraphrase Jung, introverts take the external world for granted in favour of their internal essence, while extraverts take the internal world for granted and readily adapt their priorities to external objectives. When extraverts relate to the outside world as their mental playground, they're engaging a macrocosm of an introvert's relationship to their own thoughts, dreams and feelings.
Now who wants to help me write a web series about strange, tea-sipping librarians? :3
Now who wants to help me write a web series about strange, tea-sipping librarians? :3
