In this Northern European country of mine, I’ve got as much of a neutral third party that I can think of: a friend born and raised to adulthood in the Third World. They’ve got more “extrovertism” in them than 99.9% of the natives. Yet this advice from socializing entrepeneurs with One Weird Trick doesn’t seem to hold up. People here are not all hypnotized by their screens and low self-esteem, or whatever, and then lifted up when their poor social-starved selves get attention from a kind stranger. We are just... like that. Not genetic. Not immutable. But it runs deep. Very deep. Deeper than what an “extrovert” all by themselves can penetrate.

So if there is a cultural pathology it takes way more than what socializing entrepeneurs seem to think.

> Fair enough if an introvert just wants to be left alone; we should obviously never force our company on anyone (nor do the mentally healthy among us have any desire to do so, because we have empathy). However, people like that will let us know that they don't want to talk when we approach them, either directly or via body language and the nature of their replies. For many others, they're starving for social interaction, and it might make their day for you to reach out. This is what makes outreach worth it, in the end, despite the risk.

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> However, people like that will let us know that they don't want to talk when we approach them, either directly or via body language and the nature of their replies. For many others, they're starving for social interaction, and it might make their day for you to reach out. This is what makes outreach worth it, in the end, despite the risk.

Nope.

Normal people—not freaks like me—in my culture will fume in private. Yes: any slight by a stranger will be relegated to complaints to your friends. Much more likely than sending any bad vibes. We’re cowards like that.

I’m reminded of some anecdote about Westerners being struck by how helpful Japanese people are. (This is from memory and may be wrong.) The context is that they are tourists. Well, apparently Japanese people have very strict social norms about being polite and helpful. This is amazing for tourists: they get all of the social upsides while not having to pay anything in return (because they are oblivious to it).