I Am The Most Amazing Extrovert
By Brad Pike
What do you mean you don’t like dancing? Everyone likes dancing, everyone who isn’t an anxiety stricken, socially retarded recluse, everyone with a warm and living soul, everyone who feels an abiding connection with the world-spirit. So what’s wrong with you? Are you insecure? Are you just “so above this”? Is your left prefrontal cortex stunted due to a lifetime of low self-esteem and trauma? These are the only suppositions I can form based on your decision not to dance. You do know, of course, that all people experience the world in the same way, and therefore, dancing should make you feel alive and jubilant and definitely not yearn for death. Why can’t you enjoy this wedding reception with the rest of us, animate this pale withering husk, instead of hiding by the shrimp cocktails? You should seriously ruminate on the Black Eyed Peas’ message of “living it up” and “jumping off that sofa”.
When I consider the hordes of pale husks ensconced in their burrows, I have to say it grieves me. People like you—they’re social cripples, agoraphobes, and neurotics. They play World of Warcraft for days and read books with small type to escape from their sad miserable lives, according to the pop culture representations with which I’m familiar. In large groups, they rarely speak, and this is because they have either nothing to say for themselves or overwhelming insecurities regarding public speech; it’s like, hello, how can you possibly feel comfortable not disgorging a ceaseless torrent of trivial nonsense from your face hole? How can you exist in public without your jaws opening and closing in a frenetic blur, words tumbling forth irrespective of their significance? Don’t you know every second spent in silence takes 3 days off your life expectancy? Don’t you know the person with the loudest ideas has the best ideas?
Like earlier, when everyone was discussing baseball stats, and you sat mutely in your seat the whole conversation like a pile of laundry. Out of pure altruism, I tried to involve you by asking, “Hey, what do you think about it?” and you said, “I don’t think about baseball,” and I said, “What?” and you shrugged, and I said, “Just tell us what you think,” and you said, “I don’t care about baseball, so I don’t think about it,” and I said, “What?” and you shrugged again, and I said, “Don’t be weird,” and then everyone rolled their eyes. You engineered that awkwardness. I tried to trigger the outpouring of meaningless dialogue necessary for proper social interaction, and you insisted on icy reticence.
This betrays an underlying flaw in your personality, and I know it’s a flaw because it’s maladaptive. It results in discomfort for you and for those around you. Your problem is, at its heart, too much activity in the frontal region of the brain, which handles introspection, and too little in the rear region, which handles external stimulation, and this leads to too much thinking, which leads to overanalyzing, then social awkwardness, then loneliness, then depression, and finally suicide. That’s why you need to get over your own personality and behave more like me, a normal person, so you don’t die alone in your apartment, crying as you kick away the step stool.
For reference, here’s how normal people behave: when music starts playing, regardless of how terrible it is, we begin to dance, sing along, and contort our mouths into a believable smile so as to reassure other normals that this is a happy fun time and reinforce the collective positive feelings. This is rational behavior. Anything less is symptomatic of depression or shyness, disorders requiring alteration by the community; just watch any antidepressant commercial. But if I didn’t know any better, I’d think communal activities fail to energize you, that you’re more enriched by time spent alone. This is deviancy.
I know what will help; how about if, against your will, I physically drag you onto the dance floor and force you to dance with my female friends who you don’t know at all? I’ll laugh to put you at ease, because this is a funny joke, pushing my introverted friend into an uncomfortable context, haha, so hilarious. People are looking at me and thinking, ‘What a nice guy, helping his awkward friend overcome his awkwardness. He should not be allowed to quietly hang out in the corner.’ Everyone’s paying attention to you, and I shout, “Look who’s here!” because you need even more attention, definitely more attention.
And now that I’ve pushed you out here, we will laugh at your desperately wooden attempts to dance. Look at you. You’re trying so hard. Your inability to have instantaneous intimacy with strangers has rendered you so hopelessly awkward, it’s hilarious. And it won’t end here at this wedding reception; no, this impotence will follow you into every other arena designed for extraversion: school, work, relationships, everywhere, because the world doesn’t care about you, quiet child. The loudest people are always the most important people.