#i had to stop myself from getting a disqus account and posting a summarized version of this on the site itself

[ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is]

Introvert, Dear: Oh, Honey, No

Spoiler: I was going to do a series but honestly this one article is a goldmine. I wrote this piece as I went through the article, which I’d previously skimmed, and with every single step I found something more hilariously bad and incorrect. Please enjoy.

Introvert, Dear's website has the following options for article categories:

Since I am in fact a scientist I decided to start with one of the articles in SCIENCE, such as it may be. You may read along here.

It begins as many articles here do with a charming anecdote about the article’s author being so spacey that she fucked up a long drive-thru Starbucks line - and to buy a mocha of all things. Anyway, this is what geniuses do. Confused? Read on to the next paragraph.

For those playing along, drink at the first Einstein reference. You see, Einstein said “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” Now, this is a great quote. However, there are two flaws. One: he was so smart. Two: introversion does not equal persistence with problems.

Anyway, introverts allegedly have a ‘penchant for deep-processing’, according to a study that says that introverts have more gray matter in their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain the article says is associated with abstract thought and decision making.

A couple of problems here: First, staying with problems longer and decision making are at times at odds. Similarly, abstract thought is an intuitive thing, not an introvert thing, and decision making is a high Si or Ni thing, not an introvert thing. And probably most damning, here’s the article title and linked article:  Individual Differences in Amygdala-Medial Prefrontal Anatomy Link Negative Affect, Impaired Social Functioning, and Polygenic Depression Risk.

Now, fun fact: the prefrontal cortex is associated with decision-making. It’s also associated with planning complex cognitive thought (including abstract thought, but not specifically limited to that), and also social behavior moderation. The general role of this part of the brain is thought to be long-term planning of goals.

If you read the article, unlike the author, a thicker prefrontal cortex is associated with better social skills, and vice versa. Introversion is only mentioned in relation to a specific test of social function, and people who demonstrated social withdrawal per the aloof-introverted personality type had a thinner prefrontal cortex with a very high correlation.

That’s right. The introvert, dear article read a scientific study to be completely opposite of what it says. Anyway people who are of this ‘aloof introvert’ personality have a thinner prefrontal cortex and are more likely to be bad in social situations and are more prone to depression. The study says fuck-all about one’s abilities in higher cognitive processing.

The next bit of the article specifies it’s specifically the intuitive ‘day-dreamy’ introverts who may be geniuses. You know, like Einstein. Can’t read a fucking scientific paper. Geniuses.

We get the “Einstein was scatterbrained!” thing and I mean yeah he was and I know obviously your scientific interpretation ability died somewhere back in that Starbucks line but correlation does not in fact equal causation, you ignorant fuck, and there are people who are both ditzy and also stupid. I mean, you may be a genius but so might the person who can remember where their car is and also can read a scientific paper and also has the basic social acumen such that they don’t hold up a coffee line, which is honestly one of the deadly sins.

Anyway, some dude named Dr. Michael Woodley is quoted as the evidence for the space cadet - genius line. I should point out this is not a unique or new idea; also the writer of this article appears to have developed a tiny scrap of self-awareness and posted an article from the UK’s Telegraph from 2014 instead of another scientific study.

Since talking to the Telegraph in 2014, Dr. Michael Woodley has appeared on Stefan Molyneux’s YouTube channel in a video on why civilizations rise and fall; he is a British ex-pat right-wing figure who frequently posts on alt-right websites and believes in eugenics and that immigration and the industrial revolution have brought down people’s IQs. You know. Highly sensitive introvert stuff.

Now granted I don’t necessarily thing the article writer cosigns these views of Woodley’s; rather I think they are such a bad researcher and writer they forgot to use Google for 5 seconds before putting together this hack job of barely coherent regurgitated drivel.

So: the author used one source that doesn’t actually say what she thinks it means, and the other that relies on the pseudoscientific testimony of someone who is what the kids call ‘racist.’ This is enough to cause anyone with a prefrontal cortex to have serious doubts on the validity of this article. However, there are also some basic structural problems that I would penalize the average high school student for were I grading their essay. To wit:

Earlier in the article, the author mentioned that “the brain can only juggle so many tasks at one time. In fact multitasking isn’t even real.”

In the penultimate paragraph the author cites a Huffpost piece from 2012, which I did not read because it asked me to allow all sorts of weird personalized ad tracking and I’m not about that life, not for a 6-year-old Huffpost article, but anyway this person’s interpretation of the Huffpost article is that children who are absentminded may be smarter because, and this is again a direct quote, "their working memory may have greater capacity, perhaps giving them a stronger ability to juggle several tasks at once.” [emphasis mine]

 So: the author cannot in fact maintain a consistent thesis throughout this article and didn’t even use a thesaurus to cover up the obvious contradiction.

We find ourselves now at the last paragraph in which we get the wishy-washiest of conclusions: not all introverts are geniuses, though some certainly are. I would like to again pit Einstein references against Niels Bohr references to say “this isn’t even wrong”, Bohr’s criticism of ideas that were so banal they showed little or no actual theories to debate within. 

I looked to the byline to see who had written this extremely poorly thought out piece, hoping it was some freelancer who wrote this in five minutes while drunk and who was scamming introvert, dear the whole time. Sadly, the author, Jenn Granneman, is not a brilliant hustler who is pranking us all but the actual founder of the website. This woman has a published book out, somehow. This woman has entertained the idea that she may be a genius because she forgets things, like her keys and how to write an essay that wouldn’t get you a ‘see me later’ in red ink at the top and a stern lecture about checking your sources.

If the above has not convinced you of the utter worthlessness of Introvert, Dear as a website and concept in general I will leave you with the final words of the article for your deep processing and consideration:

“But the next time you zone out, get lost in your head, or forget something, remember that you’re in good company. It might just be your inner brilliance shinning [sic] through.”