{"id":136,"date":"2016-03-31T13:58:31","date_gmt":"2016-03-31T21:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nathanbak.com\/?p=136"},"modified":"2026-01-02T20:02:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T04:02:38","slug":"im-nathan-and-im-anti-social-or-no-thank-you-we-dont-want-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/?p=136","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;I&#8217;m Nathan and I&#8217;m anti-social&#8221; or &#8220;No, thank you.  We don&#8217;t want to . . .&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m the first to admit that I&#8217;m not the most social, outgoing guy in the world. When a new group is having everyone do a self-introduction, I used to try to keep with a succinct, &#8220;I&#8217;m Nathan and I&#8217;m anti-social.&#8221; Unfortunately people would often misinterpret my message in one of two ways:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>That I am making a joke and am really a very social person and should of course be pulled into all social interactions.<\/li>\n<li>That I am subtly crying for help and secretly longing to be included in all social interactions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Neither interpretation works in my favor.\u00a0 For some reason some people cannot comprehend that I do not want to behave like an extrovert.\u00a0 And while honesty may be the best policy, it does tend to offend people or come off as surly or whiny.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"840\" height=\"630\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/N6thVCUbYok?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Along with &#8220;I&#8217;m anti-social&#8221;, here are some other things that many people don&#8217;t seem to always understand:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I don&#8217;t like people.\u00a0 I do like individuals.\u00a0 But just because I interact with a set of individuals individually, it doesn&#8217;t mean that I want to interact with them all together.<\/li>\n<li>Just because I&#8217;m competent and can function in society and interact with people as necessary doesn&#8217;t mean I enjoy it.\u00a0 Also, just because I don&#8217;t enjoy interacting with large groups doesn&#8217;t mean I&#8217;m not good at it.<\/li>\n<li>I would rather stay home with my family than go &#8220;out with the guys&#8221;.\u00a0 Being in a group is not relaxing entertainment, but tiring work.<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t mind just sitting quietly and letting others do the talking&#8211;being quiet doesn&#8217;t mean that I&#8217;m upset or that I don&#8217;t care or that I am angry or don&#8217;t like someone.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m good at talking with an individual or speaking to a hundred or more people, but somewhere in the middle I feel very awkward and uncomfortable.<\/li>\n<li>I really don&#8217;t care what people think.\u00a0 People are stupid.\u00a0 But there are a few individuals whose opinions I highly value.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Those are a few things I wish people would understand when I say that I&#8217;m anti-social.\u00a0 If someone feels the same way, perhaps I&#8217;ve found a new friend, and if I told my new friend &#8220;No, thank you.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t want to&#8221; do something, no offense would be taken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m the first to admit that I&#8217;m not the most social, outgoing guy in the world. When a new group is having everyone do a self-introduction, I used to try to keep with a succinct, &#8220;I&#8217;m Nathan and I&#8217;m anti-social.&#8221; Unfortunately people would often misinterpret my message in one of two ways: That I am &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/?p=136\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8220;I&#8217;m Nathan and I&#8217;m anti-social&#8221; or &#8220;No, thank you.  We don&#8217;t want to . . .&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150,"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}