5 Life Hacks That Can Change an Introvert's Life

5 Overthinking It

I should state clearly here that I do actually have friends, and that I didn't pay for them, and that they probably like me, and that I could even make new ones if I had to.

Basic friend-making skills like small talk and banter, once I got the hang of them, ended up being two things that I'm not actually that bad at. When needed, I can hold court like a motherfucker.

But this is absolutely something I need to "turn on" to do, and when I don't make the effort, in most social situations I will drift into a conversation with a bookshelf or particularly friendly dog. So, in previous columns where I've talked about how small talk works, I knew all of that because I basically had to force myself to study it.

I'm sure there are norms out there who breeze into and out of conversations like it's nothing, and hey, bully for their perfect blond heads. But for the rest of us, who have diagrammed in advance a conversation to order pizza, overthinking things like this is simply how it has to be done.

4 Talking to Yourself

I talk to myself all the freaking time.

This sounds crazy, and, well, it might be. Honestly, I'm probably the last person who should be self-diagnosing that. But I'll try to explain how it's not that crazy. For example, I don't tell myself to burn things. That's pretty sane! And only rarely do I ever hiss to myself that someone will rue crossing me.

No, the things I say to myself are almost preposterously inane. I'll replay conversations I've recently had, but try to come up with wittier responses. I'll imagine conversations I might soon have in the future and how they might proceed, again looking for killer lines. Or I'll imagine I'm a tour guide, explaining how the world works to a sexy alien visitor, who eventually succumbs to my charms.

This might be a byproduct of being a humor writer, that natural inclination to retry different forms of dialog to see what's funny. But I recall doing this as a kid, too, before I'd ever strapped on my first word processor, back when I was just funny looking, so I suspect it goes beyond that. For shy kids, where every conversation is a potential minefield filled with wrong things to say, we spend an awful lot of time worrying over the right thing to say. So if you do ever see someone mumbling to themselves, they might just be shy, not crazy, so don't start shunning them yet.

3 Avoiding People

This sounds almost too obvious. Isn't "avoiding people" the very definition of being antisocial?"

But it goes deeper than that; we don't just avoid strangers. Even when dealing with friends and close acquaintances, there are minor interactions that some of us would just really rather avoid if we could. For some it might be making phone calls. For others it's water-cooler small talk. There's nothing specifically difficult or irritating about these interactions. They just require effort. And in the exact same way that you might take the elevator instead of the stairs or eat a pizza pocket instead of food, an antisocial person will send an email instead of making a phone call, or suddenly "remember" something and then spin around and scurry away to avoid even a minor interaction.

And although this is still fairly minor, we're starting to get into the realm of actual self-destructive behavior. These small interactions form an important part of the social fabric of our world. Water-cooler talk, however inane, lets us know our co-workers just a little better, and we're less likely to go insane and start stabbing people we know. So although this definitely is a coping mechanism the antisocial use, and it's something I've absolutely done myself, I can't really endorse it.

Unless you really want to keep your insane stabbing options open.

2 Replacement Friends

OK. So you've admitted you're antisocial and find interacting with other people stressful. Wouldn't it be great if it turned out that the problem wasn't with you, but with everyone else in the world?

If that were the case, by simply replacing your useless human acquaintances with superior non-human acquaintances you would solve all your problems! And if that sounds insane, well, we're already heading down this road, so buckle the fuck up. Because right now there are already people who are so withdrawn from society that they treat inanimate objects as friends and lovers and even spouses.

I'll be clear now and state that this isn't something I go in for myself, and that all my pillows are functional only (for regular pillow functions). Although I feel more a sense of empathy for these pillow-loving dudes than a desire to mock them, I can't really contemplate how they got so far gone, or offer any constructive advice on how to bring them back. I guess maybe they should have talked to themselves more?

1 Replacement Replacement Friends

And, really, once the antisocial start transferring their emotional attachments to inanimate objects, what's to stop them from developing the same tendencies with their new friends? Seriously. How long is it going to be before we hear of people turning away from their pillow-wives because they're too much work to get along with? If the first pillow wedding made you laugh, what will you make of the first pillow divorce? What do you say to comfort the guy who lost half of what he owns to a pillow?

And who does he turn to next? A smaller pillow? Is it just pillows all the way down? Where do you turn to when the inanimate are too much work? The non-corporeal? Will people start befriending ghosts? The wind? Irrational numbers?

For all the potential these new VR systems have for making cool-ass video games, I can guarantee that they will also lead to a creepy future where pasty people with VR helmets imagine themselves sitting in an incredibly well-rendered bedroom with a fictional VR helmet on, and so on down in an ever-deepening spiral of awkwardness. A sad and lonely subcaste that will be ruled and abused by the elite few brave enough to traverse the world exchanging social pleasantries. So if you don't want to rely on a perfect blond person to remember to refill your food and water bowl, I urge you to at least be capable of faking it.

Chris Bucholz is a Cracked columnist and is avoiding you right now. Communicate with him on Facebook or Twitter, where the sweet buffer of technology can keep you emotionally distant.