The 4th Personality Dimension: ‘Textrovert’

It’s 3 am and the two of them are opening up themselves to each other. Each point they reach is marked by a beep or a vibration. Texting. Bold and truthful lines are shared among the two and at this rate maybe, just maybe, they could even fall for each other.

Come morning and it’s time for them to meet each other. They had decided on a date.
Both wonderfully dressed and equally nervous, they met. The initial shyness kicked in and only the eyes and the blushing cheeks did the talking. After the usual greetings, forget phrasing sentences, neither could utter more than a few words. Awkward silences and feelings of inferiority arise on both minds and both feel literally helpless. Disappointed, they bid farewell and headed home with heavy hearts.

Where did all the poetic lines and the bold discussions go? Vanished into thin air?
‘Textroverts’. That’s what they were, the victims of modern day technology. Technology that made them realise they were inches close even when they were miles away and when they actually were inches away from each other, they felt they were divided by a thousand miles.

To give you in layman’s terms, a ‘Textrovert’ is someone who is confident in talking over texts rather than talking to your face. Thanks to WhatsApp, Messenger and all other instant messaging platforms, we have lost the art of communication in real time. We have forgotten the value of a smile or a tear during an actual conversation and rather, we believe in the emoticons that are passed around, mostly even without a single thought.

A big number of teenagers to young adults today have become Textroverts. They find comfort talking their heart out to a mobile phone but not the person for whom all of these feelings have arisen. Forget feelings and relationships, nowadays, normal conversations have become comfortable only on messaging platforms.

And to clear your doubt, NO, I am not anti-WhatsApp or anything like that. I too use it regularly. Yes, they are very comfortable when it comes to staying in touch and informing. What I am trying to bring out here is the decline of the human touch to a conversation. If gone too deep into being a Textrovert, there are a lot of hazards that one will face throughout the life they live. To outline a few of them: Anxiety around people, death of interpersonal communication skills and an actual social life, facing interviews turns tougher than going into wars and public speaking, they would rather fall off a cliff. Those are just a few issues I mentioned. There could be more and there could be extremes.

This is not about trying to tell you stop texting totally. No. Text and stay in touch, that’s perfectly fine. This is about warning you to not let yourself fall into the endless pit.

In the times of declining human relationships, we need to bring back the good old days. We have been too busy with the world we have built around ourselves and therefore we fail to live in the world that actually exists. Meet people, talk to them and lose yourself in the art of conversation and you will be amazed at the wonders that a good conversation with an actual human in front of you will do for your mind and soul.

And anyway, who’d like a kissing emoticon instead of a real kiss?