I just finished reading a book that includes a scene where a DVD of Cheers appears in a post-apocalyptic world. For whatever reason, I got to thinking that a slight variation on the theme song would apply better to me as an introvert. Rather than going where everybody knows my name, I’d rather go where I know everyone else’s name. What would your preference be, or do you think the two things are so similar so as to be the same?
I"m an introvert, I guess (I call it “social anxiety”). I’d like it both ways, actually. I would love to know and remember everyone’s name, and whatever else I already have heard or knew about them, but I am also kind of self-absorbed so that I don’t retain nearly as much as I should. Or maybe not self-absorbed exactly as much as focusing on the wrong things in the moment, mostly things about myself, like “am I sitting up straight (or standing normally),” “am I speaking clearly and not mumbling,” “am I looking this person in the eyes,” and so on. It would also help if they knew me and who I am, so they could jump-start an actual conversation instead of small talk.
On Saturday I didn’t go to a gallery opening that included some work of a friend of mine. She knows I don’t like gatherings, and I wouldn’t have known anyone else there, but she was still disappointed I think. I will go to see the work, the show will be open for several weeks. I just didn’t want to meet a bunch of people who couldn’t care less whether I was there or not. That’s me socially in a nutshell.
For me it would be “Sometimes you want everyone else to go where everybody knows their name so you can just be left by yourself for once”
I often say, “I like to be alone in a crowd.” My local pub is very Cheers-like, in that most of the regulars know each other by sight at least, and mostly by name. We do socialize a lot, and run things like card tournaments, but they are also pretty good at picking up when I’m in the mood to just sit in the corner with a book.
I’d rather ‘go where nobody knows my name’. It’s quite liberating. I am probably weird in that I get uncomfortable in groups where people know me and I know them, but when I am a stranger in a crowd (or on a train 
) amongst people I have never met and will likely never meet again, I am more comfortable and more readily make small talk. I cannot do small talk in groups of people I know.
I’m an introvert, despite working in a very public medium for 50 years. (Many on-the-air radio people are introverted.) I briefly made a stab at sales, but I hated it. Once I had to go to a “business mixer.” I knew no one there, and no one knew me. I just couldn’t “work the room.” So much uneasiness welled up inside of me that I left in a state of anxiety so extreme that it surprised me.
So, I’d rather go to a place or be in a situation where everybody knows my name. I never had anxiety over public appearances, even emceeing stadium concerts with thousands of people in attendance. But going to a place where I’m supposed to “mix” with a bunch of people I don’t know, forget it.
Same!
I, too, am an introvert. What I’ve found is that you can build up your tolerance for situations like that. It’s rather similar to how ancient kings used to build up tolerance to certain poisons.
Going to “meet and great” meetings is never going to be one of my favorite things, but I can tolerate it when I need to.