Or why I feel like I’m f***ed
Introversion amplifies the challenge of Autism. When one is Autistic and extroverted, one can simply steamroll, can just spew forth from the mouth and become the face of Autism. There is different masking when one is extroverted. Some shades of the spectrum become easy to spot, the voice or the “Rainman”-esqueness of them. Or some shades will mask well and appear quite, almost neurotypical, able to appear part of a conversation, able to appear to be involved in social niceties. In fact, the Autism becomes apparent when one stops and realizes that perhaps it is not a conversation, rather a monologue with appearances of interested query. Which is not to say that the querent is not sincere, rather that their shade of the spectrum just doesn’t allow them to slow down enough to give space for other participants who run at a slower pace or do not take up as much space, affecting the local gravity in such a way that the querent can take time to notice them.
To be an introverted Autistic is to suffer the inability to take up that vocalized space. To be told that the new way to find work is to do all the things that an introvert does not want to do. This introvert does not desire to reach out to people I don’t know, to attempt to network with strangers, to engage with them. It feels gross, to put it grossly. It is the opposite of introversion and leaves a segment of society out in the cold. We were already at great disadvantage, now, because of the changes that are not altogether evident broadly, in the way the job market now works, we are lost.
Positions are listed by bots, positions for fake companies, for counterfeited companies. Positions that do not actually exist and were instead created by AIs, generated by bots to use common statistics. Why? That is difficult to know, as there is not one goal with it all. Some are there to act as bait for phishing. Some seem to simply be data vacuums, again, to no logical end. This causes the job market to be a large amount of false positives, for an introverted job seeker. Thus the need to network to make a connection, so that one can find work. Now the job seeker has to have an unpaid job of finding connections, making connections and insinuating oneself into other peoples’ networks.
Extroverts have no problem doing this type of networking, some may even thrive on it. This is why I feel that I see sales people having no issue finding new jobs in this market. What about the introverts? Where do we go from here? Suck it up and become extroverts, seems to be the, as usual, answer. Just do it, as Nike continues to tell us. And in some respects, sure, just do it, whatever it is. Other times, it is not something that we are capable of, it it were, we wouldn’t be in this place to begin with.