If you haven’t read Part 1, you missed the other types of Tweeters.

The Reciprocal Tweeter

Tweet: @ToWhomEver I thought your new blog post was great. Here’s a link to mine.

To be fair, it’s sucks to give without getting. But that’s not how Twitter works. That’s not how relationships work. Nowhere does it say if I like you, you have to automatically like me back. Reciprocal Tweeters thinks a Rule of Reciprocation should exists. If they follow you, you should follow them. If you don’t reply when they reply, if you don’t retweet if they retweet, if you don’t comment when they comment, they’ll consider it a slight. Enough slights added up and they unfollow you.

Reciprocal Tweeters are the it’s-not-me-it’s-you people in relationships. They can’t understand how they end up dating so many jerks. What they don’t realize is that the quid pro quo approach to relationships ends up creating heavy expectations. When those expections go unmet, then it’s never them being wrong for having expectations of another person’s behavior, it’s the other person not changing into someone more suitable.

Jerks have always been jerks. It’s not their fault that they’re a jerk to you because they’re a jerk to everyone. Who’s fault is it really to decide to try to have a relationships with one in the first place?

INFP is behavior. Behavior is self-similar. In other words, how you do anything is how you do everything. This applies to Twitter.

Since Twitter is a communication platform, I think INFPs believe their objective on Twitter is to share information. If you’re an INFP who thinks the end goal of Twitter is the act of sharing, you’ll soon be bored and quit.

INFPs in 3D interaction don’t share information to strangers as a goal. We don’t tell the guy who takes our money for gas that we write poetry. We don’t tell the hostess that seats us at a restaurant what we ate this morning. So why do we do this on Twitter?

Because Twitter allows INFPs a platform to form relationships.

INFPs are all about relationships. INFPs on Twitter are looking for connection. Otherwise what’s the point of telling someone that you got a new job, unless you’re looking to connect with someone kind enough to say congratulations. Twitter is a microcosm of relationships being created and dissolved at internet speed all with a click of Follow or Unfollow.

Have you ever notice that for INFPs, a description of soulmate is like a shopping list that takes 15 minutes to describe when they’re 20 and single, and still takes 15 minutes when they’re 40 and single?

INFPs everywhere are protesting that we aren’t that shallow. I can’t believe how many times I’ve heard that my soulmate is just someone who “gets” me.

My response is this: do you have to be physically attracted to your soulmate for them to be your soulmate?

What if he’s bald and noticeably shorter than you? What if she has bad teeth and a laugh that scares off harpies? Can they be your soulmate if they have horrendous hygiene and you find them disgusting?

The Care and Feeding of INFPs, part 2

Speaking INFP

INFPs can be great communicators when they want to be. That’s the big catch: when they want to be.

By default, INFPs do two things that cause great frustration to other types.

1. Moving from point A to D while skipping points B and C.

Conversations with INFPs at times seems like a string of completely unrelated topics. I know I do that. I could be talking about Ethan Hawke and the next second, I could be talking about locus of control theory. The connecting thoughts are: Ethan Hawke was in Hamlet –> famous Hamlet quote “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” –> your thoughts are one of the few things you can control –> amount of happiness is proportional to how much control you feel you have in your life –> locus of control theory.

INFPs don’t vocalize those connecting thoughts. Conversations may seem like random jumps from topic to topic but those topics are related in the INFP’s head.