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Loners Are Freaks: Difference between revisions
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Friends are great. Which is why having friends is often what separates the hero from the villain. An inevitable side-effect of [[The Power of Friendship]] is [[Friendless Background|if you don't have friends]], there's something wrong with you. Similarly, if a writer is going to create a sympathetic [[Anti-Hero]], they often choose to make the character a brooding loner. Although there are many other ways to make a flawed character--[[Pride]], addiction, and lust are all sympathetic, epic flaws. No, no, instead, writers opt for just plain asocial.
In fiction, introversion usually includes a raft of other problems: [[Lack of Empathy|apathy]], [[It's All About Me|arrogance, selfishness,]] mental instability, inhumanity, or plain old evil. Loners will be shown as insulting others by implying, through their refusal to socialize, that others are not worthy of their presence. [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|Right]]? This perception stems from the belief that being a loner is not a natural thing. There is something "wrong" with them.
There's also the association with [[The Sociopath|serial killers]] who tend to be loners. In Japan, [[Hikikomori]] are seen as either [[NEET|NEETs]] gone over the edge, or lazy students cutting class rather than victims of a nearly-[[Social Darwinist]] society defined by [[Ambition Is Evil|ambition]] and fear of shame. [[There Are No Therapists|Rather than reaching out for help, the family is expected to isolate the weirdo from society and deal with the problem themselves]]. When fiction still doesn't remember the difference between being a loner by choice or being driven to it, this is the attitude at work.
Even more unfortunately, there is ''some'' [[Truth in Television|historic basis]] for this; humans are social animals. Cooperation along with the invention of language is how we survived and those who were alone often weren't able to reproduce or hand over their innovations to the next guy. Through most of human history collective action was the only practical means of survival; being extremely selfish, hiding all the time, or being shunned/banned/exiled/cast out was very often a precursor to slow death by starvation, predation, etc. Thus a person condemned to [[Dying Alone]] was almost certainly alone because of a problem he'd had in another group and so to be avoided.
A loner can also become a freak through isolation. Humans learn how to be human through social interaction. And there are many social skills that can only be learnt in person -- isolation can lead to [[No Social Skills]]. When you're raised in isolation, you behave differently. Many psychological disorders originate from a deficit in human interaction. Then that person will be shunned, isolating him further in a vicious cycle, putting him closer to [[Despair Event Horizon]].....
Of course, this trope could just be the inversion of the idea that nobody could like a freak, so those freaks are loners. But this doesn't logically translate to ''all'' loners are freaks, but [[You Fail Logic Forever|a lot of fiction doesn't follow logic]].
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[[The Messiah]] will often effect a [[Heel Face Turn]] on an antagonist by trying to be their friend. Often this will work by itself, hammering home the idea that what's wrong with the villain isn't the need for revenge or a severely unbalanced psyche, it's a lack of friends. Even if [[The Messiah]] eventually accepts the Loner ''as'' a Loner, the Loner will often appreciate the effort, and begin making token attempts to be sociable with the [[True Companions]].
It's hard to determine whether this trope originated from assumptions about loners in the real world or helped cause it...or whether that's ''another'' vicious cycle.
There are exceptions, as with all other tropes: [[The Hermit|the crusty old hermit]] or [[Witch Doctor]] who rebuffs the villains and helps out the heroes is a fairly popular stock character. And both of those are frequently portrayed at the very least as eccentric. The [[Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold]] is a subversion. [[The Snark Knight]] [[Genre Savvy|deliberately]] seeks to defy this trope.
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And, as ''[[Freaks]]'' proved, loners may be freaks, but freaks aren't loners.
Compare [[The Complainer Is Always Wrong]] and perhaps [[Intelligence Equals Isolation]]. Contrast [[You Are Not Alone]]. See also [[No Social Skills]].
{{examples}}
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* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]!'': The protagonist has an ever-growing [[Team Spirit|team of friends to support him]], and not do much else. [[The Rival]] doesn't have any, doesn't want any, and consistently fluctuates between bona fide antagonist and intolerable rich snob.
* In ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'', ''everyone'' is a loner to some degree, and it does none of them the least bit of good. Shinji is the most lonely, because of all the [[Butt Monkey|depressing, horrible, and just plain sad things]] that happen to him. Watching his mother die, being forced to pilot EVA-01 by his father, getting little respect from his peers and/or being bullied, {{spoiler|watching EVA-01 tear a rogue EVA to shreds beyond his control, and later finding out that the pilot was one of his friends who is now crippled as a result, being forced to kill the only person who truly understood him, and being forced to activate an apocalyptic event, leaving him and Asuka the only two people on Earth.}}
** [[Rebuild of Evangelion|Rebuild]] has an aversion in the form of {{spoiler|Mari, who outright states that she doesn't like involving others in her plans, deliberately cuts off the intercom when she [[Gundamjack|hijacks]] EVA 02, and is hardly shown talking with anyone but the protagonist. She still manages to be a very positive, badass character who teaches said protagonist an important lesson.}}
* Sara in ''[[Soukou no Strain]]'', the [[New Transfer Student]] loner, is assumed to be an evil one by the Gambee pilots who need a [[Butt Monkey|scapegoat]].
* One of Ash's rivals, Paul, from ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'', seems to be taking this route. He doesn't even seem to form proper friendships with his own Pokémon. He's only interested in them for their power.
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* Yukiteru Amano of ''[[Mirai Nikki]]'' is very much a loner at school. This is due to his own anti-social personality. However, he does try to get better and make friends. Unfortunately, Yuno exists.
** Then later on he {{spoiler|kills his friends in his quest for Godhood. To be fair, they did intentionally get in his way, try to tell him the truth that he couldn't bring people back to life (not a bad thing in its self, but considering his reasoning of 'I can bring everyone I've killed back, so it doesn't matter', it pretty much broke him) when it wouldn't have even mattered, they were kind of stupid.}} He was a freaky loner who got better, but it was too late for entirely other reasons.
* Konata from ''[[Lucky Star]]'', while not being a true loner, often gets berated for her love of solitary activities, like playing video games or watching anime shows.
** Kagami in particular sees Konata as the stereotypical [[Otaku]] and/or [[Hikikomori]], and considers Konata as a ''potential criminal''. (To be fair, Konata lacks most stereotypical otaku and hikikomori traits.)
* Tenshi/{{spoiler|Kanade Tachibana}} of ''[[Angel Beats]]'' is placed in this category, but is rather a [[Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold|Boo Radley]]. She's seen as a freak because she doesn't have any friends, but that's only because {{spoiler|She's ''actively'' trying to ''graduate'' those around her, and thus is never really seen with anyone for any length of time.}}
* Averted in ''[[Amanchu]]''. We never see any of Hikari's friends from before she met Futaba and the rest of the diving club, but she is shown to be cheery and outgoing, although perhaps a bit eccentric.
* In ''[[The Weatherman Is My Lover]]'' the cheerful but [[Stepford Smiler|emotionally detached]] Amasawa considers himself to fall under this. His lover [[Lonely Together|Koganei]] convinces him neither of them needs to be that way.
* All over the place in ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]''. Homura doesn't have any friends because {{spoiler|she was hospitalized for a long time}}, Mami doesn't have any friends because she must distance herself from others due to her job, Kyouko doesn't give a damn about humans after all she went through, and Sayaka actually become freaks, {{spoiler|[[And Then John Was a Zombie|in so many ways]],}} when she decides to be a loner. In contrast, Madoka try to connect with them all.
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** This isn't necessarily a personal choice--as per his name, Cacafonix is an enthusiastic but [[Dreadful Musician|absolutely horrendous musician]].
* [[Depending on the Writer]], [[Batman]].
** This trope is one of the reasons many heroes are uncomfortable with him, being unaware that [[Papa Wolf|Batman]] has [[Badass Family|the biggest extended family of the DCU]].
* Both Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan of ''[[Watchmen]]''. Rorschach has difficulty relating to people on a social level, being paranoid, violent, and insulting. Dr. Manhattan pushes away from humanity due to his god-like powers.
** It's implied in his back-story that Dr Manhattan wasn't the most gregarious man in the world even before becoming omnipotent, omniscient and probably omnipresent if he felt like it.
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== Film ==
* ''[[Ten Things I Hate About You]]''. Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger both play social outsiders. In reality they are rather mundane, but their rejection of society causes people to assume everything they do has some dark or criminal explanation.
* Brendan Frye in ''[[Brick]]'' is cool, and badass, and a perfect example of ''Determinator'', but he eats lunch alone and the only two people who could possibly be called his friends are his ex-girlfriend and Brain, who serves as a sort of information broker. Brendan plays many sides against each other, and is not very well liked for it.
* ''He Was A Quiet Man''
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== Literature ==
* [[Solomon Kane]] is the poster child for this trope, spending almost every story tramping around [[Darkest Africa]] all alone except for the [[Witch Doctor]] N'Longa, who he sees very infrequently, and various other characters whose main function, generally speaking, is to die violently.
* [[Chronicles of Thomas Covenant|Thomas Covenant]] - [[Stephen R Donaldson]]'s entry for least likeable main character. Something of a [[Jerkass]] hero.
* Roland Deschain, the protagonist of [[Stephen King]]'s magnum opus ''[[The Dark Tower]]'', suffers from this trope: he has been alone for so long in his quest to reach the titular Dark Tower that it is his only reason for living. In the first book he goes so far as to [[Anti-Hero|let a twelve-year-old boy he rescued and bonded with to fall to his death]], just to because his nemesis said it was the only way he'd ever allow himself to be caught. Roland's character softens into something a great deal more sympathetic after he forms a traveling party that helps him in his quest -- which includes what amounts to a resurrected version of that kid, who'd have to be insane to follow Roland again under any other circumstances.
** Not exactly. {{spoiler|The Dark Tower is the nexus of all existence. Saving it at the price of a thousand lives would be a bargain.}}
*** But remember, Roland's goal is not to save the Dark Tower, but to reach it. He goes out of his way to save it because if it falls he could never reach it. {{spoiler|If given the hypothetical choice of saving but never being able to get there, or reaching and climbing to the top at the cost of its destruction along with all of reality, he'd choose the second option.}}
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** ''[[Enders Shadow]]'' goes back on this a bit, playing up the fact that Ender relied on his army while Bean was the real antisocial genius. Or, to be more accurate, Ender could project all the leadership qualities and bind their loyalty to him but was completely alone himself, except for Bean, who had no idea how to really connect to other people. This is something of a plot point and stated outright: Ender takes down his bogeyman by himself whereas Bean has learned how to form a [[True Companions|team]] that may or may not actually like him, but accept him.
*** The subsequent ''Shadow'' books do this even more clearly, though. Who's the villain? Achillies, who seems to be able to make everyone, except some of the battleschoolers, love him. He feels no attachment to them and is noted by Bean near the end as being empty and unable to understand true bonds. Who're the heroes? Bean, Mr. Antisocial himself, although {{spoiler|it is revealed that his detachment from humanity is more about him caring too much than too little}}. And Peter Wiggin, the terror of his brother's life and the ultimate "I can do it myself" loner. {{spoiler|Until he realizes just how good his parents are to talk to and after he marries Petra.}}
* Harry Dresden of ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' is a loner of the harmless variety. He has a small circle of friends, but he's more or less antisocial, only being immediately nice to pretty girls (not because he's a pervert, he's just the chivalrous type). People treat him as a freak, but not because he's a loner. It's because he publicly advertises his being a wizard and people think he's nuts.
** Note that this is only really an issue in the first four books. During and following ''Summer Knight,'' Harry finally accumulates enough [[True Companions]] that he can no longer really be considered a loner.
* Played with extensively in [[Gordon R. Dickson]]'s ''[[Childe Cycle]]'' series of novels. The "main character" of the series, Donal Graeme, finds he cannot accomplish his goal of uniting humanity alone; he not only has to travel in time (though not in the same body) to not only set historical events in motion, but ''to change their significance in history'' so that not only events but people are in place for a [[Final Battle]]. The trope listed here is also subverted in ''Soldier, Ask Not'' where a newspaperman with the power to influence people is thwarted in his attempts to bring down a entire race by one person of Faith, acting as he sees fit; and played to a extreme in the short story ''Brothers'' - about a set of twins that embody this trope, literally. When one is killed, the story follows thew other in his pursuit of the murderers, and leads to one of the most powerful scenes I have ever read, at the end.
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* Similarly, in the first season of ''[[Gilmore Girls]]'', Rory is criticized by her headmaster for being too much of a loner.
* ''[[Smallville]]'', obviously, where all loners turn out to be crazed mutants, though a fair number of popular kids in that show turned out to be evil too.
** ''[[Smallville]]'' lacks even the tiniest bit of sympathy for anyone who isn't attractive and outgoing. While popular party-going types do sometimes go bad, the show has never featured a real geek or nerd or loner as anything other than a hideous loser with serious issues or hideous deranged monster.(Chloe does not count, due to her failing the "unattractive" test by a country mile)
* Parodied in a sketch on ''[[Jam]]'', in which a desperately lonely woman goes to increasingly sinister lengths to make friends (from setting traps for cyclists to dressing as a police officer, telling a woman that her son died in an accident, then inviting the grieving mother to the theatre that evening)
* Ned from ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'' walls himself off from contact, both because of [[Parental Abandonment]] in his past and because his [[Blessed with Suck|freakish ability]] is based on touch.
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*** In the same episode, a visible inversion occurs: {{spoiler|1=Buddy killed Joe because he (Joe) decided to quit to be with his girlfriend, which Buddy saw as abandonment. [[Ho Yay]] + [[Clingy Jealous Girl|Clingy Jealous Boy]] = Uh oh.}} Also, in the end, Randy tells Ned that Joe had taught him that there's nothing wrong with being by yourself.
* Various examples in ''[[Star Trek]]'', for example Soran and Khan are loners. Also the [[Evil Twin|Evil Twins]] are usually loners: Lore was abandoned on a planet for a long time, and Thomas Riker lived 8 years alone on an outpost.
** Soran is not the best example, considering it was the loss of his family and desire to get back to them that made him go la-la.
** Khan wasn't really a loner; more so just the burden of being a [[Magnificent Bastard]] caused him to always be just slightly above everyone else. He had his wife on Ceti Alpha V for a while, and throughout the movie, he's seen conversing with Joachim as a good friend, {{spoiler|even promising to avenge his death.}}
** Thomas Riker's kind of a questionable example as well. Most of the conflict in the episode he appears in comes not from having been alone for so long, but from his resentment of Will for having lived those years while he was trapped. (Speaking of which, it's awfully dramatically convenient that the Enterprise happened to be the ship that found Tom Riker.) Neither is he really "evil" when he appears in ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Deep Space Nine]]''; he's working for the Maquis, sure, but that's morally ambiguous; and again, he doesn't seem to have joined them because of his time alone so much as to differentiate himself from Will.
*** Actually it's not dramatically convenient but rather logically convenient. The reason the Enterprise was assigned to attempt to retrieve the computer core is that Riker had been assigned to the planet and given his rank at the time he was would be the officer on a star ship to most likely be familiar with the computer systems. It was a time saving measure rather than training someone new on an undoubtedly outdated system.
** Reginald Barclay might be a better example. In his first appearance, he is shown as very much the Loner and his re-creation of members of the crew in the Holo-Deck is regarded as somewhat freakish. During the show, as he gains respect from his colleagues, he becomes less of a loner and deletes almost all of his Holo-Deck programs.
** But on the other side, the power of collective is often described as evil as well, like Borg Collective and the Great Founder Link.
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* [[House (TV series)|House]] and Foreman are sometimes accused of this, especially by [[The Chick|The Chicks]] (Cameron and Thirteen).
* As a result of [[Genre Savvy|his father's training]], [[Dexter|Dexter Morgan]] is aware of this, and goes out of his way to cultivate a "reserved but sociable" persona to keep from being thought of as an emotionally withdrawn loner. It works on everyone but [[Only Sane Man|Sgt. Doakes]].
* A case of "Loners become freaks" in ''[[Life]]'', where Charlie is clearly a well adjusted guy with a job and a wife and friends until he spends an ungodly amount of time (unspecified, but measured in years) in solitary confinement. When they let him out again, [[Cloudcuckoolander|he's kind of crazy.]]
{{quote|"The first six months in solitary, I did push ups, and I did not talk to myself. The next six months in solitary, I'll admit, I talked to myself. You don't want to know what I did after that."}}
* Parodied in the Buckwheat assassination episode of ''[[SNL]]''. A series of people who knew the assassin, John David Stutts, all say the same thing about him--"He was a quiet guy, a bit of a loner, but he always talked about wanting to kill Buckwheat." The caption under his high school yearbook photo reads, "Most Likely to Kill Buckwheat."
* Ranger Gord on ''[[The Red Green Show]]'' is a tragicomic example, in that being posted to a lonely tower to watch for forest fires and then forgotten by his head office has meant that he's lived all alone in the woods since about 1979. Being all alone out there has pretty much made him into a full-blown [[Cloudcuckoolander]], something [[Lampshaded]] by Red on multiple occasions.
* [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]] had an episode called ''Out of Mind, Out of Sight'' about a girl who'd magically turned invisible from social ostracization and set out to take violent revenge on everyone she deemed responsible.
** Also implied to be why Buffy is such an effective Slayer. Her ties to the world give her something to fight for, while other, more isolated, Slayers tend to have far shorter lifespans.
* Also in ''[[Angel]]'', the titular character has a lot of this in his backstory, due to his guilt and not wanting to risk attackming anyone. He came out of it for most of the series, though he sank back into it in season 2 in an attempt to protect everyone from his darkness like before.
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** It got a better example with Connor, who suffered from Aspergers. Once his violent outbursts were explained, even Ally stood up for him. In fact, the amount of suffering he got from the principal was made public, and got Shepard fired.
* In ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'', the Winchester boys (Sam in particular) often had trouble fitting in due to having to move around so often. This led to a great deal of [[I Just Want to Be Normal]] on Sam's part that eventually caused him to have a falling out with his father. The fact that being called a freak is his [[Berserk Button]] is just icing on the cake.
* [[The X-Files|Mulder]] is a loner, due to his crazy ideas about aliens and government conspiracy. He's a joke to the FBI and is mocked by his peers, nicknamed "Spooky". He doesn't seem to mind too much, though. He doesn't go out of his way to make friends and likes to work alone; the first half of the first season is him just messing with Scully to try and annoy her enough to get her to leave. It doesn't work, and she ends up being his defender of sorts to others in the FBI. He has exactly four friends, including her, three of which are just as odd as he is. His loner tendency may stem back to his childhood, in which his parents emotionally abandoned him after the abduction of his sister. He noted that it "tore the family apart", and he is never seen to have a close relationship with his parents, who divorced soon after the incident.
* Toyed with in ''[[Dark Oracle]]''. Lance is an antisocial gaming geek, but is one of the main protagonists. His [[Cloudcuckoolander]] girlfriend Sage is similarly weird and isolated, but a very pleasant girl. [[Big Bad Wannabe|Vern]], [[Evil Counterpart|Blaze]], and [[Evil Twin|comic!Sage]] on the other hand, cross in [[Psycho Loner]] territory and stay there.
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I don't care
People always bored me anyway }}
* [[Harry Chapin]]'s "Sniper". The titular sniper is described throughout the song as a strange loner, according to those who knew him. [[Deconstruction|Deconstructed]] as, according to the sniper's thoughts, everyone treating him as a freak is what sent him on his rampage.
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* In ''[[Unknown Armies]]'', spending three days alone is the sample Rank 3 Isolation stress checks, while spending seven days alone is the sample Rank 5 Isolation stress check. This means that the average character and average rolls will reach a permanent insanity from being alone, and even beating the odds leaves said character more than a little weird.
* In ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]'', Geniuses of high Obligation (Morality) might transgress just from avoiding people for too long.
** Same with [[Changeling: The Lost|changelings]], but that's because they have ''issues''.
* A [[Discussed Trope]] in ''[[GURPS]] [[Transhuman Space]]: High Frontier'': In describing "Virts", people who do all their interaction through virtuality, it notes "Many Virts are somewhat secretive about their true nature,especially since several popular InVids depict Virts as either [[Lack of Empathy|dangerous sociopaths]], [[The Cracker|criminal hackers]], or as pathetic and terrified losers.
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* In ''[[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl]]'' and ''Platinum'', a woman in Sunyshore mentions that [[Big Bad|Cyrus]] used to prefer the company of machines to other people.
** Continued in Platinum where the player encounters Cyrus's grandfather, who tells you about how his grandson snapped at a young age due to parental pressure. Grandpa himself is quite a loner, holed up in a cabin in an eternal sandstorm that you have to pull off an impressive bike trick to even get to.
* ''[[Touhou]]'' features several characters noted for shunning most human (or monster) contact most of the time. How much they are portrayed as "freaks" for this varies widely, however.
** Marisa isolates herself most of the time so that she can [[Training From Hell|perfect her explosion-making skills]] in relative peace. Her [[Memetic Sex God|extreme charisma]] and [[Genki Girl|energetic speech patterns]] assure her of her popularity, however.
** Alice Margatroid, who lives in much the same situation as Marisa (even living in the same woods), however, is portrayed as an anti-social freak, or even a [[Stalker with a Crush]] of Marisa's.
** Fujiwara no Mokou likewise isolates herself, apparently feeling more connection to humans than [[Youkai]] society, she protects people who wander into the bamboo forest, but isolates herself from them otherwise. Her [[Bifauxnen]] appearance, and [[Les Yay]] relationship with Keine prevent anyone from calling her a freak, however.
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* For some reason, a good portion of [[Survival of the Fittest]]'s version 4 are loners. Whether or not it is played straight, though, varies from character to character.
* Parodied in [http://www.theonion.com/video/potential-school-shooter-gunned-down-by-popular-jo,20877/ this] video of [[The Onion|Onion News]].
* [[The Nostalgia Chick]] has often admitted to being lonely, and her well-meaning but clueless friends believe her causticness is a result of her hating ''[[The Little Mermaid]]''.
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* Mentioned in ''[[Daria]]'', especially "Boxing Daria", where the title character's parents have a fight over her lack of ability to get along in pre-school. (Daria herself managed to avoid this mostly by her friendship with Jane, and to a lesser extent [[Beavis and Butthead]].)
* Played straight and subverted in the first episode of ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]''. Twilight Sparkle, the main character, is seen this way by the denizens of Canterlot, but on the other hand, the overly friendly ponies of Ponyville strike Twilight Sparkle as rather crazy.
** Loners barely even seem to exist in the show; friendship is, quite literally, one of the fundamental forces of that universe. The biggest loner so far shown is Zecora (a [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture|faux-African]] witch doctor living alone in the dark woods), and she's a very sympathetic character - the first episode featuring her is all about how she's ''not'' a freak. On the other hand, even she is not a complete loner, as she keeps friendly relations with the main characters, doesn't mind visits to her hut and sometimes helps out with celebrations in Ponyville.
* Mr Freeze from ''[[Batman: The Animated Series|Batman the Animated Series]]'' is another example: where Batman has Robin, who he treats as a teammate, Mr Freeze is completely ruthless when one of his henchmen gets accidentally frozen. This is also true of The Joker, and especially evident in how he treats Harley Quinn. It's subtle, but Batman isn't really a true loner. It's okay to be a loner when you cooperate with the system and have a sidekick!
* ''[[Gargoyles]]'' live in a clan structure, and gargoyles within a clan are very close and protective of each other. Losing her clan and being alone for centuries is part of what drove [[Big Bad|Demona]] to go from disliking humans to actively trying to wipe out the species.
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* Seung-Hui Cho, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre was described as a loner by many students. He would apparently spend some days just sitting in a wooden rocker staring out his window at nothing in particular and had stalked several female students. Even after being diagnosed as having mental problems, the only help his parents sought for him was from churches who insisted that he was being "afflicted by demonic powers and needed deliverance".
** Both Churches that have an established exorcism ritual (Catholic and Orthodox) virtually ''always'' have, as the first step, "see a psychologist and see if that helps". "Consult a physician" (psychology as a separate discipline being comparatively new) has been the first step in exorcisms since at least the time of Augustine—contrary to popular belief, the ancient and medieval worlds didn't automatically attribute all mental illness to demons.
** This trope often comes up in media news to describe a perpetrator in a major shooting massacre. It's usually the first headline about the shooter whether it's actually true or not.
* According to some psychiatric researchers, there is are a number of '[[wikipedia:Personality disorder|personality disorders]]' such as '[[wikipedia:Avoidant personality disorder|avoidant personality disorder]]', [[wikipedia:Social anxiety|social anxiety]] and '[[wikipedia:Love shy|love shyness]]' that cause victims to be severe introverts. Naturally, there is increased risk of other mental disorders, but these people are rarely dangerous. Sadly, these people are often mistaken for '[[wikipedia:Antisocial personality disorder|antisocial]]' individuals who can be harmful to society.
** In the examples above, the person deep down still desires friendship and intimacy, they just have problems obtaining them. For natural loners, who really couldn't care less if they have any friends or not, the personality disorder is called [[wikipedia:Schizoid personality disorder|schizoid]]
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** The "[[Loners Are Freaks]]" mentality really rose after the Columbine shootings because of these assumptions about Klebold and Harris. It's particularly jarring in that schools were telling kids to reach out to others and to stop bullying, while at the same time encouraging the "[[Loners Are Freaks]]" mentality, often by citing introverted characteristics as "suspicious behavior".
* [[Cats Are Mean]] is a product of this, because domestic cats are by nature loners, especially in contrast to pack-minded dogs.
** This is also why loners and cats often get along so well, and both tend to prefer each others company to that of obnoxious sociophiles.
* Spree killer [[wikipedia:Howard Unruh|Howard Unruh]].
* Tucson, AZ shooter [[wikipedia:Jared Lee Loughner|Jared Lee Loughner]] who became increasingly withdrawn and mentally unstable after high school.
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[[Category:Ice Queen]]
[[Category:Loners Are Freaks]]
[[Category:Introversion Tropes]]
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