Do Loners/Misfits Ever Become "Most Successful"?

Clearly, I'm hoping the answer is "yes".

Once upon a time, it was possible, but not since team work was inflicted.
Competition and aggression are king right now so it's near impossible. Quiet, introvert people are now labeled as having a mental illness and need to be fixed by meds and therapy. It's all multi-tasking as fast as you can and it gets faster every year. Youth and beauty are prized, not aged experience and wisdom. It's all money and showing off. You have to be a sociopath to succeed. So...define your success outside the sandbox and don't let them measure you in your own mind.
Yes, of course, it is your strength provided you can distinguish when you must 'work well with others' and do so effectively, as much it may not be your nature. There are a billion sheeple out there, you can differentiate yourself and probably achieve more by embracing your true self and at the same time maintaining perspective.
I guess someone hasn't seen "The Social Network."
I lived in Silicon Valley during the nineties, and you bet the answer was "yes"! I hope it still is.
Of course they can. Every dorky rich guy you've ever seen with someone hot on his arm has a good chance of being a former loner or misfit.
OP, are you from the east coast and attending a school on the west coast? There's a poster here who really intrigues me.
Very wise, R1. That just about sums it about.
I don't understand the second sentence, R7. Please say more.
Silicon Valley is not as it use to be. Those swimming in the stock option party days are long gone.
Yes, R7.
OP
R9, I know it sounds silly, but there's a poster on DL who left the city I currently live in to pursue an MBA out west. His struggles really spoke to me and actually, his posts encouraged me to think long and hard about what I want to do with my own life. If he's OP, and OP is him, I really do hope he finds success in life. HIs family didn't seem particularly supportive and ultimately, I felt the guy was trying his hardest to find happiness.
R7
R2 is the eldest of the eldergays.
Yes. One I know of runs a major television show for a major network. When his high school peers found out what became of him, they're jaws dropped. He hardly spoke. Kept to himself, and they made life hell for him all through high school. The popular kids a lot of times end up as failures. The ones that end up successful, usually have a whole load of personal problems due to their being shocked that people won't put up with their bullshit in the real world.
Absolutely!
Bill%20Gates
Barbra Streisand was a loner and a misfit. Abraham Lincoln was a loner and a misfit. Winston Churchill was a loner and a misfit.
Bill Gates is a failure as a man and a human being.
Jeffrey Dahmer became a very succesful serial killer
Nobody with that kind of money and a brief to help people could possibly have done less less successfully. And he has been poison to America.
R17
Yes, R7, that's me. The one with the mother and brother who are discouraging and controlling. It was a rough fall quarter. I'm taking a break from the business school this (winter) quarter. You're facing a similar situation? Fill me in...
OP
Steve Jobs's Stanford Address explores this question. It's a secular sermon of non-conformism.
i talk from my point of view. we arent loners by choice, or by our own mistakes. nobody wants to be lonely. however the society outcasts some ppl it dislikes, and on the surface they may show that they are caring, even accuse the loner of self isolation. it simply is social science. we are really just out casts. the truth is that most out casts dont get anywhere, but although the media rewrites histroy about them, many loners in the past have had become powerfull. and to say the least most of them have performed evil acts on their own close ones, and treated the society harshly then when once in power. typical loners are mostly dictators or gangsters etc... i dont know about you but i only hope that someday me or a persom like me becomes powerfull enough, fearless enough to take on the world in the face, to exact every lonliness and pain, i have ever conceived. i wont mind if i die in colateral fire. but i really hope that it does happen. i pray to god for it. dont know what kind of person james holmes was, but if he was like me, then i am really happy for his sucess. i am sure the society will hate him only more and me too. having read this some may change their thoughts may be or may be not. and i wonder if they will kill james or torture him even more. however my word for you is, if we dont stand up to ourselves, if we dont oevercome our fears, if our time does not come, then really i dont think life was worth anything.
we are also called hopeless low lifes, and mostly treated with more humiliation everywhere we go. i have had no women in life, i am 27 yrs old. and i also understand that no women gives a shit about anyone unless he is powerfull. i have no money. if i find a job, ppl only treat me more harshly and ridicule me and humiliate me, which is why i leave it. now i only hope that in some way, i grow strong enough to face this ppl head on. and treat them as my slaves. currently i catch cockroaches and pull of their legs and stuff, and watch them suffer. some day i hope i am able to do this to ppl. thankyou for listening.
at the grade school/ high school level, many creative, intelligent people are loners because the social options available to them are repugnant or unattractive. Either they don't relate to the values reflected in that social group or they are targeted as outsiders because they display qualities interpreted by the herd as a threat to the status quo and are rejected on that basis. People who are loners might have a strong social impulse and a strong ability to connect with others that is revealed if/when they find a larger more varied pool of people to choose from. People blossom at all different ages and levels of development. If you look at the biographies of famous people many were isolated socially as children, some did not become successful until middle age or later.
We were a loner/misfit as a child and now we are a self-made millionairess!
OP, look up the Myers-Briggs category INTJ. Introverts can be brilliant and focused and achieve much. You might want to design your own work structure, like start your own business...or learn how to blend in with other people better. Know that your weakness...is also your strength. Good luck.
If he's the OP, and OP is him. Mary!
I was wondering if I was the only one who noticed the unusal sync in this world?
MagillaGorilla
Self-made because your husband in L.A. was rich? I hardly think that's what OP had in mind.
Whatever introverts achieve is taken from them (see: Alan Turing) unless they also have social skills. Fact. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and people like that: not one of them was a loner, and not one of them could have achieved anything without a carefullly calculated campaign of manipulation and deception based on their social skills.