Y'know when you post something in a Discord server - and I mean, literally anything, it can be something heavy or it can be gushing about a thing you're super into, or it can just be responding to someone else, or it could be a one-line comment - and you see "someone is typing" at the bottom of the screen, and you assume they're replying to you because you were the last person to post, but they're actually responding to someone above you.
This makes all kinds of things go through my head about what I did wrong or what I could do better, when in reality, it's never actually anything I did. But it feels awful to post something and just get passed over, someone replies to someone above me and the convo continues as if I never existed, and it makes me go into hyper-analytical mode about, maybe this is a bad time of the day for this kind of topic or maybe nobody's in the mood to read a post that long and I should've condensed it, or maybe I posted in the wrong channel, or maybe I didn't post enough info...
If I've already talked to the regs and feel "integrated" in a community, it's really easy to brush off, but if I'm trying to integrate then it feels magnitudes worse, because then it's a very real possibility that people in the server just don't like me and politely tolerate me, but are quietly hoping that if they ignore me for long enough, I'll just leave on my own. That's rarely ever true, and it's probably just more likely that some groups are just more averse to talking to strangers than they are their friends (which, I've got some choice words about cliquey behavior in public spaces, but it's a different topic) and if you're persistent enough, eventually they might feel more comfortable with talking to you because you'll be 'familiar' to them after a point. (At least, I assume that's what happens, because that's the only way I can explain how it might take weeks sometimes for people to respond to me in some servers.)
The most occams-razor answer for this is just, nobody was interested in the topic, so the best thing to do, if you're trying to be more social and integrate into communities better (which I am, because combatting hyper-introversion is a years-long fight at this point), is to just consistently post about different things until you snag on common ground with someone and then you've got a buddy you can talk to that might lead to being brought into the fold proper.
I can say that all day and it doesn't make it easy though. If I consistently get overlooked, every new attempt is that much more demoralizing when it fails, and after a while, I'll just end up staring at the screen and wondering if I should do something else with my time. It's pretty ridiculous to sit in the dark and cry about how hard it is to make friends when it's so much easier to just ignore people, I mean, people are work anyway, they demand your time and you gotta pay attention to them like pets (except less cute), and it's not like anyone shares my weird niche interests, or if anyone does, finding them is a needle-in-a-haystack situation where I've got a 2% chance of running into them anyway... But still, I try, because even someone who gets tired and overloaded with everyone else's emotions after an hour of IRL socialization can feel lonely, and the pragmatic approach is to just grit my teeth and keep trying. It's worked before a few times, so I have empirical proof that it works at all.
I don't know. This shouldn't be something that I waste time and energy on. It shouldn't be something that spikes my social anxiety and makes me feel insecure about myself the way it does. It should just be something I shrug off because it's not even a big deal, but it does bother me, a lot, and I'm wondering if I'm the only one? Does anyone else waste this much energy on an incredibly innocuous thing?
This makes all kinds of things go through my head about what I did wrong or what I could do better, when in reality, it's never actually anything I did. But it feels awful to post something and just get passed over, someone replies to someone above me and the convo continues as if I never existed, and it makes me go into hyper-analytical mode about, maybe this is a bad time of the day for this kind of topic or maybe nobody's in the mood to read a post that long and I should've condensed it, or maybe I posted in the wrong channel, or maybe I didn't post enough info...
If I've already talked to the regs and feel "integrated" in a community, it's really easy to brush off, but if I'm trying to integrate then it feels magnitudes worse, because then it's a very real possibility that people in the server just don't like me and politely tolerate me, but are quietly hoping that if they ignore me for long enough, I'll just leave on my own. That's rarely ever true, and it's probably just more likely that some groups are just more averse to talking to strangers than they are their friends (which, I've got some choice words about cliquey behavior in public spaces, but it's a different topic) and if you're persistent enough, eventually they might feel more comfortable with talking to you because you'll be 'familiar' to them after a point. (At least, I assume that's what happens, because that's the only way I can explain how it might take weeks sometimes for people to respond to me in some servers.)
The most occams-razor answer for this is just, nobody was interested in the topic, so the best thing to do, if you're trying to be more social and integrate into communities better (which I am, because combatting hyper-introversion is a years-long fight at this point), is to just consistently post about different things until you snag on common ground with someone and then you've got a buddy you can talk to that might lead to being brought into the fold proper.
I can say that all day and it doesn't make it easy though. If I consistently get overlooked, every new attempt is that much more demoralizing when it fails, and after a while, I'll just end up staring at the screen and wondering if I should do something else with my time. It's pretty ridiculous to sit in the dark and cry about how hard it is to make friends when it's so much easier to just ignore people, I mean, people are work anyway, they demand your time and you gotta pay attention to them like pets (except less cute), and it's not like anyone shares my weird niche interests, or if anyone does, finding them is a needle-in-a-haystack situation where I've got a 2% chance of running into them anyway... But still, I try, because even someone who gets tired and overloaded with everyone else's emotions after an hour of IRL socialization can feel lonely, and the pragmatic approach is to just grit my teeth and keep trying. It's worked before a few times, so I have empirical proof that it works at all.
I don't know. This shouldn't be something that I waste time and energy on. It shouldn't be something that spikes my social anxiety and makes me feel insecure about myself the way it does. It should just be something I shrug off because it's not even a big deal, but it does bother me, a lot, and I'm wondering if I'm the only one? Does anyone else waste this much energy on an incredibly innocuous thing?
I don't so much mind when someone responds to somebody above me, but... I have this social anxiety where, I constantly panic that my posts 'kill' a conversation, or people ignore/ skim over me and I guess it just makes me feel really socially awkward and I just want the digital ground to eat me up!
I find the more I overthink about a post though, the worse it gets, so I try to keep myself busy and if I find myself starting to fret over a recent post, I'll actively get up from my computer, go make a cup of tea, or open up a game and try to distract myself. It's definitely easier said than done though, and I get where you're coming from.
I find the more I overthink about a post though, the worse it gets, so I try to keep myself busy and if I find myself starting to fret over a recent post, I'll actively get up from my computer, go make a cup of tea, or open up a game and try to distract myself. It's definitely easier said than done though, and I get where you're coming from.
EarlyGrey wrote:
I don't so much mind when someone responds to somebody above me, but... I have this social anxiety where, I constantly panic that my posts 'kill' a conversation, or people ignore/ skim over me and I guess it just makes me feel really socially awkward and I just want the digital ground to eat me up!
I find the more I overthink about a post though, the worse it gets, so I try to keep myself busy and if I find myself starting to fret over a recent post, I'll actively get up from my computer, go make a cup of tea, or open up a game and try to distract myself. It's definitely easier said than done though, and I get where you're coming from.
I find the more I overthink about a post though, the worse it gets, so I try to keep myself busy and if I find myself starting to fret over a recent post, I'll actively get up from my computer, go make a cup of tea, or open up a game and try to distract myself. It's definitely easier said than done though, and I get where you're coming from.
Oh yeah! I get that too. I'll wonder if I've done something toxic if I'm the last person talking and if the chat just got awkwardly quiet. I actually also get up and make tea, it helps calm my nerves, and being away from the PC for a bit lets me collect myself.
I wish I had some insight on why it happens but all I can think of is that it's sheer coincidence that a chat just 'dies' sometimes, and I'm conveniently the last to post. It's the easiest explanation, but yeah... Social anxiety complicates things.
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