{"id":2429,"date":"2013-04-26T18:51:46","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T18:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/?p=2429"},"modified":"2013-04-26T18:53:25","modified_gmt":"2013-04-26T18:53:25","slug":"social-network-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/2013\/04\/26\/social-network-anxiety\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Network Anxiety"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I think I&#8217;ve made it pretty clear that I&#8217;ve got more issues than a hoarder with a thing for magazines.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>If not?\u00a0 I just did.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>If it weren&#8217;t for the internet, I wouldn&#8217;t be where I am today.\u00a0 I doubt I&#8217;d be in Colorado, and I certainly wouldn&#8217;t have the friends I have.<\/p>\n<p>There are problems, though.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nFor one thing, I am absolute shit at social networks.\u00a0 I have a Twitter account that I barely use.\u00a0 I have a Google Plus account that I&#8217;m almost afraid to use.\u00a0 I use my Facebook account fairly regularly, because that&#8217;s where almost everyone I know actually <em>is<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s where the odd social network anxiety comes in.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve gotten over part of it.\u00a0 I post whatever the fuck I feel like posting now, with the occasional warning for new people regarding how absolutely fucking terrible a person I am.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve only lost one person over that shit.<\/p>\n<p>Basically: If you&#8217;re offended by me, then you should know better.\u00a0 Because you sent me the friend request, so you must&#8217;ve known a little bit about me going in..\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>But commenting?\u00a0 That still gets to me.\u00a0 Not with everyone.\u00a0 There are people I figure won&#8217;t have issues with the shit I say&#8230;but then there are others.\u00a0 Others where I&#8217;m in a thread with their more&#8230;human friends, or their <em>parents<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>Or, I&#8217;ll post a comment and start wondering exactly how they&#8217;ll take it.\u00a0 If they&#8217;ll be offended, and then tear into me for being useless, lazy, and non-functioning, or any number of other things, because I&#8217;m not doing responsible adult things.<\/p>\n<p>Then there&#8217;s the crossovers &#8212; when someone invites me to an event out in the real world.\u00a0 I never give more than a Maybe, for a thousand bullshit excuses.\u00a0 And I usually fail to show up, which leads to thinking people will eventually just stop inviting me.<\/p>\n<p>Then, I just figure they <em>have<\/em> stopped, and I&#8217;m half relieved [the less people expect of me, the better], and half pointlessly upset.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s at this point that I start thinking that I&#8217;d really be better off without friends.\u00a0 Or, at least, they&#8217;d be better off without me, because I don&#8217;t serve any real purpose.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>At that point, I usually retreat to the safety of Bed, where I wait for sleep to stop lurking and wrap itself around my face, because anxiety is fucking exhausting.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>Which is where I am right now.\u00a0 In bed, typing this on my Nexus.\u00a0 Because I spent the entire on the big, winding anxiety slide.\u00a0 Comments, invites, and&#8230;I&#8217;m not even sure I can explain the gut-crushing awfulness of sending a private message.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>Maybe.\u00a0 Imagine having to jump from one rooftop to the other.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not that far, and you&#8217;re pretty sure you can do it, but&#8230;no.\u00a0 You run up to the edge and slide to a stop because you&#8217;re just not ready this time.\u00a0 You need to run faster, and start a bit more back.\u00a0 And again:\u00a0 no, you almost didn&#8217;t jump at exactly the right time.\u00a0 And no, because it just felt wrong this time.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s just far too easy to imagine the fall, which results in an impossible crater, and a wet, meaty explosion at the bottom.\u00a0 Or, in the case of sending a message: it&#8217;s too easy to imagine that you&#8217;re being a nuisance.\u00a0 That they&#8217;re just fucking sick of you, and are going to complain to someone else about your message.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>Now that I&#8217;m admitting all this, I do <em>not<\/em> feel better.\u00a0 I actually feel worse, because now I have to worry about the people I know thinking that I think they&#8217;re horrible people.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t actually help it.\u00a0 I&#8217;m a terrible person, and there&#8217;s an even worse person in my head helping me come up with these things.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a part of me, but it&#8217;s a part of me I&#8217;d like to tie up and lock away.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>And, you wanna hear the craziest part of all this?\u00a0 I actually trust people online way more than I do people in real life.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>That just makes it worse.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t have many real-world friends, and I rarely see them in the real world.\u00a0 And I haven&#8217;t known them as long as some of the people I know online.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>There aren&#8217;t many local people who could hurt me the way some of those online friends could.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think I&#8217;ve made it pretty clear that I&#8217;ve got more issues than a hoarder with a thing for magazines.\u00a0 If not?\u00a0 I just did.\u00a0 If it weren&#8217;t for the internet, I wouldn&#8217;t be where I am today.\u00a0 I doubt &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/2013\/04\/26\/social-network-anxiety\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[193,9],"class_list":["post-2429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bib","tag-adventures-in-anxiety","tag-facebook"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3bMfN-Db","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2430,"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429\/revisions\/2430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}