Hiii, perceive me as I bitch abt hexbear being the actual last place that I talk to people, which is kind of sad but eh.

I know it's a problem doing my socialising exclusively online, because the internet is insane, but I've preferred talking to internet people since I was like 15 or something. The tism gives me alarmingly poor social awareness, and knowing that gives me really bad social anxiety and paranoia, which is not great. Also I am prone to slipping into monologuing mid-conversation and I suspect it's offputting please help me.

Talking to people irl is so strenuous and awkward that I just don't do it, plus where in meatspace am I gonna find the time or venue to ramble at length about weird books, or video games I don't like, or meta-observations about social interaction? I just do it online, but also my social interactions have been getting progressively worse in a lot of ways. It's unhelpful that genuinely having a weird, contrarian opinion seems to put people off, and it's unhelpful that I have so little in common with the average "normie", even queer or neurodiverse ones, I just don't see any of my talking to people going well. A few months ago I thought I had friends, but I eventually realised I was the one reaching out and talking with them literally 100% of the time, and as soon as I stopped putting in 100% of the effort, I literally just never got another message again. People just stopped talking to me, very cool.

So here I am on Bear Website®, almost totally socially isolated & using Demoncracy@lemmygrad-dot-ml's good-faith thread to post an insane, neurotic screed about my inability to talk to people