They’re absolutely self-reinforcing, and not just “self” reinforcing because there’s also outside reinforcement, in everything from capitalistic endeavors to normalize paying for a cab for your burrito, to online influencers and personalities getting shoved algorithmically in your face who also validate and justify avoidant behavior, reinforcing how you’re a victim of forces outside your control, how being introverted and socially repressed actually makes you “better” than most people and all these other tropes that I get a lot of hate for pointing out in places like Lemmy… from the same people who spend half their day in discord channels with pseudo friends complaining how lonely, unhappy and anxious they are to other people who don’t care about each other and are just there for validation as well.
Yeah it’s wild, I’ve had to learn that just because something seems exceptionally obvious to me doesn’t mean it’s at all obvious to others. There’s a lot of pressure to stay in these environments and it takes a LOT of self awareness to pull yourself out of it, if you can even detect that you are in fact in a situation that’s only making it worse. Like any addiction, it takes time, and it takes enough misery for you to take action. Hopefully by that point you haven’t etched a bunch of online nonsense on some bullets and murdered someone and instead went and touched some grass.
Very based reply, I wish everyone saw the nuance, danger and difficulty of seeking what your brain tells you it wants or even just thought about it a little more.
What’s the chicken and egg between terminally online and social anxiety, or is one just enabling the other constantly
They’re absolutely self-reinforcing, and not just “self” reinforcing because there’s also outside reinforcement, in everything from capitalistic endeavors to normalize paying for a cab for your burrito, to online influencers and personalities getting shoved algorithmically in your face who also validate and justify avoidant behavior, reinforcing how you’re a victim of forces outside your control, how being introverted and socially repressed actually makes you “better” than most people and all these other tropes that I get a lot of hate for pointing out in places like Lemmy… from the same people who spend half their day in discord channels with pseudo friends complaining how lonely, unhappy and anxious they are to other people who don’t care about each other and are just there for validation as well.
Shit’s bad out there yo.
Yeah it’s wild, I’ve had to learn that just because something seems exceptionally obvious to me doesn’t mean it’s at all obvious to others. There’s a lot of pressure to stay in these environments and it takes a LOT of self awareness to pull yourself out of it, if you can even detect that you are in fact in a situation that’s only making it worse. Like any addiction, it takes time, and it takes enough misery for you to take action. Hopefully by that point you haven’t etched a bunch of online nonsense on some bullets and murdered someone and instead went and touched some grass.
Very based reply, I wish everyone saw the nuance, danger and difficulty of seeking what your brain tells you it wants or even just thought about it a little more.
My partner got a little plaque for her desk that says “don’t believe everything you think”, and I felt like that was a succinct way to put it
Very well said. I could talk at great length the dangers of misjudging how one’s own brain works.