Social anxiety online

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I got "yelled at" on line and I have been a little leery of going back to Facebook since then.

People can be quite cruel when they don't have to face you.

Agreed. 10-odd years ago I loved communicating with others over the internet. AIM, e-mail, PM's, all of that, but now it's hard for me even to post here. Most of the time I have something I want to say, so I type it out, and then re-read it and edit it, and then decide it's stupid or doesn't add to the conversation, so then I delete it. Same with FB. I hardly ever post there anymore, and often when I do I end up deleting whatever I managed to post. Or, if nobody responds, I get upset because clearly everybody hates me and thinks I'm an idiot, so then I stop going to various sites for weeks to months until the "uproar" dies down, because I'm convinced that everybody is talking about me in private.

Now I can barely be bothered to post anywhere anymore unless somebody is asking a question that I know the answer too. Questions are always easier to reply to.

Before I gave up on POF (I should know better, they're all really that shallow) I skimmed 10s of 1000s of profiles, read something interesting enough to send 100s of cold contacts, got maybe 30 replies, of which 1/2 were anything beyond that, and out of all that, I got 1 phone # that I texted for a month before my special interests killed that. The cold contacts that drew more replies were about 1/2 a paragraph (hey I listened to the dating gurus!) From what I could tell it wasn't the content of the messages so much as the right length, but once I thought I was in I monologued them to death

My only other online haunt is a site for my moped interest, when I started there I threw myself into the fray, trying to contribute to every topic but got butthurt when ignored or flamed, newer members joined and the site took on a whole different vibe, almost Andy Kaufman-esque. Some even newer members are coming on that restore a little balance, I engage better with them than the troll elite

When I come here I feel I can wear my soul on my sleeve, finally finding the outlet that lets me say what I need to say, I can listen and be heard where the world has tried to grind me into the dirt all my life, so I've really only felt anxious about replies when it's a post where I've tried to be encouraging

To be honest, I gave Plenty of Fish a month or two and didn't really get anywhere with it either. The people on it were either shallow, not particularly bright, or had their own issues that needed dealing with.

That place sucks. Only interaction I get there is if I do what you did - under a paragraph, broken up per sentence (basically a text message!) with some witty banter and 1 question. Anything more than this they get brain damage or reject me. Sad state of affairs tbh. The site itself is good it's just the people that ruin it

I signed up in '06 and messed around with it for a month or so, then lay fallow until 2011 and started flogging it again (no pun intended and I wasn't looking for fap material anyway) off and on. I replaced my real photo (I underrate my appearance but IRL have been complimented, seeing myself on photo or video always creeps me out) with a scraped photo of some tatted up, pierced, shirtless most living cartoon thug dude, and all I had to do was click 'upload' and within an hour my Inbox was stuffed without me typing a single word.

I actually got a couple of decent leads going but like the aspie I am, I didn't have the heart to keep up the ruse and well, yeah *you* know... It was funny how this 1 girl wanted the white picket fence but nobody wanted to stay with her because she had tatoos and worked on cars. I suck at trolling but the opening volleys were some of my best work ever, should've archived it

Yeah getting the one number and then answering every 'what u up 2' text with something about my special interest is making me laugh even as I post