Anyone else find socializing online difficult?

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It's always been hard for me to make friends and socialize in real life. Now having been online, I find it just as hard. It's hard for me to communicate and hold conversations with people and every time I attempt to make online friends I end up being ghosted. With access to all kinds of people all over, it shouldn't feel this lonely but it does.

Hopefully you'll be less likely to be ghosted on an old-fashioned message board like Wrong Planet than on today's major social media.

Unfortunately, on today's major social media, I suspect that a lot of people may feel that they have millions of potential friends out there, so why waste even one more nanosecond on anyone who turns out to be less than 100% perfect? Hence, rampant ghosting.

To help you make friends here on Wrong Planet, I would suggest that you:

1) Edit your profile to be a little more specific about your location than just "U.S.," though not specific enough to endanger your privacy. At least mention your state, or your nearest major metro area, or your general region.

2) Edit your profile to include a signature line that mentions your hobbies/interests and/or other things that are important to you.

Since I joined WP in 2018, I've found four longterm friends here.

P.S. to previous post:

One question I have: What are your criteria for concluding that someone has ghosted you (as distinct from just being momentarily too busy, too overwhelmed, and/or too lacking in energy or "spoons" to reply)?

I ask because I think it's important to distinguish between full-fledged ghosting (as a way of silently rejecting someone) and just being too overwhelmed with other things to reply at the moment. Some people (I'm not saying you're one of them) fail to make that distinction, and lose friends unnecessarily as a result.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 04 Aug 2025, 10:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Honestly, there's still a lot of things I don't know how to do on here x(
I don't know how to set up a profile picture or make a signature.

Edit: Finally figured this part out

Last edited by Coilette_91 on 04 Aug 2025, 11:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't know, I guess it seems like conversations seem dry. When I ask a question, just a general question nothing personal just to make conversation they never reply back. Of course I take into account that people may have busy lives so I don't expect an immediate response, but to never respond makes me think I probably wasn't that interesting to speak to in the first place.

Have had that exact experience here too, even recently.But on the average this site , chatsights like this are seemingly less prone to it ...Hope that happens much less for you .

Thanks. I would like to engage more here, but there aren't a lot of topics that I'm interested in discussing. So I'm not here as often as I could be.

In general I would recommend NOT asking people general questions via PM.

Better to post general questions in a public forum and get replies from whoever feels like replying on that day.

PM's are best reserved for discussing things that are too personal to discuss in a public forum, with someone you've already interacted with publicly enough times that such PM's are a natural continuation of one or more of your public conversations.

Another good use of of PM's is to exchange email addresses or social media contact info, AFTER you've gotten to know someone here. (But be very careful about sharing personal email addresses, phone numbers, or any social media accounts with your legal name! See this site's warnings about Inappropriate PMs and Grooming on WrongPlanet, and see also my Warnings about online harassment.)

Another good use of PM's is to arrange logistics of how, when, and where to meet in person, after you've already had plenty of public interaction with someone who happens to live near you.

In general, the process of getting to know people in online forums (or on social media) starts in public (or semi-public) interaction and then only later moves to PMs. One reason for this is that, other factors being equal, people feel more motivated to reply to public posts than to reply to PM's. Because a public post is seen by more people, many people feel that public posts are a more efficient use of their time, other factors being equal.

I see...
I guess I'm really naive with this online thing.

Pretty much my experiences so far :/
I'd even say it's easier to socialize in-person. Okay, at very least for me. I can see after tone they speak, way how they behave etc. whether they like me or not. I just can feel the other person, even if they're good at faking.
Meanwhile in text communication ye get to see mere "raw" message. You don't really know what they think about you; If they really want to talk with ye, just want something out of you or they want you to just piss off but don't have the balls to actually say it so they just do ghosting (often excusing it with "I was busy" - I've even seen somebody saying she does that as "comfortable" way to end relationship. Just... pathetic, really.)
Mine problem for now however is that I don't have where to meet people in-face (And I feel alien to my [nation] people anyway), so for now I just can wait and try on-line in meanwhile.

Very much, yes. I do not socialize often in real life either, but typically I have someone else with me when I go outside, so they usually do all the talking while I stay silent and merely exist. Occasionally, I may add onto a conversation or have brief interactions with others.

Online, however, I'm expected to learn about/study a person to see if there's a chance we could be compatible, balance between being myself and being someone they may idealize, if they don't use tonetags, I am expected to interpret their tone, I must attempt to talk every so often and see whether they prefer longer discussions or shorter discussions, and all of this without a guarantee that we'd ever meet in real life and potentially, a huge fallout. Not to mention... what should the first message be?! How can I get their attention and keep up a conversation?!

If I had higher self-esteem and were generally happier, it would be a lot simpler for me, but I tend to overanalyze things and hesitate until the point of desperation to interact, which leaves me paralyzed for the majority of the time.

I got off FB because there were so many bullies and so much fakeness. Not to mention having things used against me by co-workers and once an extended family member. Also, off a different message board that had nothing to do with autism, a person turned everyone against me and left because of harassment.

WP I find is pretty well regulated and troublemakers are eventually kicked to the curb.

difficult.Last night I was going to try anonymous social networking, but after doing a search, I found out that this kind of website was thriving ten years ago.A little disappointed.