anonrerising | It's That Time of Year Again....

Some of the desire for that kind of relationship has gone down. Because people finally see options that aren't a spouse and kids are acceptable.

I don't need to force myself into a mold for someone. I can be happy without that. I have other kinds of social connections, and I am fine.

It's not just AI.

Even just friendships seem so much harder to make though. People just... don't want to talk to each other. It's all heads down, look at phone. I'm an autist trying to learn how to socialize and it's like how tf are you supposed to learn how to do that these days??? No one else my age knows how to either! But I quite literally can't live alone! It's unaffordable! If I'm to ever move out, I NEED roommates, and for me to get roommates I'm comfortable with I want them to be my friends... but how tf do you make friends in person these days 😭

the "people are only looking at their phones" complaint has been around for at least 20 years and the answer is the same as when people were blaming television or magazines or books.

take classes or join groups where you have a shared interest in what is happening or being done. I guarantee you will be able to chat more earnestly and helpfully with somebody there then trying to chat up random strangers in the wild and being in a group together is how friendships start outside of school or work.

Then what? How do you when to ask someone for their number? How do you know when it's safe to consider someone a "friend"? You are talking to an autistic person. I fundamentally cannot comprehend these things.

*how do you know when to ask

Honestly? Us neurotypical people don't have a clue either. Truly. We do a lot of guessing. But I do have two recommendations:

1. If someone keeps specifically finding you to talk to, it's a good sign. Conversely, if you're always the one starting the conversations, that's usually a good sign that you're more interested than they are. Specifically, I'd recommend the 3-1 rule: if they have not initiated some form of conversation by the time you have initiated 3, they're not as interested and you should step back.

2. Accept at the outset that there's going to be discomfort involved. Nobody likes being rejected - and I mean that in the broadest sense of the term, not just the romantic one. Be okay with hearing "no thank you, I'm not interested in hanging out". Once you're okay with that, you will gain the ability to be able to ask people to do things in the clearest terms possible. The majority of emotion heavy language and body language that can be confusing come down to signalling that someone is or is not rejected with out straight up saying it out loud. Find yourself a person or two you can trust to honestly and bluntly tell you "I'm not feeling up for that today, but I'd love to reschedule for tomorrow" because they know you'll be cool with it and you're in good shape.

But even if you keep talking to someone how do you get to the point of expressing "I want to be your friend"? The idea of asking someone for their number or something is utterly terrifying. And you could ask "well, how did people end up becoming your friend?" and the truth is, I can't remember, because I have not maintained a friendship since childhood and every single one of those had someone else approaching me. Or, I was grouped with them somehow.
And to be as socially inept as I am at my age is just... not acceptable. It's not. I give off immediate "socially stunted weirdo" vibes because that is exactly what I am. I stutter a whole lot. I don't know how to carry conversations. I HATE small talk. My vocabulary is weird. I don't know how to enter a conversation without being immediate "red flag".

The thing that sucks is you can never get better until you do it and practice talking. If you hate small talk about work and your pet and the weather, find some common topics like what streamer/games/tv shows
you both like. The good thing is I guarantee there are other people who feel just as out of place as you do and would enjoy your company.

Once you find someone you enjoy talking to in one setting, like a "gym friend," ("gym friend" meaning you both start conversations when you see each other at the gym) you can ask them to go do something else. Maybe they will want to go, and you can ask for their number to schedule a time, or maybe they are more comfortable just being friends at the gym, in which case they might say they are too busy and will not offer any better days to reschedule on.

And there's nothing wrong with having one gym friend who is different than your two FR friends who is different than your work friend. Even a best friend in the world will have some different interests than you, so you might be glad to still have your gym friend later on.

https://www.reddit.com/r/socialskills/comments/17lx65p/small_talk_some_tips_and_strategies/

Small talk and other forms of interaction are skills that can be learned, both by reading and by observing, and also practiced. It's fine to hate it, but you also need to understand what it's used for and why it's important in social interactions. Being social includes both fun and unfun interactions; being socially graceful allows you to limit unfun interactions without making other parties overly uncomfortable as well.

Sounds like you have social anxiety if something like asking someone for their number is terrifying.

To say it's been a complaint for 20 years is true, but to say it hasn't gotten worse isn't. It has most definitely gotten worse within the past 10 or so years. I mean look what's happened to sites like Twitter and Facebook. These sites and and apps are all designed in ways that harm you psychologically. Whether people notice it or not. Posts that get the most engagement are what ends up on people's feeds, and what gets people engaging? Stuff that makes them mad. So now we've got a sea of content designed solely to make people argue with each other and believe certain things about certain groups. Aaand it's gotten us... where we are now. Not great.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_linked_to_chatbots
You didn't hear about MySpace causing this shit 🙃

You literally cannot be serious. The amount of people who commited suicide because they were being bullied on myspace ( and facebook ) is greater that the number of deaths via AI.

Like I hate AI but can we just be so for real

But did we have chatbots that suicidal people could use to further reaffirm their suicidal ideations and harmful beliefs?

Like ChatGPT is literally designed to be a yes man. It's designed to be agreeable. Rarely will it argue with you. Actual human beings are willing to argue with delusions. ChatGPT won't.

ayrt

I'm not saying that AI is good or okay - I'm saying lets not pretend 'we didnt hear people dying because of the environment of myspace' is true

Cyberbullying absolutely occurred on MySpace 100%. I'm not trying to pretend human beings haven't always been shitty to each other. MySpace in it's heyday was also a much simpler app than what we see now though. The enshittification of the internet really began when all these big sites decided they weren't just gonna be little spaces for people to connect with their friends and family, they were also gonna where you got your news and, if you get popular enough, something you could even make money off of! And now, on top of a whole bunch of algorithms designed to be addictive and show us hateful, divisive content, we now have to worry about vulnerable people confiding their personal delusions to a robot, just for said robot to be like "yeah you're totally right actually, you should kill your mom". It's a whole other beast now and it's just absurd.

Ayrt

Now this I can agree on - My main gripe was just pretending that other places haven't been dangerous- for a different reason, granted, but saying Myspace and Facebook etc. were Perfect Utopias ( in the social sense ) is just what ticked me off.

I agree that we no longer have places LIKE Myspace of old to just..hang out. Where we're not being advertised to. Where I don't have to see the word 'killed' replaced with 'unalived' just to appease to advertisers. It's a weird and sad thing that's happened to online spaces and if I never saw another ad for anything ever again in my life I'd die happy.

Oh I'm never defending Facebook Facebook's always been shit. It's gotten WORSE but I've never wanted to touch that site with a ten foot pole. Zuck can get fucked

sa
Also to add, the internet wasn't always as heavily monetized as it was now. We've got TikTok accounts dedicated to posting ragebait because making content that pisses people off is what gets views and views are what gets you paid. It's so fucked

It's That Time of Year Again....

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