Hey Guys!

This is my first post here, but I have been wanting to share this for a while on reddit but haven't found the right sub to do so, so I guess i'll share this here. Hey, it should make a good starting post! I am not the best writer, so please bear with me throughout this post.

So first I think we should talk about my real life. I may not seem like it at times, but I am a very antisocial person at heart. Sure, with family and people I know well, or friends of friends, I am happy to talk and hang out, but anything other than that and it gets bad. I would say some of the worst things for me are public gatherings, such as weddings or family reunions. The fact that it is seriously loud at most of these doesn't help as I don't really like loud areas, such as sporting events or concerts. I have been this way my whole life.

First we need backstory, though.

During 6th through 8th grade, I went to a seriously bad school. I mean teachers constantly trying to catch you doing the slightest thing wrong, and also trying to punish you for every little thing you did wrong. Their website and media platforms were full of lies, and I felt there was a lot of lying and scamming going on at that place. Overall, it wasn't a good atmosphere, but at the time my parents believed that it was I who was the issue, not the school.

There were countless emails home and meetings to talk about how much I "broke the rules" or "wasn't behaving correctly" and I think so many of these calls or emails got me into the mindset that I was actually this way. I would always tell my parents the exact thing that happened, and they would end up believing the teachers, and believe that I was lying. I got into the mindset as well that if I left, I would be going to a boarding school or end up in a insane asylum, so I ended up staying, even though there were some days where I just wanted to leave and run away forever. I am seriously glad I didn't do that.

In my opinion, this school is where the majority of my social issues have come from.

I feel that constantly getting yelled at, embarrassed, or just getting in trouble contributed to me having a hard time talking to people, because I believed if I did, and said the wrong thing, I would get yelled at or in trouble. The issue was, I should have told someone, but I felt I would get in trouble or called stupid if I did.

In early summer 2016, I created a reddit account.

I think of this account as the first real "social media" account I had where intelligent discussions would actually take place, and not just another forum account to post one question, then lose the login credentials to forever. I had signed up after hearing about it through /r/nosleep (I was into scary stories even if they caused me to lose sleep at night)

I quickly became obsessed, learning about multiple subreddits that were about topics I was interested in. I never knew there was a whole community dedicated to error messages on public display screens, I've always loved this sort of thing!

I also found photocritique, talesfromtechsupport and techsupportgore. There are a few others I actively post on, and you can see that from my history. I found myself spending hours learning about these communities and talking to people through reddit comments, even adding a few as friends on discord

Then, something clicked, and I finally noticed something changing

I was able to start talking to people in the real world, just a tad better. It was kind of like reddit was a practicing platform, and talking to people was becoming easier. Since then, I have become active in multiple discord servers and subreddits. I am still not good with talking to people by myself, and try to keep interaction to a minimum, but at least now I can start a conversation and casually make small talk.

Something I wasn't able to do for multiple years.

I personally don't ever see myself becoming a fully "normal person" in terms of communication skills, but I think communication online via text and some voice chat has helped, and maybe if you know someone who has a hard time with the same thing, you could tell them about this post! It doesn't even have to be reddit. Say you enjoyed a certain hobby, there is usually a forum for that hobby, and if not, you can create your own!

Anyways, I needed something to post for my first post, so I thought I would make this. Thank you for reading, and I hope to have a great time on this platform with everyone else!

By the way, if anyone knows, what are people here called? Like people on reddit are called "redditors" but here I've heard multiple names, although "steempunks" seems to be the best i've heard so far.