Internet Social Anxiety

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I suppose it depends on the person involved, but personally I find internet socializing to be a detriment to real life interaction.

Internet allows too much time to make corrections and does not give you any practice thinking "on your feet," in real time. Internet gives no practice with tone of voice or body language.

I grew up in front of a book or computer monitor, and didn't develop any sort of skills with real life conversation until I gave up computers entirely for 6 years when I was college aged. My IRL conversation skills are not spectacular, even after 6 years of intensive study, but I do not think I would have them at all if I had not forced myself into the muck in the first place.

It sounds like the situation I'm struggling with.

I am as anxious in internet conversations as I am in real life, maybe even worse. I can't stop thinking that my opinions are too strong and stupid and my messages are totally worthless and it would be better if I just stay silent and say nothing. It's always hard to express my thoughts so that people can understand me and I hardly ever talk to people in English, so there's a higher possibility that I do something wrong in my messages and people will misinterprete my words.

Before I registered here, I had been lurking this forum for several months. I was sure that I would be fine here and I'd have no problems with posting, but it turned out the opposite. I managed to force myself to write a couple of useless messages but then I just felt that I can't write anything else. So I'm back to lurking now...

Unfortunately, I don't have any good advice how to handle this kind of situations.

As much as it's in some ways helped, I find it very nerve-wracking having to deal with a delay in someone replying. For example, if someone is going to argue against something I said, if it's offline, they're going to respond right away. But online it could be minutes, hours, days, or weeks before someone responds to, for example, a message board post, or an email, or a tweet, facebook status, etc.

I experience just about as much anxiety when socialising online as in real life simply because the advantages of talking online (e.g. elimination of non-verbal communication) only go so far as people prove to be as discriminatory every bit as much as real life, and dismiss you every bit as much as a person as in real life if you are not the absolutely exact, correct "asl".

This is the first forum I've joined as I feel like I belong.
I've commented on blogs and other forums that you don't have to log but I go as anom as its not so bad if someone didn't like what you said it dosen't feel like a personal attack then.

I think I started that way on WP because of what another forum said about the posters here. I think it's calmed down here compared to a year or two ago.

I think the bigger the forum the harder it feels to belong. I've been a regular poster here for a few years, even after I come back from a 3 month break I can feel comfortable. If a poster says something insulting and I think a flame war will erupt I'll completely ignore the thread. I used to take part in many flame wars obsessively but I didn't like how it made me feel even when I went offline. I find if I ignore a thread or even come back to the forum a day later I've pretty much forgotten about the argument, and then I tell the person 'get over yourself, it;s the internet.' Sometimes you've got to be a bit of a basstid.

The only anxiety I get online now is when sending messages to band members or celebrities I admire on Twitter, like Stephen Fry.