Friends and Digital Loneliness

[CeramicPundit]

I find myself believing constantly that I'm alone/lonely but I have multiple people online who know me that I can talk to. I haven't had a real-life friend, hell even a real-life acquaintance since the start of middle school and it's the primary driver of why I feel like CTBing. I feel alone even when I have people I can start a conversation with practically any time. It feels like they're not real; that they're just AIs in the screen. (Side note: This is also why talking to an AI doesn't help my loneliness; I know none of that is real and the illusion isn't convincing.)

Anyone else feel this way? I do go outside but where I live it's a bunch of old fucks and 5 year olds and pets. No one college-aged...

 

[sicklyalive]

I understand how you feel. I've had trouble making friends, online and irl for my whole life. People are focused on themselves and the circles of people they already have, most aren't looking to put in the work to create new bonds. Online it's even easier to ghost people, like you said it's almost like talking to AI. We can detach ourselves from others, and those "people" on the other side of the screen don't always exist. Our brains are not evolved enough to perceive connections to millions of others at the touch of a finger.

 

[CeramicPundit]

Our brains are not evolved enough to perceive connections to millions of others at the touch of a finger.

Born too early to live in the futuristic galaxy-exploring human golden age, born too late to live in a time where you'd die at 30-50 and be exploring the world, born just in time to live in the loneliest most atomized time in human history... Fuck.