I begin to like my internet persona more than my real life me

[noname223]

In real life I humiliate myself regularly when I try to approach women. The self-help group on here is on a different dimension better. I also get triggered by real life interactions way too easily if I don't know the other person. On here it is completely different. The people on here are so much more real and by that I mean more vulnerable sharing their most intimate thoughts and desires. In my last self-help group everything was so superficial and compared to me noone got real serious issues in life. I think about suicide daily for almost a decade. Bro I don't want to listen to your dumbass vanilla problems. I am dying every single day. Something is eating me alive. In real life barely anyone would admit that. And even if you invested enough time into developing a close connection the outcome is pretty arbitrary. You will never be able to assess the person enough before that process.

At college I don't relate to most of these people there. They either like party, getting drunk all the time etc. Everyone procrastinates their workload. I am the opposite. I am always anxious and work eagerly with way too little breaks.

Compared to the people on here I might be a positive person. (in being no supporter of nihilsm for example) but I am sick of listening to their positivity, platitudes about mental health/suicide, The people at college are so naively idealistic. This is so corny. When they will earn money most of them become culturally conservative and probably also economically. It is so predictable. The German chancellor once was very very left at his time at college today he is pretty conservative for a leftwinger. It is often all of the same. The people at my college are not interesting at all. In contrast to that the people on SaSu are very unique and fascinating. Maybe I would not want to become a close friend to all of them but the cultural and interpersonal melting pot on here is unique. Moreover the unique experience of suicidality unites us and gives me sense of community/empathy.

The best aspect of my real life me are my closest friends. And I think it is good not be fully dependent on only online friends. But the support I get from this forum is in many instances way better than simple self-help groups and on certain areas (for me) actually better than professional help. This forum could still not give me my mental health medication though. I am glad I don't try to use this forum as a dating site I think there is a high chance this could backfire severely and ruin this forum for me forever.

 

[TransilvanianHunger]

I find it rather interesting that the content of your post doesn't actually address the statement you make in the title.

What about your online persona do you like? Which bits of it do you find more appealing or likeable than your meatspace self? Is there anything from the meatspace self that you think the online persona is missing?

 

[noname223]

I find it rather interesting that the content of your post doesn't actually address the statement you make in the title.

What about your online persona do you like? Which bits of it do you find more appealing or likeable than your meatspace self? Is there anything from the meatspace self that you think the online persona is missing?

In real life at college everyone sees me as a careerist who only cares about grades. Though they don't really see my extreme anxiety about performance pressure. I am way more than simple careerist.

In college I have to hide my desperation and pain. In very small dosages I can show this to my college friends. Moreover I think on here the people are more interested in deep takes of mine. In college some people consider me as intelligent (even though I am not that smart) but my talent of being deep and thoughful is overseen or considered useless.

 

[TransilvanianHunger]

In real life at college everyone sees me as a careerist who only cares about grades. Though they don't really see my extreme anxiety about performance pressure. I am way more than simple careerist.

I have a weird relationship with grades. For most of my student life I got good grades, and tried to excel in class. It's one of the things I was taught growing up, "good grades mean you'll get a good job later." In my experience, this ended up not being the case at all. Now that I've gone back to school, I have a different view of grades. They're not a true measure of what I know or how good I am at a particular subject. They're arbitrary numbers that a professor gives out, based on their own ideas of what is "good". I still do my best, but the grade I end up getting doesn't reflect my true performance. It's just a number.

One thing that sometimes helps (and sometimes backfires something fierce) is that I'm very vocal about the work I'm asked to do. Couple months ago I had an assignment with a really, really dumb premise. Instead of playing along to try and get a good grade, I wrote a critique of the assignment. I turned it in and told the professor that I had a fundamental disagreement with the assignment as it was given, and that I had instead written my honest thoughts about it. I was ready to fail the assignment, but hey, it's just a number. I was pleasantly surprised when the professor's feedback came back, thanking me for my input. I didn't get a perfect grade because my little rant didn't correspond with some of the evaluation criteria, but the professor saw that I actually cared enough to put some thought into the work, explain and support my case, and offer thoughtful feedback. I got a pretty good grade, and a nice little surprise.

Of course, I ran the risk of failing if the prof found my "defiance" improper, offensive, or whatever else. But fuck it, I'd rather be true to myself than get a perfect grade for shutting my brain off and being a good little student who says whatever the professor wants to hear.

In college I have to hide my desperation and pain. In very small dosages I can show this to my college friends. Moreover I think on here the people are more interested in deep takes of mine. In college some people consider me as intelligent (even though I am not that smart) but my talent of being deep and thoughful is overseen or considered useless.

College isn't a particularly good measuring stick, I've found. Being deep and thoughtful is not particularly valued in an environment where intellectual conformity is the order of the day. But I can tell you that those skills can be very useful once you're done with college, especially because they seem to be very rare. If you're able to analyse a situation, identify and articulate second-, third-, nth-order effects of a particular course of action, you look like a fucking wizard. And those skills are applicable to pretty much any area or field that you can name. They're definitely not "useless", so don't let your surroundings tell you otherwise.

 

[Forever Sleep]

This is certainly a very unique place. For me- I don't fully share how I feel with anyone in real life. It would worry them too much and there's nothing they could do to help. So- I suppose there's quite a big part of me I only feel able to express here and I'm so grateful that we have this space to do it. I also agree that there are some very deep thinking, intelligent and sensitive people here.