Let me help you out on this one Adam. The answer to how that person with social anxiety can become more social is through cosplay. By donning a costume, it will provide the wearer the ability to become anyone they want. That level of anonymity will give the socially anxious person the safe zone needed to explore the world through attending makers fairs and other conventions !

Bogart's passport would not be the holy grail... instead, consider Andrew Zimmern's passport.

Me too

I have the same fear...... but only when it comes to financial issues. Like buying a car, or trying to start a business. Cause I can't financially put myself in the position where I can't get out from under that burden. So I have to know I will succeed before I start.

Fear of failure is natural. However it's one of the best teaching devices. Rarely do we get anything proper on the first try. That's the purpose of a hypothesis. You get an idea and move forward, building, testing, and making changes. You are going to fail. Everyone does. You learn, much more from failure than you do from success. Though much better to have fear of failure than fear of success... IMHO

Just know the first few things you make are gonna suck. Then as you do it more and more it starts to suck less and less until one day you look up and you’re happy with what you’ve made

Just keep trying. You’ll get it. We all make mistakes and mess it up. Keep at it

It used to be more so and there are still opportunities but social media has turned the internet into a popularity contest.

Its given them a cocoon to stay in safely rather than getting used to being outside and conversatings and working on bettering themselves. Sucks, but this next generation is doomed 😂😂 theyre too scared

@@bodaciousskies Citation needed. Maybe it's just a simple matter that prior to the internet, you never heard of these people ... Because they had no place to go where they felt comfortable enough to express themselves. Out of sight, out of mind. The internet has changed that. It might be the case that no matter how hard they try, some percentage won't be able to "better" themselves, at least not in your way or on your preferred timetable. Because of technology, they might be spared needless suffering that they would have otherwise been forced to endure just decades ago. I don't know about you, but the world I want to build is one with less suffering for all. That ought to be the collective goal of humanity, right? ... Having just lost a family member, the United States needs affordable and more robust mental healthcare.

​@@bodaciousskiessocial anxiety has existed well before the internet. Instead of being a debbie downer, why not volunteer and help those who have social anxiety instead of talking down about them saying they are doomed.

What "Extraverted world?" Get off fucking twitter, normal people are not like that.

Absolutely! That's exactly what I was thinking at this moment.

Mistakes are good - repeat, Mistakes are good. You need them in order to learn. You were not born walking, you had to learn by falling on your butt, often. And you learned how to speak by making many, many mistakes. Good luck! Enjoy your errors.

'Most people are very understanding'. Maybe because then they feel superior and then they are generous. I have these fears too, but I don't want to make myself small because of them.

Most people *want* you to succeed, simply because then everybody has a good experience/time. And: getting the spotlight takes (some) courage, which is generally appreciated.

Can confirm. Quite a few friends broke their social anxiety like it wasn't even there during Covid when they went out wearing a mask. Even easier to do at cons if you cosplay, too. You can completely just be anonymous and what people 'think' of *you* doesn't matter anymore

Yea but don’t give your kid that excuse. Fool will never take the mask off

@@saborwolf this scares me it’s rooting for ready player one vibes

​@@Lee-wh3htwhy?

@@TJDST4 I’m imagining a world where everyone is anonymous and the way I see that happening is vr, I am aswell extremely introverted and vr chat was amazing until they removed mods… but everyone has a body and a name nothing to do with you personally that’s my thought. If everyone prefers vr over real world. Then that’s the matrix givine time.

Social Anxiety can be a muscle, it often just needs to be tempered with use. A job interview can be very stressful with anxiety, until you've done it 20 times and get so used to it it's actually just annoying / tiring. Speaking in front of people can be an anxious experience, until you've done it enough times that it's just normal to talk to people you don't know for a few minutes to never see them again. And like a muscle, it can atrophy. You can become a hermit over time and not realize it ... gaining an agoraphobia towards stepping out into the world and doing something you had done hundreds of times before. But it's like riding a bike, you just have to remember you don't need to be afraid to get on it, you've done it many times before without the training wheels.

What a load of pseudoscientific self-help book sounding twaddle.

​@@ToadstedCroaksI'm a hermit but I have no social anxiety. Curiosity is perhaps one of the best antidotes for social anxiety.

You will find them, its not too late!

@@pilotguy576 Thank you. I know I will; I just need to go look for them.

When you invent things, you can patent them and offer them to large companies. For example, I developed an innovation for the company Yaneek . This development gave a new model of Drones with a rescue function. Helped in the work of electrical engineers and rescuers.

I have recently found myself in a very similar situation, albeit through covid and unemployment. I hope you find your people again. Perhaps this response assures you that they are out there (well, ok, maybe not physically 'out' there) also, hoping to meet you.

@@ZTTINGS Thank you for the encouragement. I like people who are "out there." (grin)

i've always found it intriguing at what people consider to be weird and abnormal, playing with what are effectively childrens toys (lego and knex) is odd but understandable, but something like being a furry is somehow considerably different, even though everybody knows what actors do, and a lot of people know what halloween is. In some ways it's almost more ok to be a problematic individual with normal interests, than a normal individual with abstract/abnormal interests. Society is a weird thing.

⁠@@killingtimeitselfThere’s a huge overlap between furries and the queer community. I’m sure that plays a role.

I know exactly what you mean. I've pondered this myself. People often seem to have a patronizing view on gaming, while they themselves have another hobby that could be equivalent in nerdiness. In the specific case of furries though, I'd say that it's probably that anthropomorphism is very close to beastiality, and that's what is the biggest issue. I know it is for me. I don't really mind furries, but I still wonder where the line goes for them, and if they even consider it.

@@KodakYarr when it comes to beastiality, there is often a much greater line of separation than people would initially interpret. For some reason people only consider the physical characteristics of the characters in question initially. It's the same idea behind disney movies with anthropomorphic characters not being weird even though they're objectively furry characters. When it comes to anthro characters, and even feral characters (feral being akin to actual animal biology) there is still a massive disconnect psychologically. Again like in a disney movie. 101 dalmations for instance is an example of feral characters. But since they can talk suddenly its not weird anymore. There is a complete and total separation of human psychology from that of an average animals psychology. It's much more complex, more sentient/conscious. It's almost impossible to look at one of these characters and relate it to a real animal, because it just isn't one. It's why even though apes and monkeys are distant human ancestors we put them in zoos and treat them like animals, they're animals, just because they're closely related doesn't make them human. i've always found it weird that people dont think negatively of anthro characters in movies, robinhood, etc. But the second people put a humanoid character behind one in the real world, it's somehow less related to that anthro character in that movie you saw one time, rather than a literal human, even though there is an actual humanistic element to that character. Part of that is probably due to the long standing public perception issue attributed to various media pieces having... uneducated views, to say the least. But also to people being unable to immediately interpret it correctly. You often see people initially react with weirdness/sense of disgust, but as they slowly comprehend and realize what it is, they might still think it's weird but stop caring because it slowly starts to piece together inside of their heads. The simplest way to comprehend it is that it's humans with animal characteristics. Sometimes people say that its animals with human characteristics. It really doesn't make a difference because of how broad those statements are they can be interpreted in many ways. But the long and short of it is that it's more akin to a human than it is an animal. And therefore it is interpreted mentally as a humanoid entity rather than an animal. Same idea with other humanoid entities, gods, demons, whatever you want to classify, there is almost always a humanoid form associated with it, relating it to the human existence. also, to pick up the last tidbit you left, the line is very explicit, harming real animals is unacceptable. You could make arguments for drawn animals, but even then a lot of people would still be uncomfortable over that. The line is very clear, but like a lot of things, there are a lot of ways to hit variants of that line.

@@Tooling-Around Mostly the fear thing, but it also pops up in other ways. Repeating myself, mind getting locked in a loop. My current job requires me to be in low risk social situations and that has really helped me with socializing in general.

I 100% agree, there are obviously varying levels with everyone…but very few people have NO social anxiety!

At the same time, that can be a double edged sword. I can easily imagine someone hearing that advice and thinking "if everyone has social anxiety and they don’t show it, what’s wrong with me?" Not saying that’s a reasonable conclusion, just a possible one.

Ahhahha... convention artist* >

@@gaerekxenos I know. I just couldn't help myself when I thought it up :)

If I didn't live so far away (Ohio) I'd probably take you up on that idea.

Try getting in touch with Jimmy DiResta who is also in upstate NY and very connected with the maker community.

He's curious and he connects. That's what really matters.

You're clearly working life out. Don't touch pharmaceuticals!

We read a lot that folks watch us while doing something else, and we love that.

that could very well be social anxiety, or some other form of anxiety, im not you so i can't say for sure. But social anxiety would absolutely play a role in traveling, cultures, languages etc. Could be generalized anxiety or a number of other things, it's hard to say honestly.

Ok buddy calm down. I agree that it was accurate, but three paragraphs singing its praises?

@@MawileLover I can sense some form of hostility, or at least displeasure here, im not sure where that's coming from or why its being directed in this manner, if you could expand upon that i would be able to give a more comprehensive response than the following. would you like more? I could write an entire essay detailing the technicalities of the sociology and levels of understanding required to make such an analogy. As well as the relevant psychology present.

@killingtimeitself the displeasure came from my own impatience, as I was looking for someone in the comment section to mention this analogy for quite some time. The length of your comment didn't help my impatience much. If anything, it felt daunting. Keep in mind that less is often more; that third paragraph in your initial comment could've been deleted without hurting the message.

@@MawileLover I often dont leave short comments on things relating to sociology or psycholgy, there is not short way to explain it, unless you're ok with being wrong unfortunately. Many are, im not one of those however. If it helps at all i am a furry myself, though the tl;dr here is that i dont think its judgemental, just a really apt analogy, and i was trying to convey why i thought it was really apt without leaving a short quippy response that didn't put my position on display. I like you, have also been scouring the comments section looking for interesting statements, and have found a few. This would be the third of a series of comment threads now. This comment is now very much a wall of text, i will stop now before it continues growing lol.