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A Rant About Facebook, Loneliness, Nice Guys, Etc.

8 years ago3,116 words

I've been simmering with frustration since yesterday about the feeling that what the world wants is not what I am. The feeling of being trapped by conditioning, genetics, preferences, fears. Though I originally started this blog in order to challenge my own negative, irrational thoughts by doing research about how best to overcome such things, I'm in such a foul mood right now that I just want to write out some snarling, ineffectual rant about what's bothering me, just to vomit it out somewhere so then it'll stop swirling around in my mind and I can focus on other things. Maybe it's not a good idea. But I'll do it anyway.

It started when I went out again so as to escape the feelings of psychological impotence that trap me when I'm alone in my dim, tiny room in front of this damn computer. I went to sit in the sun, in nature, with the intention of facing Facebook.

I've written about this several times before, but Facebook - that thing that's a core, casual part of most people's lives - both scares and intrigues me; it offers opportunities for the forging or deepening of bonds, while reminding me of all that others have compared to me. I want to become active on it, to meet and support people, to stop being so cut off from the social world... but because I'm so cut off from the social world, merely looking at it feels like opening floodgates. Like I'll be drowned in feelings of isolation and inadequacy. It's easier, it seems, to let them linger in the background instead of facing them head on.

I knew that I'd got several friend requests from people, which I'd ignored for weeks or months out of fear. I assumed they were either friends of my two friends, or people who'd found me through my games. I felt quite bad about ignoring them, but, like I said, I also felt unable to actually check them and accept or not.

I wonder if anyone else in the world is as pathetic as this. Scared of Facebook. I feel that my situation is unusual; the biggest reasons I'm so scared about all this tie to my prolonged isolation and the number of vicious trolls I'd had to deal with in the past. If I'd grown up with Facebook, and the people I'd see on it were people I knew from the real world around me, no doubt I'd be comfortable with it now. I really wish that had been the case! Instead, my only interactions for years were with faceless internet guys from all over the world, many of whom were younger than me, so the idea of having a Facebook page full of the faces of 'smug little boys' with their arms around girls, or of nerdy, off-putting guys who reminded me uncomfortably of myself seemed, well, like something I'd rather avoid. So I did avoid it.

I just wish my life hadn't been so abnormal. Wish wish wish. As if wishing does any good. I know it doesn't.

I did make a couple of connections here at university, but I feel I could have made or developed more if only I'd not been so fearful of Facebook. When I did get around to checking my list of friend requests yesterday, I noticed a couple of people I did at least meet in the real world, who possibly could have become friends or at least acquaintances, but they probably thought me odd or off-putting because I committed the social faux-pas of failing to accept their friend requests. Probably. I feel so out of touch that I have no idea what the etiquette or feelings surrounding such things are.

I'd love to accept them, but I wonder if it's odd to do so after such a delay. I thought of writing a status update apologising for taking so long to check Facebook, in case they wondered... But I imagine most people don't overthink things nearly as much as I do; that most people just wouldn't care.

I did check the list of friend requests, but only the list; I didn't check any profiles, and in fact hid the display photos behind my thumb. Again, pathetic; my mind's so broken it just simply can't handle certain kinds of mundane input. It's things like this that make me so frustrated at myself and my place in the world; I know my problems all arise from a ridiculous mind, but drastically changing that mind isn't something easily done, especially not alone. I noticed one of the friend requests was from my friend's boyfriend; that terrifies me due to a lifelong history I'm sure I've explained before. I've only ever known one side of a couple before; usually the girl, whose boyfriend was a distant, abstract idea I never came face-to-face with (the far-more-numerous guys I knew in school were as unlucky in love as I was). And my biggest fear about Facebook is the fact that so many people have partners while I don't; having any kind of social interaction - even if it's just a Facebook 'friendship' - with someone whose very existence strongly reminds me of my own loneliness seems like the greatest challenge I can think of. It's got little to do with him or her personally, though the fact that she's a friend makes it more difficult than if they were both strangers. It's more about reminding me of what I wish I had but don't.

I noticed that a few of the friend requests were from young women I'd never heard of before, and became quickly suspicious. I wondered at first whether they were people from my university who found me in the list of members of the group that was made for our class, and added me either because I individually interested them (unlikely) or because they were just adding everyone from the group (which seemed more likely). It seemed even more likely though that they were fake accounts, predators, like so many spam emails sent from pretty female names to catch the attention of men. It hadn't occurred to me before that such things would exist on Facebook (I am naive, after all), so I did a bit of research.

I found ∞ this wikiHow thing telling you how to spot a fake account ∞. Things on that site are often quite silly, but it frustrated me because it speaks as if anyone who doesn't have a whole load of friends - especially mutual friends - and photos they've either posted themselves or been tagged in is some kind of dangerous deviant or something. And this is probably true in the eyes of the ordinary. Lacking a social presence on Facebook is no doubt a big red flag, to potential friends, partners, employers, everyone. And yet if you're trapped in the position that I am - lonely, struggling to make connections and lacking an existing network of them - how are you even supposed to make more if the fact that you have none is immediately off-putting? It's like the whole "you need to have a job to get a job" thing.

I know that it'd be different if I were using my account to add strangers as friends, which I wouldn't do anyway. So I know I shouldn't be overly concerned about this. I suppose it just 'triggered' the deep feelings of being trapped in an 'unwinnable' sort of position, in which the only way to get out is to already be out. Or something.

As I sat outside in the sun, fuming at my phone, I intended to take more baby steps towards conquering my Facebook fears, perhaps by accepting some friend requests and by checking the profiles of people I didn't know well enough to be deeply upset by them (it seems to hurt more when I know the person well, because if what I see clashes with my existing view of them, there's a sense of shattering that wouldn't be there if they were a stranger). The frustration was a barrier though... So I just went home instead.

Feeling exhausted and annoyed, I checked the website ∞ Cracked ∞; a thing I used to hate, but got into the habit of checking somewhat regularly just out of a sort of familiarity and laziness. Many of its articles are about things I don't care about, and they're written in a style I don't particularly prefer... yet I read them anyway because it's easier to just sit there doing that than to challenge myself to find something novel. It's stupid; I actively avoid things that might be closer in line with my actual interests - like anything to do with psychology - either because I feel the threat of competition or that same 'shattering' effect if they conflict with what I thought I knew.

Hmm, that's interesting, actually... How the same general fear seems to impede both of those things (looking at friends' profiles and media relating to my interests). Perhaps by facing that head-on at some future point in time, I'll be able to be free of much what holds me back. I wonder...

But anyway. After somewhat mindlessly scrolling through a few barely-interesting articles on Cracked, I saw an old one called ∞ 5 Things Girls Don't Seem to Understand About Nice Guys ∞. The title seemed obnoxious, but piqued my curiosity; I've seen so much that put down 'nice guys', so I wondered whether this would be yet another of those or whether it might challenge that common idea and suggest that there might be benefits to being with such a partner instead of a 'bad boy' or 'jerk' or whatever. Reluctantly but curiously, I clicked on it.

I got about half way through before I couldn't take it anymore. I know it's a comedy site, and if it's trying to inflame its readers, it's in at least a semi-jokey way (or it's mocking what it's aiming to 'teach', like in this ∞ Step-By-Step Guide to Love on Tinder ∞). But I've been reading the site's articles for long enough to know that there's an underlying genuine aim to influence people, especially in articles like that (or about gun nuts or climate change deniers or pick-up artists or things like that).

It made me angry, not because I disagreed with what it was saying as such, but because it hit too close to home, and reinforced concepts I've struggled with for a long time now. I personally embrace the idea of being neurotic, sensitive, considerate... but things like that article - as well as my own life experiences - make me well aware that such traits make you a great 'best friend' for the opposite sex but apparently undesirable as a partner. I understand why, too; I think that everything that article said is accurate. It just frustrates me because that's not what I am, nor is it even what I'd want to be, so I feel the sort of ineffectual anger a square block might feel in a world of round holes.

The whole 'nice guys vs bad boys' thing had always been a distant frustration, something I heard about more than experiencing directly, as I didn't even get to enjoy being the 'nice guy friend' to any girls. I just watched from afar as the swaggering morons had a different girl on their arm every week. How the girls talked about how they wanted someone nice but went out with a brute. At those school ages, I imagine a big part of that is because everyone's insecure, and the ones who ask are the ones who get. Even if a girl might prefer a shy guy, if he never asks but Swaggery McSmirkface does, she'd likely end up with the latter just to be with anyone at all. I've been told that this all changes once people get older, and 'confidence' of a sort comes to those who were once shy while women mature and see the short flings with brutes as no longer fulfilling, but that too is just a distant thing for me; something that happens in the lives of others, not mine.

I'd like to contest all this with several thoughts, though they feel like desperate flailing; like an evolution-denier faced with transitional fossils requesting ever-more-specific ones between species. Maybe the men who 'get what they want' appeal to 'conventional' women, but there are women who really don't like that? Maybe I'd not be so shy at all if I met a girl I liked who was actually single? One part of that article that really got to me was how the author described a 'nice guy' friend of his who clearly had his eye on his girlfriend, but didn't make a move. What was he supposed to do? Steal her away? It frustrates me to think that doing something like that would be seen as making you more desirable. Ugh.

When I write these things, I imagine possible replies. This time, I'm imagining people shaking their head at my naivete; for taking seriously something said in a comedy article, as if that's all this is. Or perhaps they'd talk about their previous shyness and subsequent successes with women. Well good for you. It's nice that you've been out with a bunch of girls. I haven't.

As always, though, the biggest frustration is the lack of fish in my sea, so to speak. It's not that I fail to charm people. It's just that I never meet people who I could even try to charm. But that's a deeper frustration I'll surely focus on a whole lot some other time.

As the anger at knowing I'm not what the world wants bubbled within me, for hours, little things exacerbated it, rubbed salt in the old wound newly opened. Meandering link-following took me to ∞ one of the final reviews by Roger Ebert before his death ∞, of ∞ a film about computer nerds ∞. Quotes like "His nerd prey looks as if he may not have ever had sex, or if he has, didn't want any more" and "Bad haircuts, dorky shirts, "birth control glasses", and other social impedimenta are ubiquitous" remind me that while those characters were obviously exaggerated stereotypes, I'm probably far closer to that stereotype than I would prefer to be. I don't want to be some socially inept nerd. At least most people who are enjoy the company of other socially inept nerdy guys, but I've never found it fulfilling.

It's a ridiculous tangled knot of a mental position to be in. I want to be a certain kind of person, and get frustrated at the world for not providing what I'd like because I am that sort of person. I don't want to change, and yet I want to be in a different place. I want to be the square peg in the round hole. I mean, it's not that I want to be 'conventional' - because I don't - but I just wish I could find someone female who's sensitive and neurotic and everything I am, but who'd want me because we can relate rather than some more masculine man because that's what biology compels her to find desirable. Seems though that such a thing is friend - rather than boyfriend - material.

But of course it's all just thoughts in my head. Nothing happens in my real world. Again, it's not that I meet people and get frustrated that I don't get what I want from them. I don't even go out into the world at all because I feel there's nowhere someone like me can go to find what I'd love to find. I mean, other people go to things like bars, right? Or they meet people at school or work. My only real hope at the moment is to be more active in social activities next year at university, but all of them involve going drinking at pubs with a bunch of guys, so ugh. Square pegs and round holes indeed. But what of the other square pegs? What do they do? Shave off their edges? Conform? Hide away alone as I do, similarly intimidated about facing a world not made for them?

I can only wonder how others dealt far harsher hands deal with life. I'm 'lucky' - or so I've been told - in that I'm a heterosexual white male, though I suppose it's an impediment that I don't feel strongly 'male-gendered' (or perhaps 'cisgendered', though I'm not a fan of that word and it comes with black-and-white connotations that don't fit; either you're 'cis' or 'trans', whereas I'm at ease with my biology but hate traditional male behaviour/roles/traits/etc). But what of black transgender lesbians and the like? Even they, though, often have close-knit supportive communities they can easily become a part of. The closest I'd have would be the repugnant collectives of loserly men who rage at women for refusing to love them. MRAs, 'Loveshy', 'incel'... The last thing I want to do is rant about all this with others as if doing so would guilt women into liking me or something. Besides, I hate this part of myself, and don't want to associate with those who embody it. It'd feel like the ultimate failure.

I'd much rather challenge the thoughts, grow, but it feels so hard... Like the weight of the world pushes down on me, trapping me. All I do is wish things were different... which achieves nothing.

I'm going to continue facing my fears over the next few weeks, taking reluctant baby steps towards facing Facebook to the point where I'm desensitised to it (if such a point will ever come). Then, I might be able to break free of these bonds. It really is all a case of my mind being in the way, being a barrier, and about taming that mind to break down that barrier. The world owes me nothing. I can't wait for it to drop manna down into my pit. I need to build a ladder with what I have; to climb out by myself. Angry rants like this are just part of the process, unfortunately. I'm sure I'll feel embarrassed about having written this later, but for now it's at least got it off my chest so I can focus on other things instead.