Bail – Get out of your plans, guilt free

I use 'introvert' and 'extrovert' out of lack of a better word, because the connotations you have around 'anxiety' are also not representative of everyone who might want to use this app. But again, you're correct to point out that this is a very broad, kind of incorrect generalization.

However, I do still believe that if you genuinely can't imagine being friends with someone who would want this app, you are in a bubble. If you genuinely can't imagine friends with deep, meaningful relationships using something like this, you are in a bubble. To take that a step further, while it's completely feasible that none of your friends fall into this category, I would very cautiously advise asking them -- because it's also feasible that some of them do relate and just haven't ever talked to you about it.

On that note, if this app idea creeps you out, please allow me to creep you out a lot more. ;)

When I was in college, a friend and I came very close to setting up a system I could use to ask them for favors. The plan was, I would send an email asking for the favor, and based on how much I needed it, a system would be given a 0-50% chance of not delivering the email. That way, if the email was delivered and the friend didn't want to do the favor, they could delete it without worrying quite as much about my reaction. And if I didn't hear a reply, I would be less tempted to read into that.

I don't think we ultimately followed through (the payoff wasn't worth the technical work it would have taken to build), but there were a lot of policies like this -- there were a lot of systems that allowed us to gel, and that allowed us to cut through issues that would have made it more difficult for us to connect.

Now, you could reasonably assume that the dynamics I describe above would contribute to a pretty messed up, fragile relationship, but to this day, I would consider that person to be the closest friend I've ever had, and I think they understand me as a person on a different level than almost anyone else I know. Far from being unable to communicate, there were a number of topics and conversations that (at the time) I felt like I could only have with that friend.

I can't speak to your experiences, I can't speak to your personal needs as an individual, I can't tell you what's healthy for you. I can just say that when you imagine that people working around anxiety can't have deep friendships, you're wrong. There's a dimension to these relationships that you don't understand.

> But you don't follow through with that thought to its natural conclusion. If I'm not going to lead with something like this, what you're essentially saying to me is, "you should be uncomfortable around our calendar until I feel comfortable having this conversation with you."

No, I'm saying that your uncomfortable-ness around this is irrational until you see some reason to believe the person will lie to you, and if you're close enough to recognize that someone is lying about wanting to hang out, then you're close enough to have that conversation.

Making this about concern for other people is just a foil to avoid looking at yourself. This isn't about them: it's about your social anxiety, not theirs.

> I'm curious, if I built a calendar app for my friends that reminded us every 3 or 4 days to call that person and catch up with them, would you say that's an unhealthy technological solution that's stunting the relationship?

No. I think that's a great way for you to deal with forgetfulness to achieve a kind goal.

The problem isn't technical solutions. The problem is that this technical solution doesn't solve the real problem, which is solvable, and instead enables it.

> I don't want to get too off-topic or dismissive, but I think this is a somewhat uncritical view of how modern relationships work among most 'normal' friends.

Again, "normal" isn't my goal.

> We've built Tinder and designed blind dating apps to help people get around their social anxiety asking strangers for dates.

And while that has worked out for some people, I think you'd have a hard time arguing that it has actually empowered people to ask strangers for dates, or more importantly, to create meaningful connections.

> People go to bars and drink substances designed specifically to bypass the restraint parts of their brain so they'll be less guarded with their friends.

And while that works for some people, I think you'd have a hard time arguing that it actually results in positive, deep relationships. While deep relationships might involve some alcohol, the reasons they are deep aren't based in drinking together from my experience.

> We've built apps like Facetime so that people who lack the ability to emotionally connect to written messages can get the visual and auditory signifiers they need to feel connected to other people.

Yes, and that helps bridge the gap when face to face interactions are not possible--I'd view this as a positive thing. But it also can't fully close the gap with relationships where touch is important.

> We use online polls among friends to avoid conflicts around small decisions.

Do we? I've never even seen this, and probably just wouldn't respond if a friend spammed me with a link to some poll site. If people do this, I'm pretty sure it would be ineffective for that goal.

> We build bar-room trivia apps for people who have problems interacting with each other or picking conversation topics without 3rd-party intervention.

Trivia games are a way more complicated topic that fulfills a lot of human needs. I don't think (after doing a lot of work) that I have a hard time interacting or picking conversations, but I'd still be down for trivia for a lot of reasons unrelated to this.

I'm going to reiterate that a lot of the things you're attributing as solutions to social anxiety, would be better addressed by actually seeking help for social anxiety.

Sure, you can relate from the perspective of someone who's said they had crippling anxiety that needed to be dealt with. With respect, you are not the best person to evaluate whether everyone else's anxieties are in the same league as yours. You are coming at this from the perspective that social anxiety is a problem that needs to be solved. In some cases, I agree. In other cases, I don't.

The part of this that you don't understand is not what it feels like to be anxious. The part you don't understand is what it feels like to feel OK about feeling anxious -- that there are people in this position that don't want or need to be changed. You don't understand their perspective.

In your very first comment, you write:

> I can't imagine being friends with someone who is this incapable of communicating.

That sentence is your bubble. I can trivially imagine being friends with someone like that. And more to the point, I can imagine enjoying being friends with that person. I have intimate experience with being friends with people in this category, and I like nearly all of them.

Your take on my email example emphasizes one specific part of friendship: being vulnerable. But in your focus on that particular element, you are missing the broader principle that makes me value this particular friendship so much: that my friend and I genuinely like each other's personalities, warts and all. When we built systems to accommodate each other, we were not sharing our fears -- we were expressing to each other that we were worth accommodating.

Of course, I try to improve my personality when possible. But my relationship with myself is not hostile. There are vulnerabilities and fears I have that I am OK with having, because they are the natural consequences of parts of my personality that I consider to be strengths. When my friends accommodate them, it doesn't make me feel robotic or weaken those relationships. It just makes me feel like my friends care about me.

> Surely, a much kinder goal would be to help that person deal with their anxiety around being abandoned? /s

Sure, it would be nice, but their anxiety is their responsibility: you're not obligated to.

> Wouldn't those people be better served by seeking help for their inability to emotionally connect to others without visual cues? /s

Well, these people are already emotionally connected, or they wouldn't care that they can't see the person. They'd be best served probably by being colocated with the people they care about, but that's not always possible realistically.

> In a global society where you will almost definitely be required to maintain long-distance relationships at some point, isn't the reliance on touch for emotional connection the actual problem to solve? /s

Perhaps, but good luck rewriting a few million years of evolution. It would be better to focus on solutions that are actually possible.

> With the examples I brought up, I wasn't trying to get your opinion on specific technological solutions; I was trying to point out that many interpersonal needs are not, strictly speaking, rational. Human beings aren't rational, and in many cases we're both fine with building systems to accommodate that.

Sure. But we should build systems that actually try to fix the problem, instead of enabling it.

If you want to fix people's social anxiety, a good solution would be to educate people on social anxiety, create better educational materials, fund research, and make help available to people.

What you're arguing for is essentially like giving a wheelchair for a person who is paralyzed by a curable, reversible disease. Sure, we have the technology and it would improve one small aspect of their life, but why would we not just encourage them to seek treatment?

> > I'm going to reiterate that a lot of the things you're attributing as solutions to social anxiety, would be better addressed by actually seeking help for social anxiety.

> You can say this about literally any irrational human behavior.

No, you can't. That's nonsense. We don't have tools to address every irrational human behavior. We do have tools to address social anxiety for individuals who decide to work on it.

> Some of the behaviors I describe above are weird to me. It is weird to me that people feel like they're abandoned if they haven't spoken to anyone else for 3 days.

I don't think it's weird. I also don't care about things being weird/normal, and I'm really not sure why you're bringing it up.

> I don't see how that person's insecurity is fundamentally different than anyone else's insecurity about overburdening friends.

I don't see how it's fundamentally different either. It seems like both people could benefit from working on their social anxiety.

> And while I admit some anxieties are so severe that they can become a real problem, in general when I meet people with anxieties that are weird to me, I just try to accommodate them. I don't usually refer them to specialists.

Sure, you're not obligated to help people.

> A bias towards normalcy means treating common insecurities as fundamental and essential parts of being human, while simultaneously treating less socially acceptable insecurities as problems to be solved.

No, this is not what I'm saying: if anything I'm biased against normalcy because it's boring.

I AM NOT saying people with social anxiety should seek help for their social anxiety because it's weird: I don't really think it's weird.

I AM saying people with social anxiety should seek help for their social anxiety because it would improve their own enjoyment of their lives.