A picture of me

Pretty crummy IMO to compare himself to that poor man. He literally cannot communicate with anyone in the world, but wants to. He's constantly telling stories nobody can understand. That has to be some kind of nightmare impossible to comprehend.

The author just chooses not to talk to people. Not the same thing at all.

I wish this chap well. I can relate (but that would mean nothing, to him).

I have spent my entire adult life, in a unique community, composed of many thousands of "loners."

Given my druthers, I'd be a perfect hermit. I have been forced to be a participating member of society, and that has served me well.

It don't come natural to me, though. I have to make a conscious effort to run in the Human Race.

My experience is both yes and no. Some people are so incapable of connecting with other people that it's even worse than a normal person because you have to both drive everything and compensate for everything (which you may for some reason know more about.) When you do meet people functioning as well or better than you though, then yes, of course you quickly identify common ground and can bond on that. It doesn't mean you'll necessarily get along in the long run though.

> t began festering at the beginning of the pandemic when profiteers realized that they had a captive audience. They blistered us with politically divisive trends

I'm not going to read the rest of your wall-of-text because I happen to know this all started long before the pandemic.

I sympathize with the author. I'm in my mid-forties now and have recognized that I haven't been great at maintaining friendships. I think I've experienced something similar during the quarantining portion of the pandemic, where I didn't really interact with anyone directly, at least not in person.

I had a job, so did interact with people over Zoom, and I will admit that that helped. A few months ago, however, I quit my job and now I don't have that regular human interaction. It's been quite an eye-opener to realize that this situation (not having friends to spend time with) is something I've passively allowed to happen. Many friends have started families or moved away, but I do recognize there were some I could have continued to cultivate.

I've worked on learning more about myself in the last few months and I've come to recognize that a lot of this situation is due to social anxiety and other behaviors that I've developed over the years. I also recognize that it's something I can actively work on improving. It's important to believe that you can be flexible enough to change your own behaviors or ways of thinking that lead you to be alone.

So, I say to this poster, it's true that things like idle chitchat may not be your cup of tea, I think it's important to realize that many people don't enjoy it either but just use it as a social grease to move into more deep conversation or connection. I might be mistaken, but the post makes it sound like the author is already set in his ways and that it's unfortunate that the world doesn't adjust to his preferences. Anyway, my advice is to not give up on human connection and be flexible enough to recognize that maybe your own limiting thoughts are preventing you from connecting.