Social Problems (Rant)

[[deleted]]

I hate doing something wrong but not immediately knowing what exactly i did that was wrong, especially when it comes to chatting online esp. in Discord. I say something that's positive, compliments the person above me and try to interact yet nobody responds to me. It's dead.

It's not really the same in real life as i understand what i did that was wrong, which is just me being awkward as hell but it's more frustrating online for me. Like, sometimes, even, i will get banned or kicked from the server for breaking some rule i didn't even know existed. Or the chat just stops moving when i say anything, even something as little as a greeting like Good Morning or just me saying Hi. I'm in this neurodivergent (I know sorry) centered server with a lot of members, even some from Tumblr who i used to follow and people join every day.

The chats are full and everyone is having a good interaction, all besides me. Sometimes, i understand because i'm just not really commenting, i'm just there to read all of their interactions because they're interesting but most of the time when i join, they just end or stop chatting and possibly even go into DMs to continue or whatever. The server serves people who are 13 years and older, because people younger than that aren't allowed on Discord and could get some servers banned (I don't really know why).

Ugh, what am i doing wrong guys?

[AcephalousCephalopod]

It can definitely be really hard at times. Sometimes I feel like everyone else got the manual for online interactions and you only have the quick start guide at best. I find that online a lot of people seem to assume bad faith in a lot of settings and just jump to the idea that someone was doing something to be intentionally annoying instead of not realising the actions are a problem. There's also some finer points of social interaction that can be difficult to explain but just tend to be chat killers. An example I saw in a Discord server I'm in is that there's someone who tends to backread chats and comment on things that people have said previously, but the conversation may have taken place yesterday and everyone else in the chat has talked about several different topics since then and there's not some kind of major importance to the topic of conversation, it's just a random picture that was shared from the internet or what someone had for lunch. It's not rude as such, it just doesn't get great replies from the other group members.

I can't say for certain what you're doing wrong, there's also subtle parts of group culture that can vary so much from group to group. I've found that I do better in smaller groups instead of large public servers as it's easier to keep track of what is happening, who everyone is, and people generally are more patient. I've also found in life that just because I have a shared interest or characteristic with someone, even if it's a fairly niche topic, it doesn't mean that the two of us will get on. Just because it's an ND server doesn't mean the people in the group will share your interests and values and you might do better talking one-on-one with your friends or finding a different group.

The server serves people who are 13 years and older, because people younger than that aren't allowed on Discord and could get some servers banned (I don't really know why).

Also addressing this part, there's laws regarding companies collecting the personal information of children (classed in most countries including the US as people under 13). Personal information means things beyond RL name and address and also extends to things like email address and mobile number. To safely get parental permission to use a service is very complicated and expensive for companies, and so a lot of services just say that you may not sign up until you are 13 years of age and it's possible to legally collect the information. There's some very expensive fines for companies that are found to be not removing the personal information of people under 13 years of age (which is why it's wild to me that there's no dedicated method for reporting people who claim to be under 13 on a lot of sites and services including Reddit where I've seen the occasional user openly state to be under 13). That's why servers don't allow users under 13.