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Hi, I’m glad to have found this place and that I’m not alone. So I have pretty bad social anxiety and am very introverted. I don’t have a social media profile or go out that much. I withdrew from college at the start of 2015. I feel that since then my social anxiety has gotten worse but am getting a lot of help for it that I’m extremely grateful for. Between the time that I got failing grades up to now, one of my closest friends who I was living with at the time started to grow distant from me. The counsellor at the college campus made me feel very anxious and that I couldn’t talk to her, we just didn’t mesh well. So feeling like I couldn’t talk to anyone, I retreated to the mental health forums, i.e. the emotional wastelands of the interwebs. There are a handful that I feel are basically the same but with different names. Psychforum, socialphobiaworld, and socialanxietysupport. I went onto social anxiety support to vent about my problems I was having the the SA. What I didn’t know beforehand was that there seemed to be a lot more guys on these mental health forums than there were girls. I met a few girls, and I got along with them instantly. But whenever I posted a thread I got answers almost entirely from guys. One of the few I can remember was about how I’d been walking down the hall to class and two guys started insulting my outfit. I asked in the thread if anyone else had this problem where they seemed to attract random hostility while they were in College. The responses I got were questions from several guys just asking me what I did wrong to provoke these poor young men. “What the hell?” I thought. It was minor and I wasn’t being insulted directly but it still seems wrong to me for all these guys to assume I was the villain in the situation. I thought it was a fairly relatable thing. Then I started searching the forum for questions I had that may have been already asked. Among them I found responses from guys saying stuff like, “Haven’t had a MILF try to seduce me yet” and other things that to me just seemed really offensive even though they weren’t directed at me. It was frustrating to see so much of this kind of stuff. I’ve learned a lot about life in the past few years, including how forums operate, which is now something I wish I didn’t have to know. I’ve learned they are dumping grounds for emotions and vitriol. I’ve left this forum along with the account I had on socialphobiaworld. I keep in touch with the real world as much as I can and try to stick to venting/resolving my problems in a journal, with a psychiatrist, or with a friend or loved one.