Every time I see that little red number in my inbox, my first thought is: Did I mess up? My brain jumps to the worst-case scenario—maybe I said something controversial, and now everyone’s correcting me and downvoting my stupid comments. Even though, most of the time, the messages are actually helpful and fun, that number still triggers some sort of insecurity and anxiety. The bigger it gets, the louder my worries grow.
Logically, I know I don’t screw up that often, and most feedback is neutral or even positive. But deep down, my insecure monkey brain panics at the thought of being wrong—or worse, publicly called out. Even when I’m right, the number still makes my stress levels spike up. What if people disagree with me? What if they don’t like what I wrote?
And yes, I see the irony in posting this. Writing about it is basically asking for it and feeding the very anxiety I’m trying to ignore. Maybe it’s my version of exposure therapy.
Just to mess with you, I’m tempted to write a dozen comments with no real content… but other than that: i think it’s quite normal. Floods of negative reactions are more likely than positive ones, and more feared. In the other hand, Lemmy is a pretty chill place and, even when I got negative reactions, they were still cordial.
All in all, we are social monkey, and we care a lot about our social capital. That used to be the difference between survival by and death in nature, and we are still rooted that way. Even if we are accruing social capital with anonymous internet users we will likely never meet in person
LOL. That sort of messing around is exactly what I would be tempted to do as well. I know that feeling a bit too well.
Also, totally agree with you on that social monkey thing. Must be like some sort of evolutionary adaptation that kept our ancestors in cohesive tribes. I guess lonely hunters would die of starvation or get eaten by wolves, so sticking together has some tangible value.