this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2025
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I don't feel afraid at all. I don't give a single fuck what they think honestly, if I really mess up I can always just leave and never speak to them again.
Well if I'm really harsh on myself and define fear as more of a hesitancy, maybe 3-4 at most depending on the person and how likely they are to be some kinda crazy. It's a sort of hierarchy.
Drunk men? Avoid avoid avoid.
Middle class white women, especially on the older side of 30? Yup no thanks.
Fashionable looking young guy, or a well dressed slightly older gentleman in a long coat at rush hour type? Prolly ok.
Blasting music? Nope.
Overly buff? Nope.
Overly unfit? Nope.
Overly pretty women? Nope.
Skinny nerdy type men of my age? Yeah ok.
Plain looking women or androgynous-effeminate femboys and tomboyish lesbians? Yeah that's cool with me.
Under the age of 21 or could look it or over the age of 40? Yeah that's a no.
Wearing religious clothing? Nope.
Overly strong perfume or sweat smell unless they're homeless? Nope.
Seem rural, or have strongly local English accents in the UK? Nope.
Have a strong foreign accent, excluding Slavic, European, Asian or Spanish? Nope!
Speaking any kind of non-european language in public, including anything that resembles Russian, strongly including Bulgarian, but excluding Korean, Japanese, Romanian, Czech, Baltic languages and Polish, unless those in exception groups are older than 40 or younger than 20? Nope! Stranger danger!
Speaking French in Public? Oui oui!
Scottish accent? Yarr or however they talk.
Irish accent? That's a 50/50, it really depends.
German? Yes, but only if they're historically Bavarian.
Spanish? Yes.
Women of any sort in big coats? Nope.
Me? No, not unless im wearing a shirt with sleeves rolled up if I don't have bags with me or do have bags that don't look to heavy and am wearing polarized sunglasses.
Men in big coats? Only if they're not too freshly shaven.
Portuguese? Depends.
Dogs? Yes except the Bully XL and such.
Cats? Unless in Turkey.
Swans? Only if I had mdma and am showing off.
London? Only South London but not proper roadman types, just rough enough to not be tory wankers but civilized enough to hide their accent in shame.
Americans? Well
I think everyone has a list like this in their heads, I could of course keep going until it's down to the person, like no Newton or Jean D'Arc but Caesar and Lenin yes, Octavian at a distance, Gorbachev yes, Yeltsin, Putin, Trump, Reagan or any Bush no etc etc.
Generally though I don't speak to people because I don't like it and neither does anyone so you're perfectly normal?
Nope. This is probably common here on Lemmy, but so is social anxiety.
I don't have social anxiety though. I can talk for days. I just don't.
I'm not saying social anxiety is the only reason for avoiding interacting with other people based on their age/race/socioeconomic status/etc, but it's one of the few that doesn't fall into the "bigot" category, IMO.
I'm not a bigot and I don't have social anxiety.
Most of your criteria for deciding whether to interact with someone seems to be based on their ethnicity, native language, age, or gender.
https://www.wordnik.com/words/bigot
Yeah, but the criteria includes my own group and also literally includes me. So by your own definition I can't be a bigot.
Yeah, pretty much
Uncle Ruckus is a white supremacist who claims to be white and has internalized racism towards blacks folks.
My post was partly in jest, because OP talked about being silently judged for their characteristics, so I drew up an increasingly absurd and unhinged list that judges everyone by clearly nonsensical characteristics.
To make sure it's very clearly a joke I made sure to be discriminatory towards every ethnicity and just to make it beyond obvious what I was doing was satire, I included myself in the list, but again discriminated only based on certain clothes, just in case the absurd scenario of me not talking to a hypothetical clone of myself wasn't absurd enough on its own.
Honestly, I don't know how much more obvious it could be. Maybe you need some media literacy, or failing that at least a sense of humor.
This was also posted in the hope that OP realizes how weird it would be for his fears to be true and help them get over their social anxiety.