Shyness and the Internet: an informal study.

[badboy_fangirl]

Hey y'all. So after my big meltdown the other day about not making friends anymore, a lurker came out of the LJ woodwork to befriend me. We've been chatting a bit the last couple of days and she mentioned that she's shy and that's why it took her so long

Comments

[badboy_fangirl]

Oh, see, I'm such a yakker! My whole life I've gotten in trouble for talking TOO much. I was still getting sent out into the hall at school for being naughty all the way to 8th grade. LOL.

That's really interesting about feeling MORE comfortable in English. Maybe you were born in the wrong place ;-)

I remember that overwhelming feeling about fanfic....it still happens to me once in a while, but not like it did when I first got on LJ. The good ol' days!

[upupa_epops]

That's really interesting about feeling MORE comfortable in English.

This makes sense though. Once I got over freaking out that my English isn't good enough, I also started feeling more comfortable with English. I talked about this with other ESL people, and we decided that we have a lower embarrassment threshold in English. Our social interactions in English are by necessity limited, and also our experience of learning what's good and what's bad taste in English is less personal. In simpler terms: I learned which words/expressions are bad/cliche in Polish, because I remember them being mocked when I was a kid. I learned which words/expressions are bad/cliche in English, because I wrote it down in a notebook.

[badboy_fangirl]

LOL, I just had a mental image of you checking your notebook for the appropriate meaning on certain phrases.

[upupa_epops]

Well, if you count this as a notebook, your mental image is actually quite accurate ;).