Living a Social Media Life

I know people who go into their home offices or living rooms every day and get on the computer to the exclusion of everyone else and everything (except perhaps for the TV). When you have real live people to relate to, why would you rather type to someone who is in another time zone? Cherish the love you have, and you will find that it will fill your heart. Ignore the people who love you, and you will be a very lonely person who never developed the social skills necessary to lead a full life.

Social media has been an amazing thing and mostly positive, but it does have its dark side and part of that is its ability to seduce you into thinking that online you have real relationships with real people and that these will fill your heart.
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I prefer living vicariously through the Internet. I don't like going out. But, I realize that living vicariously through the Internet is inherently unnatural and inauthentic. I thought everyone knew that. Some recent experiences have made me wonder.

On another forum I used to visit (I left recently), I had about half a dozen women severely criticize me for the way I acted. They all seem deeply offended. Some of them claimed that I don't know how to talk to women. What they didn't seem capable of understanding was that I wasn't being serious about 95% of the time. I told them that, but they couldn't understand it. I understood at that point that they were not living vicariously through the Internet (as I was), they were taking it as seriously as they take their real-life dealings.

The truth is that talking to women is a strength for me. I have to do it as part of my job all the time. If I wasn't good at it, I wouldn't have the job I have. But, that's talking to women, not chatting with women online. It's so funny that the women on the forum I mentioned couldn't see the difference. They've lost touch with what real life is (to different degrees) in my opinion.

They're judging me on posts which were jokes or exaggerations or things posted when I was half asleep (the kinds of things you do when you're living vicariously). As if those things are the same thing as talking on the phone or face to face?

I was instant messaging with someone not too long ago. They became upset so I had to call them. After about a minute of talking on the phone, she said (paraphrased), "You sound so different on the phone. Reading the words you typed sounds very different than hearing you talking." I was surprised that she was surprised. She had spoken to me on the phone before.

Living vicariously through the Internet is dangerous. Don't lose touch with reality.

I can agree with you, when you read words it's interpreted with your mind whilst when you can hear the person's voice it's much better