I'm starting on my 4th year on Steemit (2016-2020) pretty soon and I have to admit, this has been a terrible experience. When I first got into social media it wasn't difficult to get interactions, make friends and grow a little socially. The past 5 or so years has been the exact opposite for me, where I don't get any socializing practice I'm looking for nor do I feel compelled to continuing my stay with these services.
One of the few reasons why I still post on many of these platforms where I don't get interactions is because of I don't then I will never be able to get work on my social skills. I don't get much socializing practice on the real world and I never really had good practice when I was younger. Most of my life I was picked on, bullied and even my own family use to take advantage of me. After developing PTSD from my early "social life", I started going online to learn and eventually got some social practice. Now I've been on social media since 1997 and I really do feel like a dinosaur.
People say, "why post on places that don't pay you when you can post to get paid?" but honestly, I don't make any money on Steemit/busy/steempeak/etc, floteapp, somee.social or friendster. To be honest, at least the non paying sites like Twitter fakes interactions by informing me of everyone whom interacts with a post after me or if I'm tagged. So now the question is, "Why would I want to post for places that will only pay everyone else for posting and not me?"
At some point these sites get me depressed because I feel hopeless at being able to socialize and I feel absolutely stupid because now online is just like irl, which I don't belong to. I do wonder if I'm the only person having this terrible experience with every social platform in on. Don't worry, I've been informed many times that my depressive posts don't help me but if I don't post things like this, I'll have nothing to post other than my website posts.