I'm not them but I work in tech, its lucrative
Its not social anxiety for me, its asociality. It turns out the reason could be genetic. I talked to my mom recently, she said she came from a "line of sociopaths". I think she's exaggerating but I got the idea. Her father had multiple wives, and at least 3 male offspring still alive sound like me. My closest cousin has no friends and lives as a hikkikomori in his mid-30s. My mom's brother is extremely awkward and it took him a decade of concentrated effort just to be able to exist in a social crowd, and he still has no long-term friends. So much of my life made sense hearing that, and today I almost feel righteous in avoiding contact with others, having friends in my 20s wasn't a battle I was going to win with how unprepared and demotivated I was to fight it, and how my brain was working against me the whole time
I concluded that I really really really don't have much to add to any arbitrary meeting group, I've been in a lot of bad meetup.com meetings with people just like me that are lonely and awkward yet expect something to happen or work out...and it never does. And then there are groups that should work out, full of older persons with lots of social experience that treat me like a long lost friend...and yet it doesn't feel real to me. Like I can't stay engaged. Like it's artificial, constructed. Like there's no reason to talk to these people when the activity ends. And I keep thinking that's fine, to be left totally alone. I don't care either way. Everyone else screams at me "that's not okay, youre going to die early from isolation." So its like I have to eventually push myself into these situations I don't want to be in at some point or I'm killing myself. By having no friends I'm committing suicide. It's absurd to me. It sucks the joy out of it all every time, when its between remaining myself and supposedly dying miserably or forcing myself into situations I don't want to be in
I don't think this is at the level of "making friends is hard" anymore, like I used to. Its something so much deeper and so much more firmly rooted that most can't comprehend its depths. Hence why I feel alienated by people when I try to explain my condition to others in earnest, even when I'm trying to help them approach me. And admittedly it makes me feel like someone different or unique but I'm not going to say it helps me
Nearly outing related to a hobby I thought I liked...made me enjoy that hobby less afterwards, even alone. It's like seeing myself in a mirror. I questioned who I was outside of my work, never found a satisfactory answer, and just didn't want to keep going in the end.
For now I have accepted that the reason I keep getting roiled up about people talking about having trouble making friends is because we had to make friends or form communities to survive as a species. It's the human condition. So I keep coming back to the thought like a mutt in heat. My mind is wired to care at some level even if there's a veneer I can't scrape off. And infall outside the grain. But I don't see anything wrong with it. Hell, in another life if I cared about going out more I could have been an actual socialpath singularly focused on getting what I wanted out of people, and had I been any more charismatic in this life I sincerely believe that might just have come true
I found one of the best parts of travelling to a country where I don't speak the language is that I can keep to myself without feeling obligated to bother anyone, and after a few days I can just scurry away without being seen or cared about. It's a liberating feeling when I keep feeling pressured to perform correctly in my home country and I've been continually shunned or ostracized for not fitting in at X or Y social club, exactly like I expected from the start. Its also why when I learn a language (Japanese) it's like an "emotional blunting" to consume media in that language. even though I understand the meaning of the words/sentences perfectly it's like there's no "weight" to them. It puts distance between me and people who speak my native tongue. I don't get emotionally attached like if I read the same story in English, because I have no real connection to Japanese besides side interest.I can live within these texts that all others around me can't understand. And at times it feels like a metaphor for my life