Yeah this hurt. When I became homeless I ended up vanishing from everything. Had no Internet access or anything. Was just gone. Always checked in with people. Was there when needed and then I can't contact anyone for a month. I was worried about my friends and worried they were worried about me and that I couldn't tell them what was going on.
When I finally got access to the Internet to message people I realized no one had even noticed. No one messaged me asking where I was. No one checked in. No one did anything. I sent a couple people a message like "Hey hows it going?" and they'd respond with the usual. Really didn't notice I was gone.
I ended up logging back out of all of it. Didn't login again until a year later when I was in a homeless shelter trying to figure things out.
One person messaged me.
They were asking if I could share Netflix with them.
I deleted my accounts. Have a hard time trusting people and making friends noe not like childhood abuse from my mother made it easy. How do you believe people care when your parents don't and when the people you loved didnt?
Happy Holidays. I'm spending mine in bed.
Really sorry this has been your experience. I've moved around a fair bit from a young age and I learned pretty quickly that if I don't make the effort to stay in touch with people, very few of them will check in. Only a few true friends.
If I rationalise it, it's because few people are genuinely selfless; most of us are wrapped up in our own lives and problems. Also, please don't let social media interaction dictate how you perceive the world. When we're less active (or inactive), sites like Facebook decrease the amount we're shown to other people. At the moments when we need social interaction the most, social media can make it more difficult to get genuinely caring interactions.
I don't have any suggestions for how you can fix it other than to try and find some IRL connections / groups / activities where you can have some genuine experiences and hopefully make some connections with kinder people.
Not sure if you'll see any of this Stamets, as maybe you blocked me after our interaction the other week when you said I was being aggressively negative about Modern Family. But you are clearly well liked and respected here on lemmy, that's not imaginary or fake. Hopefully you can find a way to make similar connections irl in 2024 and make some kind friends!
I rarely or never reach out to people. It takes energy and honestly don't care to do it that much. I think this is just common and it's why communal spaces are important, you show up, see other people, and hold each other to account if one is missing. We all are dealing with our own life's, if we are to keep track of others it becomes tedious.
Social media gave us the impression of being in these comunal spaces, but it was all hollow without the same social rewards our brains crave and need. Now we lost all that. We only date through apps and we only keep up with friends if we see their stories online.
Not sure if it's a real fact or one of those made up things we Al collectively believe... But don't we have a hard limit of thr number of close people we can keep track of based on our initial tribal evolution? Iirc it's around 50. So yeah if someone drops off the radar on social media it's hard to notice sometimes.
Reaching out is often intimidating, it comes with the risk of being rejected which can hurt way, way more than being forgotten.