The Trap Of Over Socializing

There is a wrong rule that some people follow to give their life meaning. I call it the Trap Of Over Socializing, where they spend too much time socializing and chasing people. They believe the purpose of life is to socialize as much possible, and act as if that is the rule they live their life by. Some examples of this are: When someone is obsessed with popularity. Or some guys who spend a lot of time chasing girls. Or someone who is trying to make as many friends as possible, or partying every night.

I need to clarify here that a certain amount of going out can be good and healthy. Some people are like monks and don’t need any socializing. Others need a little socializing, such as introverts. Or more than a little, such as extroverts. That is fine, and I have nothing against it.

The Trap Of Over Socializing is when someone takes socializing to a whole new level, and make it their number one priority, or go out a lot more than required. It is also when a person starts to build an identity or get an ego around going out, his social skills, and popularity. This is when it becomes unhealthy, and can lead to unhappiness, low self-esteem, and a feeling of emptiness. It can become an addiction, one that a person struggles to escape from. Like a trap.

For those who follow this misguided law, the universe tries to get them to give it up, by making social situations harder for them than it actually is. Some people who obsessively do this start to become really nervous and desperate in social interactions, which causes others to feel uncomfortable and avoid them.

An indication someone has fallen for this is if he wants to have too many friends. This leads to misery. He can have 20 friends, but wants more. He then makes 25 friends, but still wants more. It becomes a trap where he wants more and more friends, and is never satisfied. And thinking he needs more friends, makes him desperate and nervous around people, and making friends ironically becomes harder than it should be.

Another negative of wanting to have too many friends is that it leads him to lowering his standards, and he makes friends with wrong or bad people. He will also start to worry more about what everyone thinks of him. Someone that only wants 10 friends, will give more emphasis to what those 10 people think of him, than to other people’s opinions. We tend to be more affected and worry more about what our friends think of us, and we have the ability to decide the number of friends, or people, whose opinion matters to us.

If a person wants to have 100 friends, chances are that number will never be reached, and the person ends up with only 20 friends. He will then worry what those 20 people think. Then he will start worrying what a lot of others think of him, as there will always be the unconscious thought that one of those random people might become his friend, or that since only 20 out of 100 people like him, he needs to get strangers to like him as well to meet his self-imposed quota of 100 people liking him. He will become a people-pleaser, with low self-esteem.

If that isn’t bad enough, he will also only have shallow connections (relationships that can fall apart quickly) with a lot of people, rather than deep connections (relationships that can last a long time) with a few people.

Some people who follow this Law, end up setting themselves challenges when socializing purely for ego reasons, so when they succeed they can get an ego boost that validates their identity as ‘someone with great social skills’. For instance, they may go out and aim to get the phone number of 5 random people they have no intention of building a connection with, solely for validation. Or they might set themselves a challenge to only make friends with strangers they meet on the street to prove to themselves they have ‘great social skills’.

Or when they catch up with someone, they may decide to make the catch-up harder, for instance by picking a difficult location or time, or insult the other person, so if the person still wants to stay friends with them after the catch-up, this proves their ‘ability to get people to like them is above average’. And if that person does not want to stay friends with them, they just try again with someone else, until they find someone patient enough, or with low self-esteem, who stays friends with them. Then they mistakenly lie to themselves that the reason that person stayed friends was because of their ‘superior social skills’.

People who live according to this path can become narcissistic.

To recap, some of the traits of people who fall for the Trap Of Over Socializing are:

-Want a lot of friends. More than is realistic. The average adult has between 2 to 8 friends, not 100.

-Want everyone to like them. This will never happen.

-Base their ego and identity on their social skills, popularity, number of friends, and other social factors.

-Will purposefully make social situations harder than they are for the sole purpose of boosting their ego and misguided identity based on their social skills.

-People who fall for this Trap give off a nervous and desperate energy in social situations, causing others to avoid them. Ironically, becoming obsessed with socializing makes it harder. It’s the universe’s way of telling people not to follow this Law.

If you are unfortunate enough to have fallen for the Trap Of Over Socializing, you need to get out of it. You need to remind yourself that life is short, and try to find what your purpose in life is. You need to focus on you work, hobbies, exercising, or whatever you believe your calling on this planet is.

The exact opposite of the Trap Of Over Socializing is what I call the Law Of Productivity. I have written a blog post explaining it. I believe the purpose of life is to be productive, and the universe tries to nudge us in that direction. This is why anyone who falls for the Trap ends up being miserable, because that is not the point of life.