Then the monetization enshittification happened, both at the overarching corporate level of facebook and internet advertising in general, and with people becoming exhaustingly self-promoting, which devalued trust between friends and degraded new connections.

The weird thing about the world is seeing everyone turn into me when I was in my teens and twenties ... and I was a product of extreme social bullying that really only alleviated in my 40s.

Which scares me because it means there is some either low-key or high similarity to the trauma / rejection / betrayal I felt from society being exerted on a massive scale.

I used to go around errands trying to engage with people as little as possible, but now, maybe it is projection, I see the effects of isolation on so many people in public, that I get great joy in having a quick exchange with someone. Granted I am now far better at making smalltalk, strangely I slingshotted from being absolutely abysmal at it to well above average.

Smalltalk almost seems like rebellion against the oppressive antisocial time-stealing inferiority-inducing powers that have gatewayed using the mobile phone into all parts of people's lives.