昨天和某友提到说我对人温度很低，这并不是夸张，事实就是这样，我心里也很清楚。都不记得自己主动放弃过多少段友情了，也不记得自己ghost过多少人了，虽然大部分曾经认识的人都是随时间过去逐渐不联系的。To me, this is totally fine. 过去也不都是现在这样，也还是有过为友情努力的阶段的。只是自己在变化，别人也在变化，以前是朋友并不意味着可以一直做朋友，到了后来没有共同语言了自然就会走远。当然，如果又重新拾得了共同语言，也还是可以再相聚的。

        The thing that I kept telling myself is that connection, in the sense of truly connecting with other people, is not something I need desperately. I'm not a lone wolf, but neither am I a social butterfly. It's simply that I find being with myself or doing stuff alone makes me feel more content than being with other people -- most of the time. To me, being alone doesn't equate to feeling lonely or abandoned. Being alone means I am with my self; I am, technically speaking, alone, with one single person, but I'm happy to be with this one single person, who happens to be me as well.

        I'm not a people-hater. Not in need of other people doesn't mean I'm consciously avoiding people. If you know me in real life, you'd be unlikely to tell I'm a hardcore introvert since I have fun with people and talk with them at ease. But just having "some" connection is not what I'm looking for. If I want friendship, then it'd better be a mutual, deep relationship that both parties invest much in constantly. And I just don't see this happen very often -- people these days don't have enough time to invest in long-term friendship, and they also don't have the energy or patience to grow together, be it a friend or a romantic partner. People have to work, they have to tend to their families, they have a million responsibilities. So keep a friendship going is hard, and it's even harder to start a new friendship.

        Since I'm not in touch with many people in real life, I can only be more distant from people I know on the internet. Sometimes I think internet friends are just people I follow and people who follow me -- no further entanglements and that's it. It's really easy to treat internet friends as "information source," because all they present to me is flows of textual or visual information. If I see some information I don't like, I'll unfollow the person who posts the information, no need to worry about hurting their feelings. In fact, I guess I find dealing with people online much easier than managing relationships irl because I never try to "find friends" or "build strong bonds" with internet friends, so my expectations are much lower than when I interact with people in real life. If it happens that I like someone I meet online and they also like me, that's great; but if nobody is attracted by me, that's also fine, I lose nothing.

        Except for the challenge of contemporary lives is that since everyone is so damn occupied by their own lives, the internet -- and hence, social media -- presents an extremely fast, convenient, and ready means for people to connect with each other. Isn't it painless to just open up a social media app on one's mobile phone and start scrolling through all the posts made by people all around the world? No need to face a real person, no need to stay cognizant of all the subtle non-verbal social interaction cues, no need to care about one's own erratic flows of feelings and thoughts when standing in front of another human being. If I'm agitated by things I see on social media, I can always blame social media or the companies behind them, and I can always delete my account and uninstall the app, all the while losing all the connections I've made through the app. In fact, this is how I usually find myself losing touch with people nowadays. If I stop using a social media application, I then have no way to see how people who use that app are doing. It's as if we are only connected through the apps, not as people, not as people who will stay in touch no matter this app or that app or whatever technology or no technology.

        It goes without saying that I don't like this status quo, yet I hesitate to reach out to people through direct messaging. I used to message people directly and ask them how they are doing, just to check in with them and let them know I care about them. But once I started working full-time, I had to face the ugly reality that my "spare" time outside of work was a strictly confined resource, and I really had to use it wisely. In other words, I got busy and I didn't have time to stay in touch with friends, perhaps except those few who also proactively messaged me. Gradually yet irreversibly, I get used to this entire situation, not wanting to change and had no real motivation to change.

        And this is about how distant I am from other people.