Why offline interactions suddenly feel... terrifying

Set Status: Online / S01E01

Author

Jomiro Eming
December 18, 2025

We’ve somehow reached a point where DMing a stranger feels safer than saying hello to them in real life.

Which is odd. Because humans did the second one first.

In this opening episode of Set Status: Online, I unpack a quiet shift most of us feel but rarely name:

Offline interactions have become “high-stakes events”.

Three ideas worth sitting with

Not conclusions.
Observations.

1. We’ve accidentally labelled face-to-face as “serious business”

Think about when we insist on meeting in person:

  • “We need to talk.”

  • Going to someone’s office.

  • Big announcements.

  • Conflict.

  • Proposals.

  • Reviews.

No wonder your nervous system panics at conferences.
Your brain has learnt that IRL = pressure.

2. Chat apps let us control dosage. Real life doesn’t.

Online, you can:

  • mute

  • rewrite

  • disappear

  • come back later

Offline, attention is continuous.
Your body has to track tone, posture, timing, reactions.

That takes energy.

If you mostly socialise through apps, your stamina for real-world interaction will drop.
Not because you’re bad at people.
Because you haven’t been training that muscle.

3. Feeling socially tired isn’t a personality flaw

If you hit a wall after an hour with people, that doesn’t mean:

  • you’re boring

  • you’re a bad friend

  • you’re “doing it wrong”

It might just mean your default interaction mode has changed.

And that’s worth noticing, not judging.

A small experiment (for freelancers especially)

Next time you’re at:

  • a meetup

  • a conference

  • a coworking space

  • a vaguely social thing you didn’t really want to attend

And you feel the urge to talk yourself out of saying hi, ask:

If this person were on Instagram, would I be this afraid?

If not, why?

That question alone creates space.
You don’t have to act on it.
Just notice what comes up.

Why this matters if you freelance

Freelancing quietly relies on things chat apps can’t fully replace:

  • trust built in real time

  • reading a room

  • informal conversations that go nowhere… until they don’t

If we only optimise for convenience, we lose something subtle but important.

This episode isn’t anti-internet.
It’s anti-default.

Listen to the full episode

Full transcript

00:00
Hey, hi, hello. We’re online and so are you.
Welcome to Set Status: Online, the internet show for a little bit of internet sanity for the terminally online.

This is officially the first episode of what I hope will be many. And if you’re listening to this, I really hope you do stick around. I think there are going to be some really cool conversations and topics coming up.

00:31
This will hopefully turn into a bit of a therapy session for anyone who spends time online, which I assume is everyone.

To kick off the first episode, I wanted to tackle something that’s been running through my head for a while now. It came off the back of a recent chat I had about in-person networking.

01:02
There’s this strange thing around why we find it so scary to approach another human being at a conference, a meetup, or even just a stranger in the street or at a bar.

There seems to be a significant feeling of pressure or high stakes involved. Some fear of judgement, to some degree.

And it got me thinking about how so many of our interactions now take place via chat apps or DMs.

01:33
I think we’re conditioned from a young age to see face-to-face meetings as high-stakes engagements.

Things that happen in real life are often reserved for moments that carry expectations or seriousness. Think about going to the principal’s office. Or a message that says, “We need to talk in person.” Or “Can you come to my office?”

02:01
Even things like wedding proposals, or going into the office when you normally work remotely, tend to carry weight.

And I think this is true in dating as well. Most of us would feel more comfortable sending a picture to a stranger on a dating app than walking up to someone at a bar and saying hi.

02:30
That feels interesting to me. We seem to feel safer behind a screen or an app than presenting ourselves as a real human being in person.

I think we’ve become very reliant on the comfort of being able to mute notifications, delete chats, block contacts, and so on.

When most of our interactions default to sending messages through WhatsApp, Signal, LinkedIn, Slack, whatever it is, it’s no surprise that we’ve become more sensitive to interactions that happen offline.

03:05
Offline interactions have become the exception. They’re reserved for things that feel too important to happen online.

This also made me think about social energy. After a few hours around people, my social battery can feel pretty drained.

This obviously differs from person to person, and it depends a lot on context. Time with friends feels different from a work meeting or a big family event.

03:38
But I do think there’s something cultural happening.

If we engage 90 percent of the time via chat apps, it lowers our resilience to in-person interactions.

Physiologically, interacting with someone in real life uses more energy. There are social cues, body language, tone, and timing that our senses need to track.

04:06
When you’re typing a message, your body doesn’t need to do that work.

It’s also easier to backspace, rewrite, or even ask ChatGPT to help you phrase something than it is to think on your feet in the moment.

It’s similar to not running for a month and losing cardiovascular stamina. If we don’t practise face-to-face interaction as much as we used to, it makes sense that we lose some stamina there too.

04:44
I’m not trying to judge one as good or bad. I just want to bring attention to the tension I feel between online and offline interaction.

I think it’s useful to be aware of how chat apps shape the way we approach real-world encounters.

05:10
For example, if you’re at a conference, a meetup, or a social gathering, and you feel the urge to introduce yourself to a stranger but feel scared, it’s worth asking a few questions.

Is there an actual threat here?
What’s the worst that could happen?

And maybe even: if I were DMing this person on Instagram, would I feel the same fear?

05:48
Most of us probably wouldn’t feel the same fear in a DM. There are exceptions, of course, especially if there’s a crush involved.

But generally, the fear feels lower behind a screen. I think it’s worth questioning why.

The same goes for long conversations. If you struggle to stay engaged for two hours or more, or if your rhythm drops after an hour, it’s worth asking what makes that feel so hard.

06:29
Personally, that’s something I relate to.

I sometimes wonder if I’m interesting enough, or if I’m a bad friend for feeling tired after an hour and not wanting to push the conversation further.

But I don’t think it has to mean that at all. I think it’s a pretty natural reaction for a lot of people.

06:58
With chat apps, interactions are short and controlled. We manage the dosage.

In person, it’s constant. You can’t dip in and out. You can’t step away and come back later.

There’s an expectation of sustained attention, and it makes sense that chat apps lower our resilience to that.

07:36
That said, practice matters. Content and context matter too.

I’ve had conversations that felt like an hour and turned into four, depending on the people, the timing, and the kind of day everyone had.

Still, I do think our relationship with chat apps has an impact.

08:09
As a society, I think we should place more value on face-to-face relationships again.

Most people I know wouldn’t disagree with that. But chat apps are easy. They’re always available. You can message while commuting, between tasks, or when you’re bored on the couch.

08:41
That tap-in, tap-out dynamic is appealing because we can choose exactly how much we have capacity for.

And that’s genuinely useful.

But it also means that when we’re in in-person situations, we develop unnecessary reservations about approaching people.

09:15
I sometimes wish we still lived in a world where you could sit down in a café and easily strike up a conversation with the people next to you.

It still happens, but not as often as it used to.

That makes me a bit sad, even if it’s a slightly old-school take.

09:45
I get a lot of value from looking someone in the eyes and communicating certain things offline.

Checking in with friends, sharing life updates, celebrating good news, or meeting new people. I prefer doing those things in person.

That’s just a personal preference.

10:18
I do think there’s an opportunity to be more intentional about how and why we interact online.

That “why” matters.

Intentional online interactions feel much healthier than default ones, where we do things simply because they’re easy or habitual.

10:51
I also want to acknowledge that chat apps are incredibly valuable for people who struggle with social interaction.

They’ve opened doors to friendships and connections that might not otherwise exist, and it wouldn’t be fair to ignore that.

Opening up socially doesn’t come naturally to everyone.

11:24
That said, I do wonder what the world will look like in 20 years.

How our capacity for online and offline interaction will continue to change, and to what extent.

Again, I’m not trying to label this as good or bad. I just think it’s worth being aware of and reflecting on in our own lives.

12:05
If you have thoughts on this, I’d love to hear from you.

As promised in the trailer, these episodes are meant to be short and succinct. Easy to listen to on your way to or from work, on a lunch break, or while walking the dog.

12:34
I know I don’t always have an hour for a podcast, and sometimes a short moment of listening is enough to get the creative juices flowing.

I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I really hope to see you back here again.

Thanks for listening.

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