I drafted these thoughts during evening self-study in a classroom, after finishing my English homework. While my mind was wandering, I remembered a message a classmate once sent me on WeChat:
“You express yourself much better online than you do in real life.”
It took me a while to admit that this was true.
Online, I can often state what I mean in a single sentence. Face to face, I tend to circle around the point, and even then I still fail to make myself clear. That gap has caused real problems in how I interact with people around me. Talking to classmates is often difficult, and because of that, many of them are not especially willing to talk with me either. In that sense, the internet has not only weakened my ability to speak clearly in person, but also my ability to build relationships. At the same time, it has made me deeply dependent on being online.
There is another problem too.
On the internet, I can use certain technical or specialized terms, and people usually understand them well enough for conversation to continue smoothly. But when I talk to classmates, I have to strip those words out as much as possible, because in their view those are “terms nobody can understand.” So I end up digging through an almost exhausted brain, trying to find replacements. By the time I do, the sentence has usually been twisted beyond recognition. To borrow a phrase from my Chinese teacher, what comes out is “not even human language.” And still, the response is the same: “We don’t understand those terms you’re using.” Then the conversation just stops.
That is extremely painful for me, because I actually like talking. I always have a lot to say. Yet once I go online, I run into a different problem: I do not know how to start a new topic, or even what to talk about.
Something that looks as easy in real life as pressing the “new topic” button in Bing Chat suddenly becomes surprisingly difficult on the internet.
Some recent changes to my blog also reflect my effort to make myself easier for classmates to understand. I renamed it, started shifting the focus toward everyday life topics, tried to reduce hard-to-understand wording, and added images where appropriate. At first, the name change was partly for practical reasons related to domain registration after turning sixteen, but looking back, it was also about making the blog feel more acceptable to my classmates. For visitors—including them—I also deliberately chose Valaxy as the site generator, added PWA support, and used domestic CDN services for referenced resources so the browsing experience would be better.
A quick digression: while writing this, I suddenly realized I was missing my seventh-grade second-semester math textbook. Maybe I just forgot to bring it to school.
Back to the point. If I am going to talk about interpersonal relationships, then I should say what I actually think.
Interpersonal communication is one of the major forces in a person’s socialization. It is something everyone has to go through, and it is also a skill everyone needs. Unlike writing, human interaction leans much more on spoken expression in ordinary life. Writing may also be “speaking on paper,” but it demands more refinement in language and is more tied to what one has learned. In many ways, it asks more of us. That is one reason I have always disliked long-form Chinese exam compositions.
There is, of course, such a thing as “oral communication” in schoolwork, and that blurs the boundary somewhat. But in essence it still carries part of the logic of writing: the language must be appropriate, and students are still being tested on expression.
I was also thinking about the internet term roughly equivalent to “social butterfly” or “extreme extrovert.” Some time ago, while flipping through a magazine, I read an article that divided the cause of this kind of personality into two types. One was genuine openness; the other was inner insecurity. Leaving the second aside, why do some people become this kind of socially fearless person? Because they do not care much about how others see them, and because they have a wide network of relationships. Put differently, they are simply very strong at social interaction: emotionally perceptive, good at expressing themselves, articulate, even a little unconventional.
Some classmates also call me that kind of person. But why? Not because I am especially good at socializing. It is because they think I speak too loudly, and in public that can easily lead to embarrassment. Looking back, that is true. So in any real interpersonal exchange, it is important to consider what other people are feeling and how they might receive what you say.
For someone like me, whose online and offline communication abilities are so uneven, it might help to think carefully about how I express my thoughts online, and then try to reuse some of that method in real-life conversation. At least it is worth trying.
And beyond that, I should be willing to accept advice from others and actually change in response to it: use fewer specialized terms in casual speech, and do not repeat the same point over and over, so people do not become irritated.
That is about all I wanted to say.
With the entrance exam approaching, I can only wish the best for myself and for everyone else: may we know every answer we are supposed to know, get every subject right, stay clear-headed in the exam room, and pass every test ahead of us.
I will end with a piece written by a classmate surnamed Su:
I want to share my story, but those trivial fragments are like a stray dog run over on the road: ordinary, pitiful, and nothing anyone would stop for.
Very naturally, a bastard like me has never been welcome since childhood, and I am certain that even now nothing has changed. Even the stupid things I did here still feel shameful when I think back on them. The only benefit is that I can feel a little kinship with Dazai from a century ago: “Mine has been a life of much shame.”
Helplessly, all I can do is live with this inferiority and loneliness. I cut off all contact with other people. I even quit Honor of Kings. I began searching for obscure gems. I began writing recklessly, the way I am doing now. Because I am lonely enough, I do not need to share the joy of a speedrun with anyone, nor do I need anyone’s “insightful eye” to judge what I write.
Luckily, no one can redeem me. No one can drag me out of this dead silence. No one can give me even a trace of confidence. And because of that, I like it this way.
I do not think a teacher can separate himself from the group the way I can, so he has to change himself. That is a sad thing.
Relax. A big enough forest can hold every kind of bird.