Any tips on conversation to someone who's got next-to-no confidence on gauging, let alone starting, one?
keep in mind i am only one person with a perspective on this and will likely forget to include other good things that could potentially be of your use bc i have Doofus Brain
i'd say first and foremost don't take anyone's disengagement or otherwise inability to want to hold a convo as a personal insult
of course it can be easier said than done (as someone who grew up deeply insecure and unsure a lot of my younger years were spent wallowing over this kind of shit/filtering my social insecurity into more harmful outlets, sadly)
i feel like a big crux of people's embarrassment/shame with "flubbing" conversations is immediately taking on a massive amount of guilt and self hatred for the convo not going in a decent direction when in reality it's just energies not quite mixing yet. the world is a bunch of stews all on the same stove and sometimes you're just better suited for a thick curry than a thin soup but we all exist together regardless
it would be better to assume that everyone's got different levels of shit going on and everyone carries an infinitely changing amount of social battery strength at any given time, and sometimes people aren't gonna be super chatty to someone they haven't had much time being around. even those that might hit you up will still be "fielding" the situation bc its new! you're a new presence and they wanna read the energy and all that.
it's also hard as hell to read tone online if you're greeting people via discord or telegram or whatever. someone responding with the lower case chilled out "hey" in return to someone's excited greeting can invoke a million emotions. someone's curt response due to them being busy or otherwise drained may have you assume it's something you did when in reality someone's just tired.
it's another reason i wish Read Receipts were never a thing. i'm the kind of person who likes to see a response and in some cases i would like to chew on a response. but read receipts invoke the idea of "hmm. i see your message and it's Beneath me" when in reality its "my brain really does not work right now or i am emotionally fucked and can't be chatty atm"
another thing that i think can be hard for some to digest is just that....someone you want to chat with just does not have any interest in conversation. this still isn't your fault and people's energies sometimes just cannot mix and it still isn't a matter of you failing at anything. people just exist in different ways and in different modes. there's plenty types of people i kinda don't feel like talking to but there's no malice, vibes is just off is all
all in all just be yourself with regards to who you want to talk to, try your best to be aware of people's energy if you can and don't take immediate offense if someone isn't really at the energy level of wanting to have a chat. your true self will always attract those who want to be around your warmth even if it takes a bit