I use 'introvert' and 'extrovert' out of lack of a better word, because the connotations you have around 'anxiety' are also not representative of everyone who might want to use this app. But again, you're correct to point out that this is a very broad, kind of incorrect generalization.
However, I do still believe that if you genuinely can't imagine being friends with someone who would want this app, you are in a bubble. If you genuinely can't imagine friends with deep, meaningful relationships using something like this, you are in a bubble. To take that a step further, while it's completely feasible that none of your friends fall into this category, I would very cautiously advise asking them -- because it's also feasible that some of them do relate and just haven't ever talked to you about it.
On that note, if this app idea creeps you out, please allow me to creep you out a lot more. ;)
When I was in college, a friend and I came very close to setting up a system I could use to ask them for favors. The plan was, I would send an email asking for the favor, and based on how much I needed it, a system would be given a 0-50% chance of not delivering the email. That way, if the email was delivered and the friend didn't want to do the favor, they could delete it without worrying quite as much about my reaction. And if I didn't hear a reply, I would be less tempted to read into that.
I don't think we ultimately followed through (the payoff wasn't worth the technical work it would have taken to build), but there were a lot of policies like this -- there were a lot of systems that allowed us to gel, and that allowed us to cut through issues that would have made it more difficult for us to connect.
Now, you could reasonably assume that the dynamics I describe above would contribute to a pretty messed up, fragile relationship, but to this day, I would consider that person to be the closest friend I've ever had, and I think they understand me as a person on a different level than almost anyone else I know. Far from being unable to communicate, there were a number of topics and conversations that (at the time) I felt like I could only have with that friend.
I can't speak to your experiences, I can't speak to your personal needs as an individual, I can't tell you what's healthy for you. I can just say that when you imagine that people working around anxiety can't have deep friendships, you're wrong. There's a dimension to these relationships that you don't understand.
Dude, no. I don't need to talk to my friends to find people who can relate to wanting to use an app like this, because I can relate to wanting to use an app like this. You're not the only person with social anxiety in this conversation.
The difference, here, is that I've spent a lot of time working on fixing my social anxiety, and recognize wanting to use an app like this as the voice of my social anxiety, rather than a solution to it.
> On that note, if this app idea creeps you out, please allow me to creep you out a lot more. ;)
It doesn't creep me out.
> Now, you could reasonably assume that the dynamics I describe above would contribute to a pretty messed up, fragile relationship, but to this day, I would consider that person to be the closest friend I've ever had, and I think they understand me as a person on a different level than almost anyone else I know. Far from being unable to communicate, there were a number of topics and conversations that (at the time) I felt like I could only have with that friend.
No, I don't think that leads to a messed up friendship. I think, from the sound of it, that in a very socially anxious way, the two of you were communicating your fear about the friendship to each other: you, your fear of asking favors, and him his fear of saying no. That's vulnerable honesty, the opposite of the app you were building, and of course that would lead to a closer friendship.
But don't you see the irrationality of your email idea? If this is a person you can share your deep, vulnerable feelings with and he doesn't reject you, wouldn't it also be rational that he'd be a person you can ask a favor of?
You are a human, who, because you are a human, deserve to take up space in the lives of the people around you. You deserve to ask for favors. You deserve to not fear that people are just lying about being okay with doing favors. You deserve to spend time with people. You deserve to not fear that people aren't actually enjoying spending time with you.
Sure, you can relate from the perspective of someone who's said they had crippling anxiety that needed to be dealt with. With respect, you are not the best person to evaluate whether everyone else's anxieties are in the same league as yours. You are coming at this from the perspective that social anxiety is a problem that needs to be solved. In some cases, I agree. In other cases, I don't.
The part of this that you don't understand is not what it feels like to be anxious. The part you don't understand is what it feels like to feel OK about feeling anxious -- that there are people in this position that don't want or need to be changed. You don't understand their perspective.
In your very first comment, you write:
> I can't imagine being friends with someone who is this incapable of communicating.
That sentence is your bubble. I can trivially imagine being friends with someone like that. And more to the point, I can imagine enjoying being friends with that person. I have intimate experience with being friends with people in this category, and I like nearly all of them.
Your take on my email example emphasizes one specific part of friendship: being vulnerable. But in your focus on that particular element, you are missing the broader principle that makes me value this particular friendship so much: that my friend and I genuinely like each other's personalities, warts and all. When we built systems to accommodate each other, we were not sharing our fears -- we were expressing to each other that we were worth accommodating.
Of course, I try to improve my personality when possible. But my relationship with myself is not hostile. There are vulnerabilities and fears I have that I am OK with having, because they are the natural consequences of parts of my personality that I consider to be strengths. When my friends accommodate them, it doesn't make me feel robotic or weaken those relationships. It just makes me feel like my friends care about me.
I don't think I'm underestimating it, I just don't see any of these degrees of discomfort as justification for my friends not telling me their preferences when they're relevant to me.
> B) how normal it is for certain types of people to struggle with this kind of interaction in general.
I think you're making some pretty big assumptions about my experience in an attempt to explain our differences in worldview.
Social anxiety is normal/common. But being "normal" is not a goal I have, nor is it a goal I think other people should have. The fact that it's normal/common has turned it from a personal problem some people have, to a social problem that most people have to deal with even if they don't have social anxiety themselves.
The fact that it's normal/common doesn't mean we should just accept it as inevitable. This is a fixable problem.
To be clear, I myself have struggled with social anxiety a lot. I'm not saying people are bad people because they have social anxiety--I'm saying they should address their social anxiety. This isn't some moral/ethical "should", it's something they should do because it would benefit them and everyone they come in contact with.
For what it's worth, I wish I had addressed my social anxiety sooner. Working on my social anxiety has been some of the most beneficial work I've ever done on myself, and I've seen similar trends with my friends who have worked through their social anxiety.
> I realize this is somewhat blunt and a little uncharitable, and I don't mean it as an attack or as a character flaw -- but in the general spirit of being confrontational and open: when I hear this, my immediate thought is, "this person probably doesn't have many introverted friends, and they probably don't have many deep, honest relationships with the few introverted friends they do have."
On the contrary:
1. I'm an extrovert, but I tend to make friends with introverts, and I tend to have <10 deep friendships and almost no acquaintances.
2. I think you're equating introversion with social anxiety, and they are not equivalent. There are introverts without social anxiety, and and extroverts with social anxiety (I am in the latter camp, though my social anxiety is probably 90% fixed at this point). Extroversion/introversion is just a statement about how much social interaction you prefer, it doesn't inherently mean you'll have any anxiety about stating those preferences.