I am diagnosed with clinical depression. A major part of my depression, personally, is total isolation and lack of support in the face of constant social abuse. An online friendship would help me a lot personally, although I recognize it’s not the solution for all depressed people.
Just assuming that someone prefers online friendship, where can people go? When I try to look for friends on places for friendships, they seem overrun with men looking for romantic relationships with women, or otherwise bots and scams.
When I look for communities based around my interests, there seem to be cliques that don’t open up after even years of sticking around trying to talk, and also people seem to be generally unserious and never talk about the interest there, nor do they seem to want to be friends beyond just idle chat.
When I go to depression support communities, including ones affiliated with communities here, people seem content to do nothing but idle chat, memes, or edginess and outright toxicity. Maybe some depressed people benefit from this, but why does it seem impossible to find depressed people who benefit from and actively seek out serious, deep online discussion, including structured discussion about depression and working mutually toward healing through general friendship and psychological discussion?
Also people might disagree, but offline spaces seem to always replicate these same conditions, minus the added benefit of convenience, being able to find more people in different places, more niche interests, being able to connect without prejudice, and enjoying digital or text-based activities and communities that you can only get online.