I kind of have similar struggles, but in "reverse", if that makes any sense. In my case, it's not that I think I should be doing more for my friends or that I think I'm afraid of letting my friends down, but rather just that I wish I had... more friends in general.
I can legitimately think of only like seven or eight people in my life who I would consider close friends at this point in time, only four of which I talk to on a daily (or at least almost daily) basis. The fifth friend I talk to occasionally (though for extrinsic reasons that I have no control over), the sixth friend I talk to at least every couple of months (though we occasionally have minor interactions on social media), and the last two friends I talk to only rarely (because I don't really have any easy way of contacting them).
While I don't necessarily consider myself lonely or even unhappy, I do occasionally feel a bit incomplete, like I was missing something in my life, and I do have a number of interests that none of my current friends share. Like, sure, I can talk to them about these things, but it won't lead to any interesting or in-depth conversations, they're pretty much just listening because they're my friends. That's not a bad thing, mind you, but as I said, it does leave me slightly incomplete. Unfortunately, I've also reached an age where it's no longer as easy to make new friends. Work just takes too much time of the week, and while I do get along very well with all of my colleagues, there's just this mental barrier that prevents me from really seeing them as "friends" and wanting to get closer to them. As for the weekends, they are the only time that I have to relax and work on hobbies, so I'm just not sure how I could use some of that time to make new friends without compromising most of these things.
However, there's an even bigger problem, and that's my severe social anxiety. I honestly wasn't even aware of how big it is, so for the longest time, I thought I was just shy, with maybe just a hint of social anxiety. I mean, once I do get to know a person, I do feel comfortable around them. Because of that, I always just considered myself shy. Turns out I was wrong. Recently, I have become more and more aware that I'm suffering from actual anxiety (not just social anxiety, but it's probably the biggest part). Like, the mere thought of spontaneously dropping onto the SMWC Discord and posting an unsolicited message? Yeah, it makes my heart race. It's not as bad when someone actually mentions me and asks a question to me directly (unless I noticed it too late, in which case it does get slighlty uncomfortable). In cases like that, I'm not too stressed and usually leave a response eventually, and once I do, I usually feel comfortable enough to stick around for a little while. But just randomly joining an on-going conversation in some public channel without a prior invitation? Or even starting an entirely new conversation? That honestly stresses me immensely.
Another problem is that I also feel very out-of-touch with how people nowadays converse. Like, if I join a random Discord chat right now, the way people usually talk to each other is via short, minimal messages that only convey the minimum amount of information necessary, following it up with further messages where necessary. If you even just slightly know me, you've probably noticed that that's just not how I write things. Neither in forums, nor in real-time chats. I just like to convey as much information as possible with every single message and feel uncomfortable splitting up my stuff like that. However, doing that on Discord always makes me feel so out of place, like an outcast. It always gives me this feeling of "yeah, you're almost 30 now, and these kids are probably like 15 or 16, you probably have absolutely nothing in common with them whatsoever". You know that "how do you do, fellow kids" meme? That's literally what I feel like visiting Discord. To be fair, that stlye of writing is probably just a result of smartphones being the most common device used for chatting nowadays, as writing long messages on smartphones isn't fun, but I can't help it. When I see it, I always think that's just the way people talk nowadays, and it makes me feel so disconnected.
Thinking about it, the fact I always write my posts the way I do - these giant walls of text with as much information as possible - might itself just be a result of my social anxiety. I think I might just be so scared of being misunderstood or of accidentally offending other people that I always try to give as much context as possible for everything I write. However, this kind of conversation is tiring for people. I know that because, well, I actually regulary exchange these big walls of texts with one of my close friends who has that same tendency as me, and while I love her to death, I'd be lying if I said it didn't get tiring very easily. Unfortunately, neither of us is very good at preventing that from happening, so after talking for a while, we usually get to a point where our messages become so long that the conversation slows down to a halt and feels very exhausting. I feel like this is the rare case where two people being too similar actually turns out to be a bad thing. None of my other friends share this tendency of mine, so even if I happen to write longer messages occasionally, it never gets out of hand or exhausting with them in the long run, but it's still a bummer that I can't easily have more casual conversations with that other friend, because it led to us conversing more rarely in general, and I definitely miss her a lot because of it.
Finally, I think one last reason my social anxiety is so big is because of my history on the internet in general. In the past, I have done... pretty much everything that's bad on the internet at some point. From posting homophobic, transphobic, ableist, bigoted or even just inconsiderate and stupid stuff, to even some form of cyber-bullying. Granted, I wasn't aware of a lot of it back then. I was just an ignorant teenager on the internet. I think aside from maybe that bullying I mentioned (which I don't even fully remember anymore, so I don't know how bad it actually got aside from me throwing a trantrum once), most of my shitty words weren't directed at anyone, they were "just" your "casual bigotry" that was very common in the early internet (and I guess also the present internet still, if we're being honest). But in all honesty, none of that is an excuse at all, and I'm still very ashamed for some things I said and did. While I did get called out for my behavior sometimes, a lot of it also just went under the radar.
However, I guess the few times that I did get called out stuck with me the most (some of them on this site, even). Naturally, whenever I did get called out, it was 100% warranted, and nowadays, I'm also very glad it happened, because I do think it shaped me into a better and more considerate person overall. I generally try to understand everyone's perspective nowadays, and I try to emphasize with people who are suffering. In that regard, getting called out was definitely a good thing. That being said, I'd be lying if I said all of that didn't contribute to my anxiety to at least some degree. I guess you could say that in the past, I hurt and offended so many people (usually unwillingly) that I'm scared of accdentally doing that again, so a lot of times, even when there's something on my mind, I decide not to say it and instead just listen to what other people have to say, because I think to myself "maybe I just don't have the full picture here and maybe my perspective is wrong". As I said, it's overall a good thing I became this way, but a lot of times, it can also become an insurmountable barrier. There should be a balance between being a considerate person and being able to speak out, but I've very much lost that balance to a point where I'm often incapable of speaking out even when I encounter people saying some openly bigoted and horrible shit in the wild. There were cases in the past where I directly witnessed open racism in the streets and I was just too scared to do anything. I feel very ashamed for that.
So anyways, where does all of that leave me? I can't join conversations on Discord because of anxiety and feeling out of touch. I also can't chat with people privately without a prior invitation, again because of anxiety, but also because I feel I'd be bothering them. So what do I even have left? Not much, honestly. I can write here on the forums. Since writing long-ass walls of texts is more common in forums, I don't feel so out-of-place doing it here and don't get anxious. However, the forums feel very dead at this point. Aside from events like C3, it usually feels like I'm just conversing with myself (and maybe with just a few more other users who still come here somewhat regularly). Most activity simply has moved to Discord nowadays. I also have Twitter, where I usually don't feel very anxious for some reason, but that's probably because meaningful conversation doesn't really happen there, or if it does, it's very rare and only lasts for a few minutes at most.
So the final option is for someone else to approach me first. As I said, I can't really talk to other people on my own, but I'm always open to other people contacting me, and this can indeed lead to friendships. It's rare, but it has definitely happened before, and in the past couple of years even. Someone contacted me on Steam because he liked a game I worked on, and he kept contacting me for a while. While I did feel slightly uncomfortable at first and maybe even somewhat annoyed, it did actually lead to us becoming good friends. I even contributed to him becoming a professional translator, which felt very good. Come to think of it, a similar thing happened in the past, where a forum user I was very annoyed by kept talking to me for a while and eventually became one of my closest friends.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize: Of all the close friends I currently have, my girlfriend is the only one I approached first (and it kind of makes sense, because she has an even more severe social anxiety than me, so she would have never contacted me on her own). Everyone else approached me first. Generally speaking, I always have trouble getting close to people who don't approach me on their own, but once someone does, I can feel super comfortable around them and become friends with them very quickly. Can think of a lot of cases like that, especially in recent years. And contrary to that, I can think of a bunch of cases where I actually tried approaching someone on my own, but it went absolutely nowhere. Even with people here from SMWC. I distinctly remember adding K3fka on Skype a decade or so ago (yeah, that was way before Discord was a thing), because from his posts on the forums, he seemed like a nice person, so I sent him a message, only to never say anything again. I honestly just couldn't do it, because I felt so uncomfortable. You know, up until now, I seriously thought this anxiety was more of a recent thing I developed in the last couple of years, but the more I think about it, the more painfully aware I become that I've really been carrying this burden for quite a while already.
Honestly, this post is drifting more and more into Reality Corner territory and I should probably draw the line here, so let me just get to the point: If there's anyone around here who even remotely considers me an interesting person, feel free to hit me up on Discord (or whatever you prefer), because I'd never have the courage to do so on my own. Even then, I'll probably need some time to actually warm up and get comfortable with you, but once I do, I think I can be a solid friend. What I can say is that there's definitely a bunch of people on SMWC that I find interesting and would love to get to know better, but for reasons stated above, I could never dare to admit that and approach you on my own, so unless you approach me first, it'll probably stay that way.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!