The weird thing about me is that I've always been a little bit shy. I'm getting much better, but even now, I'm sometimes a bit shy when trying something new. If anything, I just nowadays find out much faster that this stuff isn't killing me and I'm worrying for no reason - the only hard part is getting around to try something social. I can do just fine, if I get started doing something.

In a last few years, I was a bit shy when I tried Second Life for the first time, but I was fine once I figured out how the application works. I was shy to try out Halo 3 multiplayer, until I figured out that wise people just don't even try the voice chat thingy. (No, I was not scared by the Halo 3 multiplayer. It was the brand new notion of voice chat that scared the bejezus out of me.)

But there has been times when I was completely paralysed by the idea of interacting with strangers in online games. It took me over a year to seek out other people in MUDs. I was kind of shy in Neverwinter Nights persistent worlds back in their heyday.