Conversely, as long as you're not someone who regularly finds yourself being a jerk, it's okay to just experience social interactions. Most of my internet posting could accurately be described as "shooting the shit", and I feel okay about that.
True, if it really is social interaction. But especially on Twitter (when I still bothered using it), I saw so many stream-of-consciousness dumping of thoughts on there, which mostly only managed to gather a few irrelevant likes, that I seriously wonder whether the poster really gets anything out of it, or is just used to shouting out every little thought that they have into the void.
This also goes for answers to tweets, where even on highly technical, niche topics, a pretty large share of the replies seem either performative ("I'm going to ask a question to impress OP, the answer does not really matter!"), or useless (some tired meme, if it was ever funny), or just plain nonsense ("I don't really understand the technical matter behind that, but here's some nonsensical technical question that seems vaguely related").
I think in face-to-face social situations, most people would be much better at weighing whether their interjection is worth the effort and the attention.
