Papabear Asks Readers for Help with This Ignored Furry

Dear Papa Bear,

I need your help. I used to be social and talkative but now nobody well talk to me. I try to be friendly and show interest in others but I don’t get it back. I feel like I’m being ignored in a community I’ve been apart of for years. Other furs seem so much more interested in my mate and I just don’t know how he does it. (Sorry for any spelling errors. I have APD [note: Papabear often corrects spelling and grammar to make letters easier for people to read]).

Thank you

-ignored fox

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Hi, Ignored,

A little more detail would be helpful to me before I reply. You say that you to be "social and talkative" but now you feel left out of the community. At what point did this happen? What happened between the time you were more sociable and the time when things changed and you were no longer part of the group as much? Did it happen when your mate came into the picture? Some other event?

Thanks for your help.

Papabear

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This started happing about 3 years ago when people started switching to Facebook from MySpace and I lost contacted from some of my best fur friends on it. I don’t know what happened but people just stopped replying to me and I try to talk to others and I just got ignored. I even tried talking to random furs to help me be more social but I just keep getting ignored. After each failed attempt at trying to talk to furs I start getting a little more depressed and discouraged from trying to talk to others. I’m natural super shy and it just makes things worse it takes a lot from me to try to talk to a stranger. I just feel like I’m back in school again because of the popular kids ignoring and making fun of me. 

Ignored

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Okay, just to be sure: this might not be happening because of some software program or browser error, could it? Could there be a technical reason why you aren't getting replies? Just as a thought....

Papabear

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Sadly no everything gets sent.

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Hi, Ignored,

This is indeed a puzzling situation. If you were being ignored by people who had been your friends currently, I would guess that some kind of clique had formed and that it didn’t include you, OR that when you switched from MySpace to Facebook, somehow, people thought you were snubbing them and decided to block you (such miscommunications and drama are common). The problem with these theories is that you are also being ignored by new people you just met, which makes no sense. Adding to the riddle is that you once had no problem talking with people online and now you do; also, as far as I know from your letter, nothing happened in between those times that might have caused drama.

Papabear is genuinely puzzled by this one. One disturbing possibility is that someone out there has put the word out online to ignore you, and that this message has somehow effectively been read by every single person you try to communicate with. Again, though, this seems very unlikely. Another possibility is that you aren’t telling me something, such as you have a tendency to be mean to everyone you talk to, but, again, that doesn’t seem the case and, also, at one point you had no issues with online chat.

On the other paw, your mate seems to be having no problems with socializing. At this frustrating point, if I were you, I would ask for his help in getting you back into the social scene, even if that means piggybacking on his popularity. If he’s a good mate, he should be happy to help.

For the first time since starting this column, Papabear is quite perplexed. I’m going to also put a call out to my readers for help. Anyone have any thoughts about Ignored’s problem? Maybe, you could even befriend this poor furry?

Papabear