I have met a number of individuals I like, who I have befriended and grown from. However, I'm more likely to run into toxic people than positive people. From my own experience, Roleplaying forums tend to attract certain types of personalities. One of those personalities is something I'm going to call "The Judging Introvert". These are people who either naturally prefer being alone, or have dealt with enough shitty people they prefer to isolate themselves. Fair enough, I think everyone here (myself included) can relate to that. However, a lot of people don't do it in a "I am happier this way" manner but in a "I shall now sit here. And be judging and pessimistic to everyone I meet" or "People are a virus. They should all fuck off and leave me alone with my book". Which has time and time again created cliches, popularity contests, elitist roleplayer's and a lot of talking behind peoples backs, enough that it suddenly becomes 'cool' to shit-talk certain people.
And an unfortunate side effect of being a forum roleplayer is that you will run into these types of people, a lot. And for me personally I think this had lead to some negative habits.
Firstly, it has caused an amount of social... sporadicness. Basically I've dealt with people turning the forums into a High School, or people suddenly being really cold on a consistent basis. They might be totally cool people sometimes, but then they might turn right back around and be nasty as all hell if the mood hits them. And this level of judging and unpredictably has made me develop two conflicting behaviours at the same time.
1) I'm more likely to be paranoid about people's opinions.
I'm constantly thinking about what someone might think, what they're saying to others, how each of my posts are being picked and torn for every bit of dirt they can. If someone is going to be fun and cool, or if they're going to suddenly turn around and start being snappy. This had lead to a number of occasions where I became convinced people just have it completely in for me, and make it a constant habit to speak poorly about me to others to their friends, and then have their friends think poorly of me even if we barely interacted.
2) I'm more likely to go "Fuck it. I don't give a shit"
This is likely more of a by-product of #1. And I know this part hasn't gone unnoticed, because I've seen several people on Iwaku remark about me having thick skin or being able to take shit well. But truth be told, I wasn't always like that (nor am I always like that now). That sort of thick skin was something I trained myself to have, I spent so much time trying to appease people and only becoming a punching bag for it that I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. I spent so much time trying to open dialogue with people, to understand them better, only for them to snap back and paint me as a trouble maker. So once again, I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. I ended up deciding I had a choice to make, continue to try appeasing people and be shit on for it. Or simply ignore those people, do what I feel is right and be shit on for it. I was going to get shit either way, so might as well be true to myself and not give much concern to others. But alas, I'm only human so there are times people can get to me, hard. And the fact this is a forum site, it's rather easy to simply calm down before replying. And since all people can see is the words I type, and not my body language, tone of voice, facial expressions it's a lot more easy to not show people how irritated I might really be.