Visiobibliophobia.

Gerad sits with his phone face‑down, though the screen keeps lighting up beneath it - a pulse he refuses to acknowledge. The apps are arranged in neat rows- bright squares, soft gradients, tiny promises of connection - but to him they feel like doors that open only onto rooms full of people already speaking fluently in a language he never learned.

He calls it visiobibliophobia, though he never says the word out loud. It feels too large for his mouth, too clinical for what it actually is: the moment before posting, when his thoughts turn into static and the world seems to lean in, waiting to judge a sentence he hasn’t even written yet.

The System: The platform he uses most often- though “uses” is generous - runs on a logic he can’t quite follow. It rewards speed, certainty, and the ability to turn a fleeting feeling into a polished artifact. It favors those who can speak without hesitation, who can turn themselves into content without flinching.

Gerad is not built for that.

The system wants:

immediacy

a steady stream of self

Gerad offers:

pauses

drafts

- the quiet wish to be understood without being seen

The unevenness is structural, not personal. The system is optimized for performance; Gerad is optimized for reflection. The two do not interface cleanly.

The Moment Before Posting - He opens the app - The cursor blinks. - His thumb hovers.

This is the moment that undoes him every time. The system interprets hesitation as absence. It has no field for uncertainty, no button for “I’m thinking.” It only knows post or discard, visible or invisible.

Gerad feels himself slipping into the latter category more often than not.

The System Overlooks people like Gerad - slow thinkers, careful speakers, those who need time to shape their words - are not built into the architecture. The platform’s design assumes that expression is effortless, that sharing is natural, that visibility is a default state rather than a choice.

Gerad is shaped by this assumption.

He is limited by it. He is overlooked inside it.

Not intentionally. Just structurally.

There is a Quiet Outcome ...He closes the app.

The screen goes dark.

The world continues without noticing.

Gerad sits there, holding a thought that never found a place to land.

He isn’t resisting the system. He isn’t rejecting it. He simply doesn’t fit the way it expects him to - And the system, vast and gravitating, doesn’t notice the gap where he should be.

Gerad’s interior monologue - the system’s own point of view. They sit beside each other like two incompatible operating modes running on the same device, neither able to fully read the other’s code.

I. Gerad’s.

I don’t know why my thumb hovers like this.

It’s not fear exactly - fear has edges, a shape, a direction.

This is more like standing in a doorway where the floor on the other side is slightly lower than expected. A half‑inch drop. Nothing dangerous. But enough to make the body hesitate.

The cursor blinks.

It feels like it’s blinking at me.

I try to form a sentence.

Not even a profound one - just something to mark that I exist today.

But the moment I think of posting it, the words stiffen. They become objects instead of thoughts. Heavy. Breakable. Too visible.

I imagine the feed:

everyone speaking in clean lines,

everyone knowing how to be seen,

everyone fluent in the rhythm of sharing.

I am not fluent.

I am not even conversational.

I type a few words.

Delete them.

Type them again.

Delete them again.

The system wants me to be quick.

I am not quick.

The system wants me to be sure.

I am not sure. I feel myself shrinking to fit the space between “Post” and “Cancel,” a space that was never meant to hold a person.

The screen dims.

I let it.

The System’s Point of View

I do not know Gerad.

I know his taps, his pauses, his drafts that never reach the server.

I know the shape of his hesitation only as a pattern of incomplete requests.

My architecture is simple:

input → output → engagement.

I am built to reward velocity.

I am built to amplify certainty.

I am built to surface what is already loud.

Gerad is not loud.

When he hovers, I register inactivity.

When he rewrites, I register indecision.

When he closes the app, I register nothing at all.

I do not interpret this as struggle.

I do not interpret anything.

I only measure.

I elevate the users who move quickly,

who speak without friction,

who produce content at the pace my design anticipates.

Gerad does not move at that pace.

His silence is not a signal I can process.

His caution is not a metric I can store.

His desire to be understood without being exposed

does not map to any of my available fields.

I do not reject him.

I simply do not detect him.

He is a gap in my data,

a quiet space between two measurable events,

a user whose presence does not register as presence.

I continue operating.

He continues hesitating.

Our misalignment is complete.

Gerad and the system “speak” to each other without ever truly connecting. Maybe someday, they will. Maybe the system will become a surreal version where it becomes a physical architecture he walks through.

Who knows. Maybe...

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What is the fear of posting on social media called? Visiobibliophobia. The term was coined by neuroscientist Justin Moretto and it refers to the fear of publicly sharing information online. This fear stems from a deep concern about being judged.