When My Voice Doesn’t Blend In Online

I don’t really know how to put this, but yeah... there is a quiet pressure on the internet to sound casual.

Not just friendly, but that easy kind of friendly. Short words, slang, abbreviations, a tone that feels closer to jokes you say out loud than something you actually sit down and write. And if you don’t sound like that, nobody says it straight to your face, but you can sort of feel it. You sound stiff. Distant. A bit too serious.

For a long time, I tried to adjust. I really did.

I used things like “lol,” “idk,” “lmao,” “wanna,” “kinda,” “gonna,” “stfu,” not because they felt natural to me, but because they looked normal out there. Like some kind of social dress code. I didn’t want to stand out as the guy who always sounded too formal, too controlled, too out of place.

The thing is, it wasn’t that I couldn’t use those words. I could. Anyone can type them. It just never felt like they were actually mine.

So yeah, I was borrowing a voice that didn’t really belong to me, and I could feel it every time. The sentences looked relaxed, but I wasn’t. It felt like wearing clothes that technically fit, but you never forget you’re wearing them. You keep adjusting, pulling, fixing, and somehow you’re always aware of it.

Something similar happened with how I showed emotion in writing.

Back then, I used a lot of punctuation. Emoticons. Multiple exclamation marks. Question marks. Sometimes even full capital letters, like volume could replace tone. I guess I was trying to make up for what text doesn’t carry very well: facial expressions, pauses, that quiet hesitation when you’re not fully sure what you’re saying.

In private messages, that felt fine. Normal, even. But when it came to public posts, it started to feel off. Like I was putting on a louder version of myself that didn’t really exist.

It just didn’t match who I am.

I’m not someone who talks loudly in real life. I don’t react in big dramatic ways. I usually think first, then speak, and sometimes I just stay quiet if I don’t have anything useful to add. So when my public writing started to look emotionally loud, it felt more like acting than talking.

At some point, I stopped doing that.

Not because I wanted to sound more “grown up” or more polished, but because I wanted my writing to line up with my actual character. If there’s emotion in it, I want it to come from the sentence itself, not from extra symbols I throw in to make it look alive.

The same thing goes for how I address people.

I almost always use saya and Anda, not aku and kamu. In Indonesian, that’s not just about being formal. It’s about distance. “Aku–kamu” already assumes closeness. “Saya–Anda” kind of admits, well, we probably don’t know each other, and that’s fine.

The internet often acts like everyone is already familiar, already friendly, already part of the same room. But that’s not how it feels to me. When I write publicly, I know I’m talking to people I’ve never met. Not enemies, not friends, just strangers passing by. Keeping that polite distance doesn’t feel cold to me. It feels honest.

I’m not pretending we’re close when we’re not.

These days, casual language is often treated like proof that you’re being real. Like if you’re not joking, not relaxed, not throwing slang around, then something must be wrong with you. But for some people, being careful with words, keeping some structure, not jumping into fake intimacy that’s not fake. That’s just how we are.

My semi-formal tone didn’t come from trying to sound professional. It came from how my head works. I process things slowly. I like clarity. I don’t really enjoy throwing half-formed thoughts into the air just to keep a conversation going. So of course that way of thinking leaks into how I write.

Which is why, when I force myself into a casual voice, it doesn’t feel more human. It feels less honest, like I’m translating myself into a language I don’t fully speak.

The strange part is, nobody really tells you that you should sound casual. It’s not written anywhere. But you see which posts get attention, which tones feel welcome, which styles blend easily into the endless scroll. And yeah, at some point you start wondering if your natural voice is somehow not enough.

Maybe you should soften it. Loosen it. Add a little noise.

I tried that, for a while.

Then I got tired.

Not because I think formal language is better, but because constantly adjusting the way I sound is exhausting. It feels like negotiating with yourself just to stay socially acceptable in a place that claims to be open to everyone.

I don’t come to the internet to perform closeness.

I come to think, to observe, and sometimes, yeah, to speak carefully.

If that makes my writing sound calm, or distant, or a bit reserved, I can live with that. I’d rather sound like myself than like someone who’s trying too hard to belong to a crowd that was never really asking in the first place.

Maybe not everyone comes online to sound relaxed.

Some of us just want to sound like ourselves, even if that voice is quieter, slower, and not very good at pretending to be easygoing.