Internet personal relationship advice and self-fulfilling prophecies.

I was just thinking about the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy about how when you think that you're in a situation or a scenario and that you can't change the outcome of it the idea behind the theory is that you'll act in the way that you think that you're going to act. Now of course this isn't true all the time or completely. But in times of desperation more often than not it'll make you act in a certain way.

It's the idea that if you feel that you're going to fail a test for a certain class you will put off studying for it and you won't do well. Now, of course if you're motivated this is a non-factor, but the self-fulfilling prophecy holds true if you act on your beliefs and don't try to change it. It's like you're going into a school thinking that no one likes you and you act like no one likes you and then you taste the results of it.

More times than not when I've had situations when I've been in relationships in the past or with friends in the past I used to always think the worst of me, and that my friends hated me or something like that when something wasn't going right and I was kind of down in the dumps. I asked people what I should do. A lot of people told me that I should just get better friends. But I ignored the advice that I could have used to keep some of the friends that I had. Some people were saying that I should just hang out with them more often but I ignored it and just looked at the advice that matched my point of view. In this case, I didn't think that the friends I had were that good of friends, or my real friends, and I didn't do anything with them at the time (now I have good friends that I hang out with a lot, but I didn't think of asking my other friends to hang out with before). So I just looked for only pertinent advice and I decided to just go around looking for new friends.

I am interested in forming a relationship with a girl that I like and I made a thread about it on another internet forum asking what people thought about it. Everyone was saying that I should tell the girl that liked her and that I should do it sooner rather than later. They were saying that I shouldn't wait 2 months to do it. Basically this girl asked me if I was interested in her after we were talking about something and I said something really stupid, and I thought she was asking me if I was interested in her as a friend, which I said of course I was and I wouldn't be talking to her if I wasn't. I talked to her on Wednesday about it and I told her that I meant that I was interested in her and I didn't realize what she meant and she said she was fine with it and that she knew what I meant. In fact she even kind of got upset at me for bringing up the past.

The two of us are okay now and I asked her if we could hang out this weekend... but like I've talked to some of my friends about this issue and they seemed to be willing to give more help than random people on the internet. I've learned kind of to just talk to actual people who know me rather than people who don't. One of my friends said that the girl just simply didn't understand why I was bringing up that particular conversation so I didn't hold it against her and because of that, I was fine. I realized it was stupid of me to make a whole thread about it, but, it probably was a good idea that I told her that I was interested in her Wednesday rather than waiting 2 months in order to do it.

So, but that being said how much information can I trust on the internet with regards to personal relationships? We all see all the propaganda about friendzones on the internet. I know that many people get involved in relationships right away and they just meet up when they don't know each other and they go out with each other. But, like with regards to relationships too like just because someone doesn't send you the signals that they like you doesn't mean that they don't like you. You just have to do the moves on them and then they might like you or reject you. And it doesn't always happen right away. So the people that think that they can just get a girl within weeks of knowing her even though they don't know the girl really well are just nuts in my opinion because it would be awkward when they are dating and they would have nothing to talk about.

Obviously I know now not to go on the internet when I am desperate. It may have been that I needed to have made better friends at the time. It may have been that I needed to be more forthright with that other girl before, but at the same time I received a lot of alarmist responses and self-conforming responses to what I said that made it feel like I was the one telling people what to think and they were only going on what I was telling them. I feel that it's better now that someone actually knows me when I talk to them and ask them for advice. Of course the internet may be good to get my thoughts out on these things especially if it's a past issue, but when talking about the present, I think it's better to go to my actual friends than just using the internet to do it. Now with all that being said, how much information about relationships or friendships on the net can I trust? How will I know if it will or will not lead me to just act in a way that will be of a self-fulfilling prophecy?