I made an observation a few days ago that there is a large population of people who spend too much time online. Large swaths of these folks' social lives are dedicated to sitting around on Discord, Twitter, Final Fantasy, VRChat, or whatever other online platform of their choice, chatting with people on the other end who they know nothing about past their avatar, username, and posting styles.
While the internet has its merits, it certainly can ruin people. I'm a nonbinary transfeminine person (though I don't fully present as such) and I can tell you firsthand that the world can be scary - rather, people in it can be scary. Agoraphobia can wreck a person but I postulate that becoming an online recluse only makes it worse. If I were to allow the fear of bad interactions govern me, and if I were to then retreat to online communities to feel safer, I would never get anywhere with my life, transition, or sociability. I would never confront my fears and my ability to exist and function as part of my local community would be crippled.
When someone confronts and experiences what causes their fear, they can win over the fear; but when fear is appeased with a buildup of walls around the self, or a retreat to a safe or comfortable place, the fear wins and the person does not improve. If we start interacting mainly with avatars and usernames, we allow ourselves to form idealized versions of people who we truly know nothing about. We start to twist and mangle our perception of reality and bend it to something that is not truthful; we replace reality with something warped and self-serving. It leaves us ill-equipped to deal with real life's actual problems if our perception of real life is skewed. We become less resilient and more reactive; when conflicts arise, we then crash out harder than we need to.
One of the most unfortunate parts about chronic onlineness is its ability to turn the bullied into bullies themselves. There really should be no moral justification for becoming meaner as a result of trauma. Bullies are created in precisely that way. Online spaces can amplify the idea that it is actually OK, especially when those spaces are comprised of a crowd with a homogeneous craving for revenge against the people or demographic who have wronged them previously. One may feel it gives them agency, but it is actually a losing game. It's easy to fall into these spaces looking for support or comfort and then suddenly become at odds with reality, at odds with improving one's own resilience; a reactive shell of a human with a clouded perception of the world.
If you want to get over your fear of the real world, don't retreat to alternative realities. Try to force yourself to experience things you find difficult or scary. If it's one step at a time, it's one step at a time. If you need to employ something like cognitive or dialectical behavioural therapy, there is no shame in that. Those are tools for you to use when you need them. Don't just give up and become a "Discord mod."
You need not spend hours per day roleplaying a virtualized personality you can never fully self-actualize in order to be happy. The world is so much better with you in it and the internet can turn you into a mean, jingoistic, fearful person if you let it. You don't have to let it. You need to allow yourself to be visible. Stand up for yourself, because at the end of the day you are the best person for the job, and anyone, including yourself, can learn resilience.