I think you'd be hard pressed to find anything in his post by which to dismiss nilkn's (and the medical community's) assertion that the fear comes from "no rati

I think you'd be hard pressed to find anything in his post by which to dismiss nilkn's (and the medical community's) assertion that the fear comes from "no rational reason". This is, after all, a defining feature of anxiety disorders. Note that he doesn't say that this kind of fear in itself is not rational (propensity towards it might come in handy in certain social situations), but the degree of this kind of fear in the contexts that a diagnosis demands is totally irrational. Even if we set aside the fact that the disorder in question does not deal with rational things, one can easily argue that (in this context) the text is more permanent, and can potentially reach many more than unrecorded spoken language. Downsides include the opportunity to get stuck in a loop of doubt and rewriting the entire post. Misinterpretation of the written word is also common. Therefore, the trademark anxious rumination is not less likely to occur by virtue of the medium alone. Some sufferers of social anxiety might be anxious in these settings, others might not. All in all: interpretation based on assumptions helps no-one.