Saying to yourself, "I will respond with 1 line of dialog to the next person who hits me up" is deliberate, although the event itself will come randomly. Your

Saying to yourself, "I will respond with 1 line of dialog to the next person who hits me up" is deliberate, although the event itself will come randomly. Your train of thought here reflects classic avoidant behavior -- it's not therapeutic unless I'm in control of all the variables. Certainly you're correct depending on the type of fear being extinguished -- dropping buckets of spiders randomly on someone afraid of spiders isn't likely to help things at all, nor is dropping someone with GAD in the middle of a crowded concert -- but for the particular phobia (social anxiety) and exposure (small talk with strangers in public) we're talking about in this thread, it's definitely the low-stakes kind of exposure exposure therapy aims to provide.