Used to Be More Social

"It's undeniable, Earth. He's different than he used to be. He's never around, and when he is he seems... distracted."

— Mars, Nebula

There was a character who was once friendly, outgoing, and sociable to everyone he meets. He was the first person to speak in a conversation with one or more people. He was the one who had made a lot of friends and everyone liked him. He was the one who had reached out to the loner and made him open up to others. He even was the one who made friends with those who were his enemies or were just strangers to him. He may have been The Heart who always kept the band together in perilous times and always stuck close to his loved ones through the good and bad times.

A few years have passed by and the character hasn't really kept in contact with his friends or family. He doesn't take any opportunities to visit them. He may not even bother to pick up the phone and call them or even answer their calls. He doesn't even say "hi" to the people he passes by, let alone socialize about things he isn't interested in. There is the implication that the character has turned from extroverted and outgoing to introverted and distant.

There may be a couple of reasons for the character's current lack of communication with people:

• Deceased loved ones: The character may be going through a difficult phase. Perhaps he did keep in contact with his friends, but somehow, some villain took his relatives' lives away, and this so greatly traumatizes him that he doesn't bother to be approachable to others.
• Business before pleasure: The character may be in the workforce and may be more focused on earning his paycheck and working hard than on chatting with his friends, not to mention the character isn't sociable with his co-workers. Remember, Being Personal Isn't Professional.
• Heavy bullying: Perhaps the character wanted to blend in with people (although in some other reasons, they are expected to socialize with them). Unfortunately, the character is rejected and is the main target of their bullying. This goes with the Armor-Piercing Question what's the point of socializing if there are people who won't accept them?
• They just want to be left alone: The character got tired of talking with others and wants to have his space for a while (which can be quite common in reality), although other reasons have a character become enraged by society and happy to leave it or that he's just tired of being around people to the point of becoming The Hermit.

If the character's loved ones find the character, expect them to get quite upset with him and admonish him for being socially inactive for all these years while still telling him how worried they are about his well-being. The character may explain his reasons, and if his friends empathize with him, then everything's peachy-keen. In other ways, the character may try to reconnect with them, make new friends, or just enjoy his newly solitary and introverted life.

This can be often how the character becomes the Ineffectual Loner. Contrast Loner-Turned-Friend if a distant character becomes outgoing and friendly to others. This can invoke the belief that Loners Are Freaks. Could be the result of Break the Cutie. Compare Used to Be a Sweet Kid and Troubled, but Cute.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Asteroid in Love, Mira and Ao met once as children and only reunited some years later. Mira has noticed Ao, who was quite talkative as a child, has become a lot quieter. Turns out Ao developed a fear of speaking in the interim, after being teased for a case of Open Mouth, Insert Foot / That Came Out Wrong.
• As a child, Hiro of DARLING in the FRANXX was cheerful, curious, and a charismatic leader figure to his fellow Parasites. His current self is far more subdued and morose. As it turns out, this personality change is due to the heavy-handed memory wipe he received after attempting to escape with Zero Two.
• In Dragon Ball Z, Bulma berates Goku for not keeping close contact with her and the others for 5 years after he was defeated by Beerus in Battle of Gods, but Goku explained that he was only training.
• Loveless has Ritsuka, who became withdrawn after his brother's death.
• Haruka Kotoura of Kotoura-san is definitely a sweetheart and easily likable. However, she was outcasted because people were afraid and offended of her inadverdent Telepathy even though she never realized it until they lashed at her for it. Deconstructed since she wants to be more social, but she's afraid because she lives in a seemingly sweet yet corrupt society of lies that has No Sympathy for her.
• In Mission: Yozakura Family, Taiyo used to be an ordinary, outgoing kid who loved video games. But the trauma of losing his entire family in a single night from a fatal car accident has made him a recluse who struggles to interact with people. He begins to get over it thanks to being forced to live with the Yozakuras for a month.

Fan Works

• Rei is stated to have been an outgoing Genki Girl in the backstory of Evangelion 303, but brain injury from a flight crash brought her more in line with her canon counterpart.
• A Knight's Tale as Inquisitor provides an inverted example in the form of Arturia Pendragon. Back when she was King Arthur, she made herself as impersonal and isolated from her subjects as possible in order to become the perfect king for the kingdom. Having witnessed the fallout as a result of her seemingly inhuman nature, Arturia has made considerable efforts to become a more companionable person to those around her in her new environment.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce has become this trope following the events of The Dark Knight, and then failing to make a difference as himself, rather than as Batman.
• Don Vito Corleone chides mortician Amerigo Bonasera for this type of behaviour in the opening scene of The Godfather after Bonasera approaches Corleone for help when the court — and justice — fails his daughter and his family.
• The character Joaquin Phoenix does this in I'm Still Here when he ends his acting career to become a hip-hop star, cutting himself off from his former life.
• Adam Sandler's character in Reign Over Me becomes this after his family is killed in the 9-11 attacks.
• In 10 Things I Hate About You, Bianca mentions that her older sister Kat used to be very popular at school until "she got bored of it or something". It's later revealed that after sleeping with her boyfriend under the rationale that other people were doing it, deciding she didn't want to sleep with him again, and then being hurt when he dumped her as a result, Kat resolved to never again do things just because other people expected it of her and became viewed as "the Shrew" as a result.
• Thor falls into this in Avengers: Endgame. While the other survivors are leaning on each other and/or trying to rebuild their lives, Thor withdraws from his friends and his people and refuses to leave his house unless New Asgard's getting a shipment of beer. The only people he spends time with are Korg and Miek, which involves a lot of drunk video gaming.

Literature

• In Bakemonogatari, Senjogahara was very friendly and social during middle school, but after having her weight, and emotional attachments, taken away by a crab-deity, she becomes totally isolated.
• In the Circle of Magic book The Will of the Empress, this is one of the main points of conflict. Foster siblings Sandry, Briar, Daja, and Tris have been physically and emotionally distant from each other for several years, and Sandry in particular harbors a great deal of resentment for the fact that her duties forced her to stay in Emelan while the rest of them got to travel.
  • This is implied to be the case from the beginning of the series, for Tris. She's used to being bullied and gotten rid of, which has made her outright reject friendliness. Her cousin's reaction suggests she was less prickly as a young child.
• From the New World does this with Shun, who distances himself from his closest friends and even moves out of his hometown because he's turning into a Karma Demon.
• Cho Chang in Harry Potter becomes this. She goes from an outgoing popular girl and gifted seeker to a depressed lonely girl with only 1 real friend, thanks to a dose of Break the Cutie.
• Scout Mason in Heretical Edge withdrew into herself after a Stranger attack left her without a mother and the Stranger proceeded to use its Voice Changeling powers to imitate her mother and try to lure her out. She ends up slowly crawling out of her shell over the course of the story, particularly after learning her mother is still alive and being separated from her sister.
• In Island in the Sea of Time, Marian Alston cut off all ties with her kids after she realized that she was a lesbian and divorced her husband because her husband threatened to out her to the Coast Guard unless she gave him full custody of the kids and agreed to stay away. Since then, she doesn't socialize much because she's afraid one of her subordinates will learn her secret.

Live-Action TV

• The Doctor in Doctor Who is normally a very outgoing and friendly type, but has been known to withdraw for prolonged periods of time after a particularly traumatic event.
• Forever: Played with for Henry. In a flashback to before his immortality in "Hitler On the Half-Shell," he meets up with friends at their club, but he hasn't been around for a while due to his father's illness. In "Best Foot Forward" Henry only attends a party because he's tricked into thinking the hostess is ill, but he clearly is friends with her, and he's recently had a girlfriend stolen by Hemingway. In flashbacks with Abigail in "The Art of Murder," she's the one coaxing him to crash a party with her, and it's unclear how much of a social life they had outside of work. In the modern day, Henry starts out the pilot with no friends, so just about any level of sociability in the past would count.
• Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Taiga Hanaya used to be a kind, respected doctor with friends and life, but then the Zero Day happened and he lost everything. Early into the story proper, he is an arrogant, cynical Backalley Doctor living in an abandoned hospital and the only person he spends time with is The Thing That Would Not Leave, whose attitude can be even worse than his at times.
• An episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit had a woman who had been raped by the same man on numerous occasions become this. After the first time, he was never caught and eventually tracked her down again. Even after changing her identity, moving to another state, and becoming a paranoid shut-in, he still found her and did it again.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Galadriel wasn't aways this jaded and cynical Broken Bird who speaks to everyone with an authoritarian tone. She once was a sweet girl, if prone to take quick offence, and as an adult, she was once just an Elven woman who loved dancing among flowers, and had a more happy-go-lucky personality.
• Monk was this before Trudy died, despite still being a neurotic mess he was still functional enough to still do active police work. After her death, he suffers a complete breakdown.
• This happens to Scully on The X-Files as a result of the intensely insulating nature of her work. Mulder was introduced from the beginning as a loner with few friends, made worse (or even caused by) his lifetime devotion to finding his sister. Scully, on the other hand, was social in the early seasons, enjoying spending time with her friends, her godson, her parents, and her siblings, and even has a date or two. She mentions in season one that she would like to "have a life" and that she doesn't see herself as immersed in the work as Mulder is. Fast forward a few years, and we see her lose touch with friends and pull away from her family. Her brother Bill notices and becomes increasingly annoyed when she visits him for Christmas and rather than spend time with him, his wife, and her mother, Scully becomes involved in an X-File. She does maintain contact with her mother, but even her mother expresses worry that she doesn't share anything with her and instead "keeps everything so bottled up."

Theatre

• Roger in RENT becomes almost agoraphobic after his girlfriend's suicide. In "Light My Candle", he says to Mimi:
  I used to see you out and about
  When I used to go out
• In Timon of Athens Timon starts out as the friendliest, most loved man in Athens. Then his creditors take all his stuff and his "friends" won't help him out. He becomes a misanthropic hermit who just wants to be left alone.

Video Games

• Your villagers in Animal Crossing will bring this up with you if you haven't played for a few weeks. They generally just comment on how worried they were about you and that you shouldn't be so withdrawn... unless you promised to do something for them and didn't, in which case they will be quite upset with you.
• The hero from the prequel in the backstory to Diablo II; it was noted that The Wanderer (the hero from Diablo), was notably more sullen and withdrawn upon emerging from the labyrinth under Tristram. Later in the game, you realize that he went insane from overexposure to hell and was promptly possessed by a demon, which was quieter than him. Compound this with, canonically, killing the demonically-possessed brother he was trying to save, which shattered what was left of his mind and left him susceptible to enslavement from a demon overlord trapped in a crystal, which he promptly stabbed into his brain.
• Both the Warden and Hawke in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II, respectively, show the tendency to leave behind their Fire-Forged Friends at the end of their adventures—a fact that is lampshaded at the end of the second game, as one of the Warden's True Companions is now desperately seeking to reestablish contact with him/her.
• In The Caligula Effect, the timid Suzuna admits that she was actually very popular and talkative in middle school, where she was surrounded by friends. But when she entered high school and none of her friends went to the same school as she did, she ended up shy and had difficulty making contact with her classmates. And when she did, they ended up teasing her, so she began to pull back.
• Final Fantasy:
  • At the end of Final Fantasy IV, Kain Highwind refuses to attend the reunions and celebrations and goes to Mount Ordeals instead to atone for his actions. He stayed there until the sequel, which takes place seventeen years later.
  • The whole cast of Final Fantasy VI counts as this. Halfway through the game, they get flung to different areas of the world and while that happened involuntarily, they only reunite when one party makes the effort to find them all a year later.
• In "The Champions' Ballad" DLC for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mipha notices this about Link as revealed in her diary. Link used to be a talkative and energetic child and grows up to be very aloof, stoic, and rarely smiles. This is probably due to Link's dedication to being a knight for the Royal Family and his duty in protecting Zelda caused him tons of anxiety, thus he kept up a stoic front to look calm and professional.
• Through some dialogue options after rescuing Knuckles in Sonic Chronicles, there are Sonic's pals expressing resentment towards him abandoning them for two years after their last battle with Eggman.

Webcomics

• Erfworld has Charlie, who used to attempt to conquer all opposition, and rule the world as one side, who suddenly went in the complete opposite direction after attuning to the Arkendish. He has one city and seems to allow no one to see him.

Western Animation

• My Adventures with Superman: As a child, Clark was an ordinary, outgoing kid until he discovered his powers. After this, he became so afraid of hurting people that he started distancing himself from others. Pictures in "Hearts From Our Fathers" show him standing far away from his Little League teammates and there's no sign of a girl he posed for pictures with (implied to be Lana Lang) at any point afterward. Then he stopped inviting others to his birthday parties by the time he turned 12. This pattern didn't break until he shared a room with Jimmy in college. Even after this, Clark isn't shown going out of his way to interact with anyone his age other than Jimmy (his Best Friend) and Lois (whom he's immediately smitten with).

Real Life

• Generally, this may be a symptom of a whole bunch of psychological issues, e.g. depression or avoidant personality disorder.
• Sir Isaac Newton was known for this despite being an extremely respected member of the scientific community. On one occasion, he even went as far as to write to everyone he knew and basically say he wouldn't contact them again (he was back in touch within a year).
• Actor Jeremy Brett was naturally quite outgoing, but had to adopt an introspective and sometimes antisocial persona in his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes — and in the process, to some extent Became The Mask.
• Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd during his early career was said to be pretty outgoing. By 1975, due to a combination of drug abuse and pressure from the limelight, he had shut himself off from everybody but his family, wanting nothing more to do with his musical career, focusing his time instead on private ventures such as painting, gardening, and do-it-yourself projects.
• A young woman from London named Joyce Vincent was described by those who knew her as a high-flyer, socialising with many people, even a few celebrities (during her time dating a music producer). However, gradually she lost touch with friends and family to the point where after Dying Alone in her flat, she remained undiscovered for nearly three years. Her friends never checked up on her because they assumed she "was off somewhere having a better life than they were". Vincent's story became the subject of a documentary called Dreams of a Life.

---