u/Accomplished-Gap6280

Im based in the US and I have multiple different questions about this, so if anyone in this field is willing to answer it would help a lot

I know digital advertising in these parts of the world especially for financial services doesn’t work as effectively as it does in the West. Mainly because of trust with the local populations as well as bot traffic eating campaign budgets. So how do they actually get users?

I run an agency where I set up billboards and get news articles written in local media organizations for Western companies that offer services in emerging markets (so far I’m working with Western fintech/app companies and help market their service in Africa).

I’ve been trying to target companies that export products to Africa. Since almost all of them work through selling products to distributors, my pitch has been along the lines of “having brand visibility built through physical media and news coverage helps your distributors sell more so they buy and restock more of your product.”

Haven’t had any success so far with this pitch, so is this the right angle I’m taking or is there even an angle?

For context I’m 21m in college. My whole life I’ve always been extremely hyper vigilant. I wouldn’t say social anxiety is the right word because I am fine talking to people one on one or small groups, but as soon as I’m in an environment with more than 5 or 6 people I get incredibly nervous to the point where my whole personality changes. I feel like everyone is watching me and despite knowing it’s irrational I can’t shake it. It gets really bad in classrooms. I just get so awkward and incredibly nervous in public but I’m not actually a socially awkward guy, one on one or small groups in more private settings I can be very confident and extroverted

I’ve always had good groups of friends my whole life but dating has been non-existent because of this. No real talking stages either. Genuinely my only experience with girls has been one night stands when out at bars. While I do get kinda nervous around girls I find attractive like a lot of other people do, I get irrational panic and anxiety when someone shows signs of interest in me. A couple months ago for example I was at dinner with my boys and our server was a cute girl our age and flirting with me. My boys kept telling me to ask for her number and I forget exactly what she said but when we were paying our checks it was basically a free shot but I just couldn’t do it. When we left everyone was asking what the fuck is wrong with me. The thing is, it’s not even really the pretty girl that makes me nervous, it’s more getting perceived/people in public seeing me ask for her number or something is the part that terrifies me in these moments as irrational as it sounds. This was just an example but this has happened a countless amount of times to me over the years where I get so paralyzed I can’t even try.

The thing is usually I can pinpoint reasons for why I have certain tendencies I want to fix and can help improve from there but this I can’t at all. No abuse or neglect as a kid, loving supportive family, and no incidents I can recall around girls or being in public to make me this way. I have no idea how to fix this fear even tho I know it’s irrational, I always thought I would just grow out it but I haven’t at all and I’m desperate on how to improve. I’ve probably genuinely wasted chances of a relationship or maybe even my future wife based on how many times I’ve self sabotaged.

From a lot of comments it seems like a lot of people here struggle with social anxiety—even though obviously being tall is seen as the ideal state for men. Just curious if this comes from being tall you think? I’m 6’4 which seems to be on the short end for a lot of people here but I definitely feel I get anxious when I walk into a room or somewhere and everyone looks at me because I’m tall—I think my brain misinterprets it as judgment.

To get an article written in Ghana Business News, does this price seem fair for 500-600 words?

Used to be a good looking kid man. 21 now. Had a decent face and I’m 6’4. Summer going into freshman year I had a bit of acne and after pressure from my mom I hopped on accutane. Had an allergic reaction to it or something, but basically my skin just kept purging and purging with cysts and never got better until I stopped taking accutane after like 5 months and it almost immediately cleared up. Left me with pretty bad scars. Have a deep indent that takes a decent size of the my left cheek and another smaller like dime sized depression on my right side near my mouth, right where the cheek/mouth muscle is whatever—both of these caused by big cysts. Had micro needling done and it cleared the other scars decently well or at least enough for me to not be insecure about them—but fuck dude these two are bad and I don’t know what the best thing to do is. The worst part is in certain lighting you can’t even tell they’re there, but in others it looks really bad—so I’m in constant worry about how the lighting is making my scars look every time I talk to girls especially. If there’s lighting where my scars don’t show or from a distance I’ll see girls checking me out sometimes but when they see my face in different lighting or get closer nah it’s wraps, sometimes I feel like I see horror in their face.

For buying codes, I know its popular in Nigeria but I couldn’t find any data on Ghana.

Will pay 200 cedis

I get really conditional social anxiety pretty much daily depending on the situation that gets really irrational at times, but I noticed it’s more when I don’t have a point of conversation. Idk just as an example if I’m just buying water from the gas station sometimes I’ll get really nervous but if I have something beyond the word “hi” to say like asking for a pack of zyns I have way less anxiety.

Also weirdly when I lived in Spain for a year I genuinely had zero social anxiety when speaking broken Spanish because in my mind I knew I was immune to any judgement since I didn’t know the language. I would literally go strike up conversations with random people, something that I can usually never do back home without getting hit hard by panic—but also sometimes this can be conditional, like if someone starts a conversation with me by asking a question I can talk fine, but if they just say hi or hows it going with no follow up I can get incredibly nervous, like start twitching weird and stuff 😭.

I’ve seen this discussed before and the answers I remember were that its more mental. Like peoples personalities adapt to the way they view themselves physically or also your perception of someone’s personality is also influenced by the way they look.

Just curious if there’s a biological answer or theory on this that says the two are directly interlinked, or if it’s all just mental perceptions.

NOTE* Can’t change the title but I meant to just say physical appearance, not phenotype

Long story short, I’m renting a billboard in Somalia (weird situation I know but it’s for business)

vendors don’t speak any English at all. Looking for someone who I could pay to talk on the phone with them and translate for me

It’s called polse.social —not trying to advertise just genuinely urgently need someone to tell me if it connects

I have two really deep acne scars on my face, the rest of my skin isn’t that scarred. I don’t want to post my face on here but I can dm

I don’t really wanna post my face on here but if someone wants to dm me I can show you

Basically looking for smaller Western business that I can cold outreach who are starting to do business in West Africa—not major corporations that I would have no way of pitching. Nigeria, Ghana, but also ideally smaller countries like Sierra Leone, Benin, Guinea etc. Any advice?