Oh, no. No no no.
That new series Mr. Robot is cool, and the fact that they're portraying a protagonist with social anxiety is a cool idea (because it's underrepresented in popular culture except to mock quiet/awkward/insecure people, and because, well, SA is ****ing boring, it's not romanticized like depression and schizophrenia, etc.).
However, while I am aware that the severity of the anxiety varies from person to person and depends upon the situation/activity, I think it's safe to say that most socially anxious people struggle with conversation. I'm sure there are many exceptions, but by the issue's very nature it only makes sense this would be the case, and if you're going to make a protagonist of a TV show have some kind of disorder/emotional issue, you would want to make him a typical case, no? You can't say he has social anxiety and then have him walking up to strangers and slickly informing them he has dirt on them and can ruin their life if they don't do A or B, without breaking eye contact, voice perfectly even and composed, facial expression confident.
They're portraying him as strange and nonconformist, someone on the fringes of society (it is cyberpunk after all), depressed, a drug user, and a psychotherapy patient. And he mentions (more than once) that he is socially anxious. Okay, so he has mental issues, we get it. But honestly, do some actual research on SA next time, it's kind of insulting. He really just looks more like a depressed drug user than anything else. I see no real social problems here.
