This post wasn't what I was expecting from the "socially normal" title. While there is a lot of self-reflection and growth in this piece, a lot of the points felt more like learning how to charm, manipulate, and game social interactions.
Look at the first two subheadings:
> 1: Connecting with people is about being a dazzling person
> 2: Connecting with people is about playing their game
The post felt like a rollercoaster between using tricks to charm and manipulate, and periods of genuinely trying to learn how to be friends with people.
I don't want to disparage the author as this is a personal journey piece and I appreciate them sharing it. However this did leave me slightly uneasy, almost calling back to earlier days of the internet when advice about "social skills" often meant reductively thinking about other people, assuming you can mind-read them to deconstruct their mindset (the section about identifying people who feel underpraised, insecure, nervous,) and then leverage that to charm them (referred to as "dancing to the music" in this post).
Maybe the takeaway I'd try to give is to read this as an interesting peek into someone's mind, but not necessarily great advice for anyone else's situation or a healthy way to view relationships.
> a lot of the points felt more like learning how to charm, manipulate, and game social interactions.
A lot of stuff "normal" people do is charm, manipulate, and game social interactions. Except because they are not conscious about it, we give them a pass. One of the characteristics of autistic-spectrum individuals is that they must make a conscious effort to achieve goals that are achieved unconsciously by most of us. If we prevent such individuals from learning all that rarely-written-down stuff consciously because it seems "distasteful" to us, then we are disadvantaging such individuals socially.
Agreed. It's the playbook of social interaction written out. Nothing offensive about that.
Sometimes we find it distasteful to have things we're fully aware of explicitly spelled out. A trite quip here is "nobody wants to see how the sausage is made".
100% correct.
[dead]
I would take it further and say that the more light we bring to this subject, the less it becomes the exclusive domain of snake oil salesmen and the "sales tips 101" type books, and the more inoculated the general public becomes to manipulation.
That's a pretty cynical take on what "normal" people are doing.
It is weird, but part of the skill is to surf exactly on that line that is normal without crossing it.
Almost all honest signals are about a similar tradeoff.
They call that too:
> There are two reactions that one could have to the previous section. “Wow, that’s cool, how he developed the ability to create a lot of deep connections in this lonely world.” And: “that is a weird and creepy thing to want, sounds kind of vampiric.” I believe that both reactions are correct in some proportion.
> Here is the thing about going around the world in a state of emotional openness and presence. Many people are hungry for that kind of attention. They might dream of getting it from a parent, or a mentor, or a lover, but might never receive it. Maybe never in their lives. And if you just walk up and give it to them, for free — but you aren’t actually interested in a deep relationship — then they might, rightfully, feel manipulated, or at least confused. You are writing them emotional checks you can’t cash.
This post actually kind of blows my mind.
Through all their gyrations there is still something inherently contrived and performative to their interpersonal relationships that are far afield from normal, but pass well enough to permit connection. This line really resonated with me:
> I was going around dangling the possibility of emotional connection indiscriminately, ignoring the fact that it’s entirely reasonable to interpret this as flirtation.
I am still struggling to understand the way in which many people naturally form casual connections with others. In this example, a casual connection might be a hookup or a makeout session without it turning into a relationship. In another case from their article, it may be exchanging some personal stories at a house party without it turning into a four hour ordeal, or following up and developing a close, meaningful friendship. I perceive a lot of confusion here - and in my own life - about personal wants and needs being met, meeting someone else’s needs, where one’s personal boundaries lie, and how we effectively communicate them - or not.
In consent-forward spaces you get a lot of neurodivergent people using explicit verbal negotiation and agreement on everything, but this is a consent style that very much may not land well for people outside of one of those subcultures. Therapy and other trauma-informed modalities carry similar problems. It’s fine and great to develop subculture norms for the people participating in them, but it may not help them navigate the rest of the world. And yet, I’m not sure what else can be done. My social development mirrors the author’s, and I’m still unsatisfied with my results, even though I have more meaningful connections now than I used to, so this is not all without merit. It may just be the best that some people can do.
> I am still struggling to understand the way in which many people naturally form casual connections with others. [...] I perceive a lot of confusion here - and in my own life - about personal wants and needs being met, meeting someone else’s needs, where one’s personal boundaries lie, and how we effectively communicate them - or not.
I think this is a really interesting question. Speaking just from my perspective and experience, casual connections can form naturally from the basis of having no specific intention to connect. You simply give your attention to the other person without any preconceived needs or wants. Maybe the interaction is brief and superficial, maybe it goes somewhere deeper, who knows. But either way you get to experience the real, rubber-hits-the-road connection of being present with the other.
An important understanding is that it's possible to genuinely connect without being entangled in any way.
If the limit of someone's behavior winds up making everyone happier-off, I don't understand why I ought to care. In that sense, calling it "manipulative" seems either inappropriate or not very useful.
At least with something like adultery, there's a pretty obvious ill consequence of someone finding out what's going on behind the scenes. But if I looked behind the curtains of someone like OP and found out that the reason they're so charming is because they thought about people a bunch: I couldn't be burdened to care.
> The post felt like a rollercoaster between using tricks to charm and manipulate, and periods of genuinely trying to learn how to be friends with people.
That’s all the same thing. What is being friends with people other than essentially manipulating them into liking you by being likable and a good friend?
What’s important is why you’re doing it.
I think big distinction is “doing it on purpose, in a thought out manner” vs “just being who you are and people falling into friendship with you”.
Doing it on purpose - even if you don’t have bad intentions - still feels selfish, you make them like you for your own benefit first and foremost as you want them to be your friends.
I’m curious how you accidentally or unintentionally become friends with someone. Being friends almost always requires intent.
If you read "how to win friends and influence people", you'll realize that these two things are inseparable.
It's pretty much in the title of the book already: it's an ironic title because "influence people" sounds like a shady goal to have, but the book is fully focused on self improvement without ulterior motives. It makes constant reference to authenticity, for instance.
Just because something can be used for nefarious purposes doesn't mean that it shouldn't be studied or learned.
The numbers represent progressive stages of growth away from socially abnormal behavior. Numbers 1 and 2 represent the author's abnormal behavior. Numbers 5-6 are their later stages, where they've achieved competency in social normally behavior.
That's a good think to mention, but some of the tricks and behaviors I mentioned were in the later points like about pretending to be an energy healer. The last point about recognizing that these behaviors were not healthy is a good one to internalize.
This is consistent with my conclusion above: This post should be read as one person's retrospective, not as a guide for connecting with people. By the end, he realizes that playing social interactions like games and putting on personas that target other people's mental state is not healthy.
FWIW, I didn't think the energy healing bit was sleazy because I had already been exposed to the musician version which prompts a student to instantly sing better by pretending that they are <great singer> and just singing like them. And it works.
The book is called “how to win friends and influence people”, after all.
I read that book because it was on so many generic book recommendations lists.
It was less sleazy than I expected from the title. It actually had a lot of points about being genuine, being a good listener, showing respect to other people's opinions, admitting when you're wrong, being sincere, and so on. Decent advice, really.
A side benefit of reading it is you learn how to spot when other people are insincerely trying to use the tricks in the book against you. Once you see it, it's hard not to miss.
I read that book and I think it's terrible.
Though the "God has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence" was funny and I can relate...
but otherwise, I wouldn't want to live in a society where people are secretly hating you but "speaking ill of no man" a.k.a. "not criticizing."
I liked the book Winning by Jack Welch more, which advocates for "candor," and is essentially the opposite of How to Win Friends.
Not criticizing is not for hiding fact you hate someone.
Not criticizing is about - you see someone slipping don’t call them stupid just move on.
Like if someone makes a typo in comment here on HN, no one writes how stupid they are because they might be on the phone having autocorrect breaking their typing. You don’t really show off how smart you are pointing out small mistakes.
Hating someone requires that they somehow wronged you. There was nothing in the book about being nice for someone who is swearing at you or punched you in the face.
> Winning by Jack Welch
Why do I get the impression that this book is very much in line with Charlie Sheen's personal philosophy?
> I liked the book Winning by Jack Welch more
Jack Welch the sociopath?? Or is there another author with that same name?
The sociopath who destroyed GE in the quest for more money is someone I would only take social advice from if I was done with humanity and had started to use society for entirely selfish ends.
He got away with “candor” because he was at the top and anyone who disagreed with him was removed.
Honestly any self help books from people in unique positions in society trying to tell the common man how to improve always read to me as “my top 10 tips for winning the lottery: tip one buy a winning lottery ticket”
Mutual preferences is the best idea in the Dale Carnegie book. Resolving conflicts by being imaginative enough to suggest a win-win option.
Interesting, when I was reading it I got a real sociopathic vibe from many of the points and especially how the author was talking about them.
If I take a helicopter view of the main themes they make sense, but I will admit feeling a little sleazy by reading the book.
Reading is subjective however, so I’m glad it didn’t make you feel this way.
> and especially how the author was talking about them.
To really get the best out of this book, you need to realize that it was written in 1936.
I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much without regularly having this fact top of mind while reading it.
90 years ago, think about how different the world was then. This is before WWII!
Interesting, I felt the exact opposite. I used to be guarded and aggressive and was careful not to give other people too much else they might take advantage of me. My takeaway from that was... It's fine to be nice and caring and helping people out genuinely (I know, a shocker, but coming from a more... Uhh.. predatory... World it might not be something that crosses your mind.)
Disagree with your reading, respectfully. The majority of that book is putting into words the things we like about people. It helped me immensely, especially points like not criticizing people and thinking it’s helpful. I would say the title aged terribly and comes off as sociopathic.
> I don't want to disparage the author as this is a personal journey piece and I appreciate them sharing it. However this did leave me slightly uneasy, almost calling back to earlier days of the internet when advice about "social skills" often meant reductively thinking about other people, assuming you can mind-read them to deconstruct their mindset (the section about identifying people who feel underpraised, insecure, nervous,) and then leverage that to charm them (referred to as "dancing to the music" in this post).
I see why you'd think this, but I disagree. In my opinion it's two sides of the same coin, and the key moral question is whether you use those skills in a moral way. I've seen both well-meaning and charismatic people and not so well-meaning charismatic people, and at the end of the day I believe that charisma is a powerful tool, but it's not fundamentally good or bad.
Social interactions have always felt like a game whose rules I don't intuitively understand, and I've always envied people like my wife who handle it much more naturally and fluidly. The same way that I'm comfortable and capable in analytical settings, they navigate social settings with just as much finesse. I've personally spent a big chunk of my adult life trying to learn to navigate social interactions more comfortably and more intuitively, so I can see some parallels with what the author writes about. (For the record, I'm neurotypical, just awkward.)
For most people I don't think it's about charming, manipulating, or gaming social interactions, I think it's about wanting to make connections and friends because that leads to being happier.
you are doing it all time. you just not aware.
the person was so bad in thing, and had to build relevant part of the brain manually. that part you got automagically.
there is no difference except awarness. over time he will loose awarness too.
skip to the end
It is manipulation, you are doing things that impact how others view you in an effort to get them to do/feel/think something. Human interaction is various forms of manipulation.
Many people hear music and can put together some moves without thinking about it, others have to deconstruct, learn, and rebuild... it's still dancing either way.
Manipulation vs influence is about intent and degree of peoples ability to reject it.
If someone is influencing (actually) other folks can take it or leave it, and someone is willing to own it - because it’s something they actually believe.
Manipulation is non optional, and if rejected causes attacks of various forms because people are doing it not because they believe it/it will help the ‘target’, but because they are trying to extract something or control the target.
It’s the difference between ‘follow me if you’d like’ and ‘do what I want you to do or else’.
The goal of influence is often manipulation... we see it all the time with "influencers" trying to illegally advertise to people by not disclosing sponsorships
People influencing others are trying to manipulate their emotions or thoughts into feeling a certain way about something...
We can look to the definitions themselves...
influence: the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.
manipulation: control or influence (a person or situation) cleverly, unfairly, or unscrupulously.
influence is literally there in the definition of manipulation
I think this means you didn’t read the piece, as it addresses this concern of yours in perhaps the simplest way possible: it’s about why each prior modality has issues.
He seems like an odd duck.
He does, doesn’t he. For one it’s pretty special to have the energy to do all this. Or is it just because it’s a summary of 20+ years?
Somehow you feel like someone who’s socially awkward would not just go on a 4 hours super deep conversation, as some form of experiment.
I wonder what this person is like irl. I did like this piece.
I really love this piece! I relate to it but it also doesn’t describe me. I’m far more intuitive than this person, though still agree that insights have driven a leveling up of how I relate to others. They were different insights, sure but the model holds.
Once my spouse and I worked for the same company and attended many of the same meetings. The opportunity to pick apart our impressions of the subtext really helped me to learn that I should listen to my gut, that everything I needed to know about how other people were feeling was already in my head and i just needed to stop doubting.
Another time I watched a rather ugly and old person have amazing romantic success with a young beautiful person. How could it be? And I realized that authentic confidence is social gold. I had to let go of my insecurities because my flaws were irrelevant in the face of authentic, confident self acceptance.
I think everyone has a different journey and different epiphanies and it is so enjoyable to hear these experiences put into words.
> The other day, someone told me, “I can’t imagine you ever being awkward with people.”
I was telling my therapist of several years recently about being uncomfortable with the number of new people I've had to meet recently.
He seemed surprised that I wasn't excited by it all and said something along the lines of "You seem like a very social person, that seems out of character." It struck me… am I really that good at masking that my therapist didn't realize I am absolutely terrified in near all social situations? I have zero idea how to make small talk with people I haven't known for years.
Working from home since COVID has made my social skills so much worse because I don't get the practice.
The best small talkers say very little. We just ask interested questions about what you've already said. An easy cold opener at parties is, "So how do you know the host?" Then inquire about whether they're still doing that thing, or how long ago it was, or where they did it, whether they learned any cool things--the point is to keep asking questions.
Most people love talking about themselves and things they like to do. If you can keep them doing that, they'll remember fondly the "great conversation" you had.
Fair warning: It won't get you past the third or fourth interaction, at which point you probably actually need to have something in common, but it's an easy way to get through parties.
It is like that to me. I believe that I've just learned the proper motions for some interactions, and I can look to be very social person proficient in communications. It is easy for me, no problem. Till I hit some situation where I need to think fast, trying to figure out what is expected of me now.
> I am absolutely terrified in near all social situations
It is different for me, I'm absolutely confident in near all social situations, but there is a catch, I actively avoid social situations which make me terrified, and I'm pretty good at it.
> I have zero idea how to make small talk with people I haven't known for years.
I have never bothered to get the idea of a small talk. I hate it from my teens, I hate to dig in my mind for something I can say when there is nothing to say. Or to voice opinions about things I don't care (and "i don't care about your TV-series, I never watch them" doesn't count as a socially acceptable opinion). So I just avoid such situations overall. Generally if you avoid talking with people tet-a-tete you don't need to talk small. You can just look like you are listening, why calculating ways to leave the place without offending anyone.
> I have zero idea how to make small talk with people I haven't known for years.
Forget small talk.
Listen-- really listen --and engage with open ears. When it's your turn to talk, offer up an anecdote in reply if it's on topic or take the opportunity to pivot to a related topic you're passionate about. If you do the latter: do. not. info-dump. Give them a chance to play the game I just described to you from their side.
Need a cold opener? Get the party going with something you anticipate the majority of the people there would remember.
--
You: "Hey, does anybody remember the Blizzard of '96?"
Them: "Yeah! I remember they closed down all of Route 9!"
You: "Hell yeah they did. My family pulled me down the highway on a snow tube. I've gone tubing every year since. Any tubers here?"
Them: "No, but I love snowboarding."
You: "Nice. I was briefly obsessed with snowboarding after playing 1080 on the N64, but I was always too chicken-shit to try it. Where do you go snowboarding?"
Them: "Vermont. Where do you go tubing?"
You: "I used to do it over near that big hill by the library. Ever see that?"
--
Arm yourself with personal stories to make situations like this easier. People would rather interact with the guy always telling stories than the visibly-uncomfortable one sitting in the corner.
> Working from home since COVID has made my social skills so much worse because I don't get the practice.
Opposite for me.. I apply my social efforts to a smaller subset of work demands on my time and social interface, and so I have more energy for gregariousness after work, on my terms, etc.
If you are outwardly meeting lots of people and your therapist is picking up on vibes you aren't awkward, it sounds to me like you might be being quite hard on yourself. Not to suggest your experience isn't valid, but that perhaps your small talk is not the issue!
Consider that context heavily impacts how you show up, and in a therapy context, you’re likely to be a lot more relaxed.
So I’d bet it’s not that you’re masking that terror when you’re with your therapist, but that it isn’t present.
i think part of the reason is that our own discomfort feels much stronger than it actually shows to others. the discomfort is inside us, and the people we interact with don't notice because for them it is not a concept. only if you and i meet one or both of us might realize the others discomfort.
it's kind of like farting in public. you know you did, and you think everyone noticed, but in reality most didn't
I recognize all of these steps, having gone through flavours of them myself. The root for me, was that I learned at a young age that to feel safe, I needed to cater to what others wanted for me. Never learning to ask myself, what I wanted. It might be the author's next step, is reconnecting with his inner-desire and finding out what he wants from the world, instead of how he wants to appear in the world.
I don't have much to add to this right now other than to say this is really fantastic writing. I don't normally enjoy "my journey" kind of blog posts, but this one feels full of valuable insights, and I'm grateful to the author for sharing. It's also just nice to read something written by a skilled writer.
Because unlike the other my journey posts, this one is sharing acquired knowledge and framing it through his (in this instance relatable since it explains the reasons) experience.
Other my journey posts are look at me with only enough subject matter to disguise it.
This post is about sharing knowledge, the others are about sharing experiences.
I have been trying to manage other people's feelings and reactions for as long as i can remember. That's a self-soothing fantasy of sorts. With this mindset, you are naturally drawn to people who need such emotional management - a realization that you can't actually manage other people's happiness was long and painful. These days I am not sure that getting people to open up by altering your presentation is a good idea. Maybe we should learn to accept that we have no insight into another and just observe them with patient curiousity? That we are fundamentally alone and isolated and the best you can hope for is a person who's values align with yours - and so you feel safe around them?
There's a lot of wisdom in this post and it resonates with my experience, great write up OP.
I'd add one thing though: OP's ability to observe and imitate these kinds of social dynamics he was seeing suggests he's already coming from a solid foundation of EQ and also feeling secure enough to try on these different personas. Often there's a lot of work to be done to even get to that place!
This was an interesting and thought provoking read. I appreciate the author's openness in sharing all that they did.
I eat at Chinese restaurants where my waiter is a QR code. Please pour olive oil in my lap, hold my hands, and tell me I'm special.
Related: "just be yourself" is horrible advice, on its own, to give a young person. It must be accompanied by an understanding that there is a social game to learn to play, and that "being yourself" is not always compatible with playing the game well.
Incredible wisdom here. I can only speculate that the author is right about the later stages since I'm nowhere close to that sort of thing.
Overall this piece reminds me of reading writeups from pickup artists who sort of ascended beyond the game, like they practiced so many social skills that they can see through every situation and lose interest in it all.
The bit about him spilling olive oil onto someone's dress then playing it off with a flirtatious joke seems very strange to me. Maybe it's just my upbringing but trying to pull off a joke like that in a tense situation seems very risky. I would be worried about coming off unserious, indifferent, and sleazy while also stoking an even angrier reaction from the person.
I think it was much more about anchoring the other person's response as quickly as possible and less about what was specifically being said. Sort of like speaking first in a negotiation to anchor your salary expectations. Even if the rate you propose is outlandish - doing so shifts the expected response curve in a way that can be useful.
This is one heck of a hook:
> I was one social notch above children who were so pitiable it would be rude to mock them.
He's just like me, for real
Appreciate the writing and the author's fortitude in achieving their goals. While I never had friends, neither online nor in person, I cannot identify with this at all - it reads like a strange, obsessive seeking of external validation which I have never felt myself. Maybe I am just disinterested in people in general.
"hey call you when they need something
Trees for the blunt, the g's for the front
I found a way to get piece of mind for years
And left the hell alone, turn a deaf ear to the cellular phone
Send me a letter, or better, we could see each other in real life
Just so you could feel me like a steel knife
At least so you could see the white of they eyes
Bright with surprise, once they finish spitting lies
Associates, is your boys, your girls, ______s, _____s, homies
Close, but really don't know me
Mom, dad, comrade, peeps, brothers, sisters, duns, dunnies
Some come around when they need some money
Others make us laugh like the Sunday funnies
Fam be around whether you paid or bummy
You could either ignore this advice, or take it from me
Be too nice and people take you for a dummy
So nowadays he ain't so friendly"
- Deep Friend Frenz DOOM
i can sort of relate. ive been told by my family that i dont like people much. im also confident in conversation and social situations. i think the latter is true because i feel no pressure to perform and naturally seek novelty to entertain myself
That's interesting. People are really different. I had my own stages to being still not socially normal person. I always wanted friends, sometimes had some, sometimes felt lonely. In case you happen to read this, did you not have friends in childhood but didn't feel bad about it?
It took me decades to learn to be a socially normal-ish person. Some of us are just good at computers and not so good at people. But that was in the geekosphere - university, then a tech job. Working as a bartender/waiter is certainly jumping in at the deep end, and accelerates the process.
I wish I had the drive to do as much work as the author has. Instead I will live more or less where I am now, stably in social mediocrity, perpetually somewhat impedance mismatched with the people around me.
The problem with accounts of life like the author is that it sums up a whole hell of a lot of time into a nice short Saturday morning read. In this case, it sounds like it spans multiple decades. It sounds like you feel socially awkward. You really don't think you can do something about that in thirty years? In November of 2055, you expect you'll be the same bag of awkward you are today? 1,500 weeks or so from now, you don't think you can leave the house or go somewhere multiplayer online to meet up with me people and make mistakes until there's a close enough impedance match that they signal (you) isn't too attenuated or overpowered? This weekend's not over yet, get out there!
The problem as I see it is that, while I certainly could have that growth by 2055, by that point it wouldn't matter. E.g. if you want to increase your social ability in order to have a family or a satisfying job, in 30 years it will be much too late for that.
Thanks for the encouragement. I wrote my comment while a bit hungover from a dinner party :) In general I'm OK with how I interact with people.
I think we're all a bit impedance mismatched. The author's experience of having instant intimacy I think is a result of what happens when you spend the time to become completely attuned to other people. He found drawbacks to that skill.
What I really meant is that I don't know if I want that level of interpersonal skill. I'm actually kind of happy bumbling about socially, making jokes that don't quite land, alternating taking up too much space with not taking up enough.
The older I get, the less I desire perfection and power in all domains. I look forward to being a bit of an oaf.
If you are routinely getting invited to dinner parties and drinking and conversing with good friends, your social interaction level is probably just fine.
really identify. especially with the early yearning to connect and not having the skills. Learned sooo much over the years by being brutally rejected and eventually taking stock of what happened and extracting a rule or two. but then, yeah, next phase, rules don't matter (except when they do) and change moment to moment anyway.
funny to read this here on hacker news of all places, where I let my carefully managed, almost always inhibited, childhood nerd self fly free in the comments.
OP has definitely gone beyond me in many ways, with his talk about embodiment, and being able to be so empathic that he has elicited tears of gratitude. Enviable.
I felt the same way when I was in University and High School. In fact I ended up focusing on it so much at the time that my grades really suffered, and I feel like I could have ended up at a better University and career if I had focused more on my grades and learning.
Either way, I did learn my lesson, and I'm now much more comfortable with myself and not seeking validation or connection from others so much.
You may have gotten better grades but doubt you would have been more successful professionally, emotionally, or romantically.
This sounds like a ton of work to learn and by the end it sounds more like a curse than a super power. To be so above people in terms of social intelligence must be horrible. It sounds like the Author views interactions on a completely different level.
I dont have any offensive social strategy so its hard for me to dictate making friends but passively I do quite well by just projecting an authentic version of myself.
It really depends on what you want to do with your life.
If you want to do engineering, or play music, or be a professional chef, you don't need these skills.
If you want to be in sales, or a working actor, or manage a high-end restaurant, or be a professional interviewer, then these skills become pretty important.
Blessing and a curse combined. With great power, great responsibility, etc. etc.
Like his wife bluntly telling him many women had crushes on him and it must be coming from something he was doing.
He could have went different directions with that information. And chose the direction that was best for his marriage.
One hazard of being a programmer is that sitting alone in a room alone with a computer for 10 years can turn you into a weird dude.
Lately I have taken steps to re-learn how to be social. I am doing a lot of social dances, like Salsa, Swing, Bachata. I think partner dance is good training for body language. Also good training for presence, as when you really start dancing, you stop thinking; conversely when are thinking too much you will stiffen up and choke. There are a surprising number of PHDs and other very cerebral people in my local dance scene.
One thing I have learned is that being good at dancing and being fun to dance with are orthogonal. You can be technically quite bad and people will still want to dance with you if you have good eye contact, smile, laugh at your mistakes, tell little jokes, complements, etc.
Conversely there are some people that are really technically good but not that much fun to dance with because they grimace and look away and don't match your energy.
Of course the best is when you find a partner that is both fun and technically good, and this is what I ascribe to become.
The downside of dances is that I don't get a lot of practice at talking, I guess this is something you could learn to do at bars but I don't drink and so have not found really good place to practice a lot of talking.
I try to get the guys from my jujitsu gym to come dance, these are big bad dudes who could really mess you up in fight, but they are all scared to dance with the girls. You will be scared your first few times for sure. Personally, I tend to be nervous in direct proportion to the beauty of my partner, which can be a problem because women that dance tend to be above average in that respect.
Most dances have a 1 hour lesson at the beginning and then social dance after. The lesson part is easy, you just follow the instructions and the teacher will have you rotate partners so you get to meet most of the girls. I tell my guy friends, just come for the lesson part and then if you get too nervous you can sneak out early.
> some people communicate in order to exchange facts, and some communicate in order to find connection.
I love this quote. Excellent and very relatable piece.
Social skills can be acquired through practice. But being an introvert, I've specifically picked my profession so that I can focus on ideas over people. Tinkering and solving problems excited me, whereas staying in touch with friends, noticing social dynamics, networking, reading people, being good at remembering everyone's birthday, etc felt tiring to me and was less appealing.
I'm at a place in my career where I'm managing more and doing less. It's a weird transition because I've spend a decade acquiring technical skill, only to discover soft skills are equally if not more important (perhaps increasingly so with AGI) .
Unfortunately I communicating ti exchange facts. I have a lot of trouble with people and I straining to get better.
That was a delightful read.
The last part resonates with me, early on I realised that listening to people was the easy ticket to connection.
But like the author, a lot of the time I was not emotionally available for that connection and I have definitely caused some pain and confusion.
well they're not normal
but they are getting to the place that "normal" people end up, I think. It seems to be the case that no amount of being in your head is a substitute for just not being in your head in the first place.
He kind of goes from normal to super-normal, and has to deal with how to handle this outlier social competence responsibly.
I'd characterize the entire journey as "neurodivergent"
but there's nothing wrong with that, and there are lots of other neurodivergent-ish people (regardless of whether you like that word for it, I just mean "outliers", the sort of people who have trouble with socializing in a way that most people seem to have an easy time with), and many of them could stand to benefit from figuring some of the same things out
I think slapping neurodivergent on everything kind of dilutes the word. I had some social challenges growing up, probably still a weird cookie at times, but def would not consider myself neurodivergent, it just feels like a different league of difference to the norm.
But that's the entire point of the term neurodivergence. Rather than categorizing people into specific pathologies, you acknowledge that every spectrum of human behavior is just that: a spectrum. And that means that some people will be outliers on any given axis.
For example, the author of this piece is clearly on the autism spectrum. Of course, everybody is on the autism spectrum, even people who show no symptoms (they are on the left hand side). This person is clearly functional, but far from what would be considered neurotypical.
The point of neurodivergence is to better understand the various spectra that make up human personality without judgement. And by understand people who are outside the norm, we can better understand humanity as a whole.
i sorta agree but also that's basically just what the word has come to mean. agree that it's a catchall, but also, like, it's definitely not the case that everyone's social experiences are anything like the OPs'; theirs really is a slightly-autistic-coded category of experiences.
The irony of this piece being enjoyable to read and feeling very relatable isn't lost upon me :)
It's fascinating to think about how much goes on inside each person's mind!
One thing this article reminded me of is a conversation I had with an old roommate of mine. I always considered her an absolute sorceress when it came to dealing with people.
Anyway, I forget how her and I got onto the conversation, but she asked me, "Before you say something to someone - do you ever play out the conversation in your mind?" and, of course, I said, "Yeah. I'll practice what I'm going to say and think a bit about how it'll land." and she countered with, "Do you ever take it one step further? By responding to yourself as if you were the person you're speaking to and then formulating your response to their anticipated response?" And my answer was an emphatic, "Fuck no. Are you crazy? Do you do that in real-time mid-conversation??"
Of course, my roommate's approach wasn't something she used all the time, but the entire notion was foreign to me because the number of branching outcomes seemed large enough as to not be valuable to explore. I'm not psychic - why bother trying to formulate a response to a response not yet verbalized? And yet, if it were low enough effort and I had good enough confidence in the outcome, I could completely see the value in anticipating responses and trying to approximate the ideal N+1 response. It shocked me that someone I considered naturally talented in this space had also become comfortable taking on a mental exercise that I'd entirely written off as too effortful.
FWIW, I still don't follow her approach and am reasonably happy with my conversational skills, but the revelation really made me take a step back and consider how much potential depth there is in areas I considered shallow.
Why do we need to be normal anyway? Why can't we just be unique?
Because not being normal results in being lonely, rejected by society, and often unable to keep a decent job. After a lifetime of struggling just to achieve fairly pitiful social success, I would give a great deal to be able to be normal.
This to me reads as someone who has never been "the bad kind of unique". Not being normal carries very heavy practical repercussions in some cases.
"Just be yourself" is only good advice for people whose 'self' is acceptable and well-functioning.
I never got the sense the author was trying to push people or himself into a box, more that he wanted to be able to connect to others more easily.
This Ted Talk from his wife is also very interesting:
https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/behold-my-ted-talk
The topic is agency. Which is a word I hear often used by rarely defined or described in detail.
She talks about agency as being the key to going from drug addict to CEO of a successful organization, and the specific habits that process involved.
I recognized her name when one of her blog posts was trending on HN yesterday (from the same submitter as this one, actually).
For what it's worth: She has something of a history in the professional poker world of being a less than reliable narrator. To be fair, the fallout during her time in the poker world overlapped with her admitted drug addiction problem. However, from what I recall from that era I'd suggest taking some of her stories with a grain of salt.
She is very good at storytelling and charming people, though. There is probably a lot of value in studying how she delivers messages, puts spin on the past, and charms audiences.
The idea that most people who are doing professional public speaking are reliable narrators is a bit quaint. There is a lot of room for framing that you have to allow for story telling. If you think that all story telling is about reliable narration, you're going to have a tough time being successful at it or interacting with others who are.
Please go to a therapist.
Honestly I think lesson 7 is nobody's normal. All the things the author's noted about interacting with other people - see how weird and rare it was and how long it took to recognize it? See how often it's on your plate to be the one to go zen mode to figure out how to dance with someone? The author isn't normal, they're now skilled. Before, they weren't normal, because they noticed they weren't skilled. Most people don't.
"Socially normal" these days seems to be more like "spends most time at home, scopes out gym on regular basis for potential likeminded people, struggles to ask other people about themselves, flakes if given a rare invite to something"
The laye stages sound like psychopathy. The whole thing sounds on the one hand very useful and great for shy people but also very one dimensional. Did he make any friends?
I’m “on the spectrum,” but I had no idea, until I was in my forties. I just assumed (as did most folks), that I was “eccentric” (or “weird,” for the not inconsiderable number of people that didn’t like me).
Once I did find out, it wasn’t really a huge revelation, as I was already well on my way towards learning to compensate.
I know that the popular outlook, is that folks use “neurodivergent” diagnoses to excuse (and not address) bad social behavior, but that certainly wasn’t the case for me. It was just another data point.
If we’re jerks, then no one will cut us any slack; regardless of a diagnosis. It’s still incumbent upon us, to address the issue.
In my case, I’ve spent my entire adult life in an organization that forces us to work intimately with others, seek out and interact with many types of people, and to look at ourselves, in a harsh, realistic manner.
That naturally encouraged me to address my social issues, regardless of the causes. Eventually, it also forced me to find the cause, but by then, the cure was already under way.
> the cure was already under way
What's that cure?
> [spending an] entire adult life in an organization that forces us to work intimately with others, seek out and interact with many types of people, and to look at ourselves, in a harsh, realistic manner.
I was diagnosed short-bus autistic in elementary school twice.
But I also have Williams Syndrome, which gave me empathy and a fondness for people and their stories.
So while I was bullied mercilessly I also had friends. Deep, lifelong friends I still have today.
Wow, this is something else. Reading about Williams Sindrome is a bit shocking, you sound like such sweet people, but it seems easily preyed upon. I'm curious how you managed the difficult parts, did you share your experience anywhere in the internet? Excuse my curiosity, but I read about it a while ago and found it fascinating. Hope I don't become off rude.
Must be exhausting to have to explicitly learn all that.
I don't know whether author is on the spectrum, but for many people on it, it feels exactly like this.
Retitle the blog article to
"I'm Autistic and this is how I learned to mask"
> I was probably the most severely bullied kid at my school.
> I was demonstrating my erudition
Those two things might have been linked. I wasn't there, but I'm suspicious.
Fortunately the author learns better by the end of the article, but it stuck out to me because LLMs have made people suspicious of five dollar words like delve so to use the word erudition in this day and age is a choice.
Well, in the timeline, this was after the author was bullied.
Also, he says:
> In essence, I became an example of obnoxious precocity, a heartfelt young wordcel.
So it doesn't sound like disagrees with you either way.
It's all in the preamble before the later sections of learning and my implicit point was that my social awkwardness got better when I stopped trying to show off how smart I am. It still comes out occasionally, and I don't try to be condescending, so I do really appreciate my close friends when they give me feedback when I am.
My other point though is that as people using AI to generate content take the time to tell ChatGPT that it sounds like ChatGPT and to rewrite it to not sound like that, that people are going to be suspicious of anything recondite that isn't in common parlance. But I'm a believer in xkcd 810, so what can I say.
Trying to show off how smart one is is probably part of the motivation behind many interesting comments posted on here, and more generally, a big motivation behind a huge number of the useful things people do. Doing it in a non-obvious way requires additional ingenuity. The cumulative effect of people trying to show off how smart they are has undoubtedly greatly accelerated the development of our species.
I know this article wasn't written by an LLM because the writing isn't mediocre.
The post has just enough minor grammatical imperfections that a LLM wouldn't make that I don't for a second believe this copy was written by an LLM .
"now add some grammatical errors and a couple of spelling mistakes so it feels more like it was written by a human"
Wow, I can’t get past the first couple of paragraphs.
> I’ve tried so hard to learn how to connect with people. It’s all I ever wanted, for so long.
Are there really people like this? HN is probably the wrong place to ask this question, but this is so far outside of my bubble that I just cannot relate. Some people feel like this, for real?
You don't usually realize that's why you're the way you are until much later.
At first it might feel like "these people don't like me cause of how much better I am than them", or "these people don't like me, well fuck them, I don't need anybody".
People have all kinds of excuses they tell themselves to feel better about the needs they can't satisfy.
Yes, I have dedicated most of my life to trying to connect with people. In my experience, since I can't connect with people none of my other strengths or skills matter.
Yes? I mean...why is it so hard to imagine people having difficulties with things you find easy or natural?
Maybe social connection doesn't come easy to them and they don't care about it much.
Ok, sure. But is the disbelief there are other people unlike him out there warranted?
I'm curious what your bubble is.
The peice is relatable to me at least. A great many of the lessons were something that I also arrived at through deliberate practice. Though the paths we both took are radically different, the main ideas are universal and the resulting destinations are similar.
I can't list all of the times when someone has shared that they didn't mean to "share all that" because it happens often enough that it's become countless.
As mentioned elsewhere, it illuminates the spectrum of interpersonal and social intelligence where it becomes impossible to not notice how some people repeatedly, and perhaps even compulsively are their own impediment to personal connection.
Do you mean wanting to connect with people?
Or not being able to connect with most people?