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.
>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.
I have to say this strikes me as a very distorted perception. I don't know about 'normal,' but a socially successful person isn't intuiting their behavior subconsciously, they have learned it, and are actively mindful of it as they engage in it. Otherwise I think socializing would be excruciatingly boring. I think the distinction is that they had the capacity to learn from interacting with others, and had the confidence to iterate until they became comfortable with their social skills (which to others may appear 'unconscious').
I also don't think normative social interaction has much tolerance for manipulation. Maybe in the scope of a night out socializing or a business transaction, but in the context of actual relationships, those people are often ostracized or avoided in my experience.
I read parent's wording of "manipulation" as not in the usual negative connotation, and more as making the other person do something specific.
For instance if you wanted a security guard to help you find your way in a shopping mall, there would be approaches that are more effective than others. For instance making it sound more like you have something important to do and they'd save your day by helping isn't specially abusing the person. They might feel pretty good about helping you, it's still somewhat part of their job so you're not tricking them either.
>I have to say this strikes me as a very distorted perception. I don't know about 'normal,' but a socially successful person isn't intuiting their behavior subconsciously, they have learned it, and are actively mindful of it as they engage in it.
Lots and lots of, if not most, social behaviors are intuited subconsciously.
And that's even if the person has actively studied and learned them (and most are picked up by osmosis, not consciously learned anyway).
>I also don't think normative social interaction has much tolerance for manipulation. Maybe in the scope of a night out socializing or a business transaction, but in the context of actual relationships, those people are often ostracized or avoided in my experience.
That's either oblivious to 90% of social interactions out there, or just understands "manipulation" at the con artist or sociopath level.
Even wearing nice clothes to make a better impression is a kind of manipulation. Same for using different manners of speaking and language in different social contexts, and lots of other stuff.
Yes, I think we have different definitions. Some people make a distinction between social behavior and manipulation that you apparently do not.
If I wear nice clothes and make a good impression on someone, I am creating an outcome we both wanted at the outset. If we are meeting socially, they probably wanted to like me, and I wanted them to like me. That was the shared goal. That is cooperative, not manipulative.
It's very strange that people are ok with people charming others "naturally" (while it's probably because they learned by imitation, often from parents) while "practicing it" is seen as bad and manipulative.
It's the same with genetics. Getting lucky with looks is fine but working for the same goal (eg surgery) is somehow bad and people often hide it.
The reductionist biological explanation might be obvious to you, but in the actual world, the reasoning and the moral condemnation of things like plastic surgery is never explicitly about giving false signals regarding one's reproductive fitness. Reasons "haters" cite are about vanity, narcissism, refusing to look your age, etc.
For me, motivation matters. If you want to learn social skills to make your life easier while not harming others, that's perfectly fine, admirable even, but if you learn it to damage others for your own profit, that's immoral.
Same for the motivation of surgeries. You might not be comfortable with yourself, and want to change something, and that's perfectly fine, but again to changing appearance signal something to benefit you and harm others with less effort, it's immoral again.
And, I believe, if you need to change how you behave or look to get acceptance from a circle, this means the circle is toxic and you'll be far happier elsewhere.
That too is pretty obvious from the same perspective: Admitting you only care about someone’s genes is itself considered shallow, so people make up other justifications based on other, more accepted values.
While I certainly agree that it is an example of poor judgment and perhaps weak character to be broadly judgy about cosmetic efforts in general, I can understand the theoretical plight of someone who might be taken in by a deceptive person in that regard.
If you steelman the argument you can see the point, but it’s also unreasonable to assume that a person is living the steelman version of life (and being a deceptive person) just because they had a facelift.
OTOH, if you are admiring people’s genetics using their appearance as a proxy, I can see why it might seem like “cheating”
But the problem is not admiring good looks if they're natural, or expecting someone to be truthful, or anything of the sort that might or might not theoretically happen.
The problem is clearly with the bullying. And the assumptions around character. And basically using "changing yourself" as a proxy for hallucinating all sorts of completely unrelated bad characteristics. And the rationalizing around it.
It's the same for behavior: people are fine with the behavior of "naturally charming" people but as soon as someone mentions "learning how to do it" people immediately jump to conclusions and call it manipulative.
Someone having one consciously developed ulterior motive… does increases the likelihood of them having other consciously developed ulterior motives that might be hidden away?
The linkage isn’t as strong for unconsciously or subconsciously developed ulterior motives. Hence the huge gap in how people behave towards that.
Calling it "ulterior motive" is already a judgement call.
Being better at socialization is virtually demanded by society. "Not looking good" is also punished. There is nothing ulterior about anything.
The fact that a certain chunk of society demands both perfection and authenticity already makes it necessary for people to not be transparent about such things.
You might think that those people’s opinions don’t matter, but it turns out that ‘lots of other people value me highly’ is in itself a signal.
And yes, it is horrible, but if you want to solve a problem, you must first understand the problem, and ‘some people are just born with Evil in their hearts’ is not a very good sociological model.
Or it could still be, but have other explanation. E.g. you're called out if you ruin the signal to noise ration, but you're also called out if you genuinely give the unfit signal.
(Don't approve doing this or anything, just pointing the blind spot in your dichotomy, interested in the argument on a purely technical manner).
But this is the neurodivergent ‘just world’ blind spot.
The world isn’t just. People like people with good genetics, because being friendly with the strong gets you benefits more than it gets you costs. Especially if you’re able to influence (or even pathologically manipulate) them.
Most people just know this, subconsciously. So they would probably even deny it. But it’s transparently easy to test, and even easier to see evidence of by just looking around.
Also, most attractive people work to be attractive because it’s often mutually beneficial (assuming they can counter manipulate or influence appropriately). Having people attracted to you gives you the ability to use other people’s resources for your benefit.
Most attractive people just know this, subconsciously. So they would probably even deny it. But it’s transparently easy to test, and even easier to see evidence of by just looking around.
This is generally kept covert, because like most covert power, it attracts negative attention if brought to conscious awareness - as then it’s perceived as manipulation, not influence, or encourages more jealousy, etc. as it’s not fair.
But life isn’t fair, except where we make it, and making something fair requires power.
And acquiring and maintaining power is fundamentally unfair.
> Physical attractiveness is a signal of reproductive fitness when it’s genetic, and not otherwise.
Nay, artificial physical attractiveness is also a signal of reproductive fitness. It isn't a given. It's the subject's genes that made a brain that was able to design (and to arrange to pay for!) the improved attractiveness.
It's not qualitatively different from brushing hair.
Yes, technically, having spare resources to devote to your own appearance is considered a positive signal, but it is an unreliable one, and often one not as valued by the people making the judgement. If there are many ways to signal wealth, a signal that has some intrinsic downside will lose its value if lots of people are sending the other wealth-signals.
>It's the same with genetics. Getting lucky with looks is fine but working for the same goal (eg surgery) is somehow bad and people often hide it.
We also tend to hide how hard we work to make our success look natural, but we reveal how hard we work on the extremes of success. For example, if I work hard and take a score of 17 out of 20 in a test people will say "I barely read last evening, phew", but if you're consistently scoring 19-20/20 people may even approach you to learn your studying methods and for tips, because they assume there are important takeaways that they can adopt.
It's my pet peeve with how society recognizes that someone is talented, which is blatantly flawed because all you can do is see what they're capable of doing. Someone may be talented yet unable (or unwilling?) to tap into their talent, but since we recognize talent by the output you can't really tell the existence of talent unless it's at the extremes of success, like the 8 year old who can solve mathematics that are a grade or more above the current grade.
I see talent like a genetic predisposition that can be appropriately cultivated to attain success. It's not much different than my height, because I didn't choose it, yet I can guess that there are men out there who hate the fact that I have their desirable height yet I never hit the gym, cultivate my social skills, or take advantage the fact that I look younger than I am. I am willing to bet everything that I met at least one person who thought of all of these things the first moments they looked at me.
But at least genetic predispositions like height are visible to the naked eye and no one can dispute the differences. When it comes to differences in the brain it's where we ignorantly proclaim that things are obscure therefore they can violate the very facts of observable nature.
In sort, not only I fully agree with you, but I also agree with the obvious double standards in society around it. If I take ADHD medication and that helps with my focus to improve my performance in school or work then I deserve that success as much as someone who naturally had no problems with ADHD. Why is this different for looks (like hair transplants, etc.) is beyond me.
Of course, but just because you can throw a metaphor around doesn't make it true.
There is no "rule" in life that says that people have to be judgmental assholes to each other. Using a card game to justify the behavior is just a rationalization.
>There is no "rule" in life that says that people have to be judgmental assholes to each other.
Apparently there is, which is why this judgement you speak of happens.
It just happens to be a social rule, and you don't like it, but it's a rule nonetheless. Doesn't have to be an official rule, agreed upon, and signed by each participant, or some physical law.
Hence, the card game metaphor has some merit. Like people think you shouldn't cheat in a card game, many people also think you shouldn't cheat with cosmetic surgery.
I 100% disagree. It is a minority making the noise and turning everything into life as a game.
Most people don't care, and I'm willing to bet that the ones rationalizing the behavior here don't go out of their way to care or talk about any of this.
>Yes, people who judge others like this are anti-social assholes
On the contrary, since many (if not most) people do it, they're on the social side.
>Once again: rationalizations don't make something true
When it comes to social truths, what most people do make them so.
If most people think X bad, X is bad is a social truth. Doens't matter if you think X is "not bad in reality". Reality doesn't care about good or bad anyway, it doesn't have a morality.
Nope. Actions that harm social bonds, judging that shames, excludes, or hurts is antisocial even if many people do it.
Also this post has the classic logical error of assuming that because something is a certain way, it should be that way.
> Reality doesn't care about good or bad
Likewise: What you call "social truths" are real in that they shape behavior and consequences, but they’re conventions, not objective moral facts, and they can be unjust or oppressive.
>judging that shames, excludes, or hurts is antisocial even if many people do it.
That's a modern dellusion.
Sociology (and common wisdom) tells us that judgment "that shames, excludes, or hurts" is necessary for the development of morality, social cohesion, and cooperation.
Note: not any random judgment "that shames, excludes, or hurts" has this possitive role, but plenty of judgements that "shame, exclude, or hurt", meaning that judgement that "shames, excludes, or hurts" is a useful social tool.
Says the person trying to rationalize away obviously common human behavior as not existing because it is bad?
Or do you think anti-social assholes do not exist or are not common? Or that any system of identification of people should not attempt to understand them?
That is a mistake I think. Many 'normal' people who grow up (emotionally) make a conscious effort not to instrumentalize their social interactions even if they do know how to do it. Certainly with friends they aim to be authentic.
I think emulating things that a serious person discards is a step backwards.
My take living as a relatively high functioning autistic (& other things) person and having many neurodivergent friends is that instrumentalizing is more often due to relational failures due to developmental social differences. The underlying of those is most often a hypersensitive (to sight, sound, smells, touch) individual having periods of being overwhelmed by the world around them. Couple that with parents who really don't have either the time, energy, or temperament to connect with such a kid.
This makes trying to figure out social cues difficult. After enough failures to connect, or being picked on to the point of feeling constant betrayal, we go to the safest place we can to try to play out interactions to avoid being hurt: our imagination. We make systems to predict behavior, we take to shallow taxonomies and try them on like tinted sunglasses. We are so masked, so protected, so... hardcore avoidant of the shame we feel just for existing, and we lean on this until we finally figure out that what we went through was really, really hard, and we find again the threads of our things that we never got a chance to develop, and start to grow them from the level they are, not where we pretend they are.
There's a lot of ways away from that, and those who instrumentalize might still be on the pathway upwards. Its hard to know where someone is from.
I think this is where the high incidence of neurodivergence in the trans community and certain subcultures (furries, roleplaying) comes to fore. Autism is often accompanied by identity conflicts - between what you're labeled as, and how people treat you, and how you feel about yourself - because communication disruptions are common when neurotypes are unaligned, and identity is both the reason for and the means by which much interpersonal communication takes place.
People who don't feel resonance between their label, treatment, and self-concept will question why that is, up to questioning aspects of their identity themselves. Once unmoored from a proscribed identity, people can find the ambiguity uncomfortable and untenable, and may adopt a concrete identity that fits more closely.
That doesn't make the adopted identities any less true, of course. Identity is socially-constructed, so deciding that you feel more comfortable presenting as a woman isn't any less justifiable than being assigned good ol' football-playin', roughhousin', English class-hatin', red-blooded American manhood at birth. Calling yourself a wolf or an orc is probably more extreme, especially in general contexts, but at a convention where you're surrounded by a thousand other people who find it easier to connect when they've thrown on a (literal or figurative) bear sark? Go ham.
In the end, of course, you're just you. All of the labels - even the ones you internalize and externalize - are just ways of trying to communicate, and to make being around you easier for other people, in part by giving them a box to put you in and to understand you by, because that's what our pattern-matching ape-brains like. The mask is a mask; it's a cover, not a substitute, for the totality of a person's being.
> in part by giving them a box to put you in and to understand you
Identity is a lookup for a custom zlib dictionary, so communication compresses better! Which means we can pick and choose per communication channel. :) Thanks for that thought!
I completely disagree, I find this claim to also be unsupported by the current evidence. Identity is only a part of being trans and often comes much later.
The goalposts for "sexism" have moved to the edge of the galaxy if people today think that's sexism.
Parent says that "identity is socially-constructed", they defend trans people, they say it "isn't any less justifiable than being assigned good ol' football-playin', roughhousin', English class-hatin', red-blooded American manhood"
- but the fact they said "presenting" as opposed to "being" a woman is sexism, as if they're some "chauvinist pig"?
This poster is a well known transphobic troll that makes new accounts every week and implies that trans women are autistic males who "pretend" to be women because of sexism.
That being said, saying presenting instead of being is not ideal indeed.
It is sexism, in that this promotes sexist stereotypes regarding how women should present themselves. There is similar sexism inherent in the concept of "manhood", as well.
The irony of your white knighting is that its in reply to a kind thoughtful and insightful reply to probably one of the most gender non conforming people you've ever interacted with, who didn't see any problem with it.
I think many of the “manipulations” are actually more like dances; both people engage in a consensual proxy display of willingness to cooperate. Any “manipulation” occurs only when one person is unaware that the “dance” exists and mistakes a protocol negotiation for a call to action, or where one person is deceptive and intentionally mis-signals their intentions.
I can see why someone not understanding the “dance” could easily mistake it for “innocent” manipulation… but when it’s basically a scripted give-and-take that serves as a symbolic representation of a persons willingness to cooperate and their advertised intentions, it isn’t really manipulation at all, but rather a type of communication that allows (hazy) inferences about a person’s character and intellect in the guise of insignificant banter.
Although, I agree that for average people, over instrumentalizing your interactions becomes fake (although, to be honest, most could use a bit more, including myself, to communicate more effectively with those close to us).
Still, agree with others, seems like you're generalizing what is good for the average person is also good for those with personalities that are more at the extremes. Yeah, know a couple of people who just don't understand what people are thinking or feeling, ever. And so they have to learn a system of cues to look for to figure out whether a person is angry or sad or happy... These people need to create systems to make socialization work.
I wouldn't say just friends either. The biggest leap I made in social stuff is to simply stop caring what other people think. If somebody doesn't like me, cool - there's plenty of other people. If they do? Awesome, because they're getting the 'real' me, so it's probably going to be a good relationship.
Basically I think a lot of people's issues with social stuff starts with something analogous to a boy who never asks a girl out for fear that she'll say no. People don't engage in interactions, or try to be overly pleasing, to try to appeal to other people.
But that's never going to lead to a good relationship, because it's fake, and it'll feel exhausting. By contrast when you stop caring, you might be surprised to find people like you even more, it becomes even easier to form "real" relationships, and suddenly social interactions aren't tiring at all.
This becomes even easier after having kids because you're probably not really seeking relations in any meaningful way, so you completely genuinely just don't care. And then paradoxically it becomes so much easier. Well, at least it becomes wisdom you can hand down to your own kids, or random anons online.
> The biggest leap I made in social stuff is to simply stop caring what other people think.
If you do care what other think, you alter your behavior to make them think what you prefer, and it becomes inauthentic on your part and manipulation of others. That's not to say that all things for others are manipulation; if you find out that you don't listen to people well and improve that, they might like being around you more because being heard is an important core part of relating.
You might not be understanding what is annoying to people, or you might understand it quite well and are using that adopted identity as a shield. You can’t lose what you don’t have.
Either way, if you aren’t content with your situation in this regard, I would recommend study, introspection, and perhaps therapy. Dale Carnegie produced some excellent work in this regard, aiming towards win/win interactions. He’s more business oriented, but that context is easy to strip away, and the principles stand on their own.
You should probably figure out why - unless you are ok with nobody liking you.
If _everyone_ finds you annoying or difficult being around, you most like are annoying and difficult to deal with.
How you go about figuring what bugs people is perhaps the hard part.
You speak as if you are an expert on everything in the universe at all times. Way too much black-and-white thinking. And many people often strongly disagree with your statements... a great deal of your comments are quite often downvoted and/or flagged.
There is a reason you have been banned from several different platforms now. Disagreeing/arguing with their actions is not how you improve yourself, and you can't explain your way out of it, you have to want to change how you act, and work hard at it. You have to be ok with being wrong. Your weaponization of logic has destroyed your empathy. You are craving validation through technical dominance, but this just further isolates you/alienates others.
I think real intelligence by definition requires empathy and humility, which is typically the opposite of such dogmatism in my opinion. "As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding."
The Dunning-Kruger effect also applies to smart people. You don't stop when you are estimating your ability correctly. As you learn more, you gain more awareness of your ignorance and continue being conservative with your self estimates.
Also you seem to like to claim that almost everything is illegal and then not back up your claims with any useful sources, instead telling people to look it up themselves or give vague non-answers like "it's in the German law code". That and most of your comments are just plain negative in general, and I think this ultimately stems from some kind of childhood trauma that you have not dealt with.
Many of your comments are you condescendingly implying other people are stupider than you, and you have a disproportionate number of comments targeting me specifically.
These words are unfortunately loaded. "instrumentalizing" is so close to "instrument" for me to see them as unrelated in meaning. But lots of similar words drift in meaning, or have several interpretations.
I don't have any issue with people doing things for "natural" reasons, vs. realpolitik analytical reasons, when the motive is still benefit-neutral, or benefit-benefit relative to ourselves-others.
> 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.
I don’t think that’s a fair comparison to what’s describe in this blog post.
The writer describes taking on different personas and trying different tricks with other people portrayed as subjects of some sort of experiment.
The casual mentions of how they tried some conversational trick and got someone into full on sobbing was particularly striking because there was hardly a mention of concern for the other person. The only discussion was about the trick used to elicit the response.
That is what I do not agree is consistent with normal interactions. Most people would feel some degree of guilt or dirtiness, for lack of a better word, if they used some of these tricks to lure random interactions into a false sense of connection and feigned friendship, especially if for no other reason to experiment on the other person.
I don’t think neurotypical people can ever understand this process but I’ll try to explain what it was like for myself, a neurodiverse person:
- yes, I was consciously trying different ways to fit in
- yes, I felt uncomfortable that it was forced and unnatural
- no, it didn’t occur to me at all this was a deeper issue; I had all kinds of naive explanations: oh I’m not as confident because I because I started school a year earlier than the other guys; girls don’t like me because I’m not as handsome as other guys; I’m not as social because I don’t have an older brother to learn it from, etc.
- over the years, as I got better at what I now know to be “masking”, I just subconsciously embodied the idea that consciously working on every little aspect of social interactions is “normal”
- it took me 30 years to realise, wait a minute, it’s probably not normal that I had to put so much effort into all of this, and got myself a brand new shiny autism diagnosis at 40
the only book worth reading on this topic is "how to appear normal at social events" by Lord Birthday
Like you I was disgusted to see OP's link posted to these hallowed grounds, a bunch of filthie normie jibber jabber waxing poetic about how great it is to have cracked the normie code
The “trick” you are referring to, requires you to care about other people in the first place.
As I recall, the section this came up was when they were coaching.
This does feel like another instance of how people have a deep instinctual grasp of social interactions, but a shallow ability to articulate the moving parts in detail.
I think the analogy was “everyone know how to use the flush, but they can’t explain the mechanisms behind it”
What comes across as creepy about the techniques is that the approach doesn't seem to involve personal consequences; it seems to be sterile, like a game with no negative effects if it goes wrong. Normal people have all sorts of anxiety and potential hurt if they do these things, since they know how they affect others.
Personally I'd prefer that "spectrum" individuals just be themselves. I take it as my own shortcoming if I can't establish a dialog. I like the challenge of interacting with someone who does things very differently. This of course assumes there's a genuine desire to connect. I knew someone who had some techniques like this, and it was weird interacting with him. The techniques put up a barrier and it didn't feel authentic.
Maybe I'm jaded but I see it as a failure of the "normal" person if they can't deal with someone who communicates differently. All their issues just get triggered, not the fault of the spectrum individual, and not their responsibility to overcome. As a practical measure for just dealing with these people, I could see using techniques. But not when you actually want to relate with someone.
As a neurotypical person (I don't think the term "normal" is appropriate) I'm probably doing or did the same things the article is talking about. And I never thought about negative consequences, except when I was extremely anxious.
If anything, people on the spectrum, introvert, or just awkward are probably thinking about the consequences (positive or negative) way more than someone like me.
I also agree with the sibling post. The failure of most (?) neurotypical people to accept people on the spectrum as-is shouldn't be a burden on them. If society can't make them safe, they should do whatever is best for them. "Authenticity" (which is just an illusion anyway) be damned.
By authenticity I mean being able to speak your thoughts without having to strategize around the other party being unable to handle it like a mature adult.
Yes, my whole comment was about me and my experiences. That specific point was that I don't see it as a burden that someone is interacting me differently than most people do.
A lot of normal people may routinely act charming and game social interactions, but they generally aren't being "manipulative" in the process. "Manipulation" is really just a polite word for routinely lying and BS'ing people on the off-chance that they are going to be fooled and/or not want to call you out on it.
If you're reasonably socially skilled, you can usually see it coming a mile away and react accordingly, but what gets you in trouble is the not-so-common case where you actually fall for it, since the consequences can be quite bad. None of this is describing ordinary social interaction, tough; these are really two entirely separate topics, and there's little reason to conflate them.
So for the same set of actions, it's fine if you're unaware of the underlying mechanisms, and manipulation if you are aware?
If you dig through the weeds of it you can argue just about everything we do socially is manipulation. We are social because we're social animals and will die without help from other humans (well, particularly thousands of years ago). At the end of the day, we are nice to people to get things from them that we need - food, shelter, knowledge, strength. It's always been like that. But because it makes us feel fuzzy and good, apparently that's not manipulation, that's being nice.
You can absolutely be charming towards people and play the "game" of social interaction while being quite aware that this is what you're doing. The point is that this need not involve outright lying or BS at all and that the latter is what such terms as "manipulation" actually imply in a very practical sense; not that it somehow counts against you if you're aware of what's happening at a pure level of social interaction. (In fact, the opposite is generally the case; active social awareness and mindfulness is a big part of what people variously call "EQ", "empathy", "cross-cultural competence", etc.)
Looking at the definition of manipulation, it occurs to me that manipulation must be a win-lose situation. Otherwise it is persuasion. You could use the same technique, but if it is win win for both it is persuasion, but if you are gaining from their expense it is manipulation. At least according to Wikipedia.
There are also white lies. Are you manipulating children if you are claiming santa exists? Are you manipulating a person if you either omit a truth or do a white lie because you know truth at that moment in time would be worse for their life.
That seems a little bit of an odd interpretation to me.
Persuasion is honest. "Hey, I think you should do this thing because of reasons a, b, and c, there are some downsides like y and z. It may mean something to me peronally, so I may also to appeal to you to do it for me as a favour. I may even play up how important I think it is."
Manipulation is dishonest. "Hey, I'm going to use an underhanded technique to make you feel like you're missing out on something, or are inadequate, to get you to do this thing. Maybe I'll go overboard on flattery and inflate your ego to achieve my end. I also might lie or omit some of the downsides to give a distorted view of the risks"
Even if it's a win-win situation, it's still manipulation if you're seeking to bypass someone's agency.
> Are you manipulating a person if you either omit a truth or do a white lie because you know truth at that moment in time would be worse for their life.
Yes, certainly, and that's why people often get upset about "little white lies" too. Maybe you are doing a good thing, maybe you're not, but removing agency from someone by keeping the truth from them is always manipulative.
The wiser question may be "is manipulation always wrong?"
And I'd argue that if it gets your kids to calm down and go to bed on Christmas Eve, maybe not ...
"we are nice to people to get what we want" is flat out not true. We are nice to people because cooperative societies out performed the non-cooperative ones on the macro level. On a micro level this kind of attitude sometimes/often prevails, we call the people who act like this "jerks", and the people who try to justify it with these kinds of rationale "sociopaths", because to the group as a whole its so incredibly damaging, and to the individuals on the other side of it, insufferable.
> We are nice to people because cooperative societies out performed the non-cooperative ones on the macro level
I.e. biology gets what it wants... We want to survive, mother nature wants us to survive, society wants to survive.
I am absolutely not suggesting that outright jerkish behaviour is acceptable (although to suggest jerks have no social success is probably untrue; plenty of people who are attracted to jerks). I am arguing that if there was no personal advantage whatsoever to being social and nice to people, we wouldn't do it. We'd be lone animals, spread out across the land rather than concentrated in towns and cities. There's a spectrum of selfish behaviour, right? We are somewhere in the middle because it's advantageous to be.
Both are true. We want to survive and being nice to others increases our likelihood of survival. Wanting to survive is also selected by evolution and wanting to be nice in order to survive in a group setting that increases survival odds too.
What about intentionally making conscious effort to remember to use people's names when talking to them?
And other similar things that increase someone's odds of being liked or convincing or getting someone to do what they want more likely?
Doing those things is not BSing, not lying, yet people can consciously be doing those to increase the likelihood of getting what they want.
Many people will obviously do it naturally. I personally have to make a conscious effort every time for such things.
Does having to consciously decide to do those things make me a sociopath? I certainly wouldn't bother saying someone's name if I didn't think it mattered for reaching my life goals. Extra same with small talk.
Then what about memorising some funny, self deprecating stories from my life to make people laugh so they would like me more?
Then what about asking questions, keeping up conversation etc, etc, even though I would rather be in my own thoughts doing my own thing?
I do it all consciously and intentionally for my own self benefit. Some to avoid bad things happening to me, some to make good things more likely to happen to me.
If I didn't do those things people might think I am awkward, weird, silent, boring, pass me on for promotion at work, etc.
Do you really think you're the only person who's heard of that "technique"?
When someone uses my name in conversation, it makes me think less of them, because it's so unnatural and clearly they might be doing it to manipulate me.
> When someone uses my name in conversation, it makes me think less of them, because it's so unnatural and clearly they might be doing it to manipulate me.
Oh man, I always find it so slimy when people do that! I've also noticed it's mostly HR people or sales people who do this, so clearly it's a phony technique they learned somewhere. But I suppose it gets taught because it works, maybe for people who don't pick up on the fact that it's so forced?
I'm not entirely sure what constitutes "normal" anyway. A frequent tongue-in-cheek topic of conversation between my wife (a counselling psychologist) and me is how we're weird, and everyone else seems to be normal, where "normal" in this thread of conversation usually describes some sort of puzzling behaviour.
Each one of us occupies our hallowed space in the rich tapestry of neurodiversity. Only a few people design our social institutions though. "Normal" is looking like those few, and tbh, varies widely. Compare normal at a Cambridge academic department and normal at the local gym and normal at the BBC.
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".
Yeah. I wonder why that is - is it because it highlights a conflict between our actions and values? If left unexamined, it's a non-issue, so having it spelled out feels like a problem being created?
I think sometimes this is when we find our way to the middle of two relatively simple drives: "be an orthodox group member/ avoid being a social outcast" and "avoid the discomfort of cognitive dissonance / admitting hypocrisy".
If there aren't immediate consequences for inaction (especially if there ARE costs and/or social consequences for action) were very good at convincing ourselves to ignore it (or tell ourselves we will EVENTUALLY deal with it but just not right now)
I would much rather assume the people I'm interacting with are honest and conveying their real feelings, vs playing some (probably) Machiavellian game with N levels of dishonesty and manipulation from what could easily be a malevolent person at the core. At least that tends to be the assumption when you pick up on a lack of authenticity in this way.
When you have a real indication of dealing with a master manipulator, it's very understandable that you should use an abundance of caution. That's probably an instinct in us at this level.
Of course everyone is at least a little aware that they're putting on a bit of a ruse with their public persona, but that needs to be tethered to some level of authenticity or you'll just be sending out Patrick Bateman vibes.
This strikes me as a glass-half-empty interpretation. Why is the stuff from the blog post necessarily machiavellian and manipulative?
I didn't read any of that into that blog post.
Rather, it was about how to create win-win situations where the people involved genuinely enjoy each others company. No need for bad intentions here.
> When you have a real indication of dealing with a master manipulator
This statement seems like a paradox. Forgive my "No True Scotsman" example. If the person is such a "master manipulator" what indications do you have? The social normies will miss them, or will think they are the ones making the suggestions/decisions. This is the hallmark of master craft sales people.
Wouldn't you think it is more important what the goal for the other person is? If their goal is to enrich and make both of your lives better, does it matter whether they consicously use social techniques or have natural automatic ability to do so?
It is also autism vs psychopathy. Patrick Bateman is nowhere close to someone autistic trying to learn those socially successful behaviours. Patrick Bateman is a terrible human being not because they are inauthentic, he is a terrible human being because of the acts he did and wanted to do.
That's not what I got from the article. Firstly they seem to be saying that they were not seen as phony (hard to judge). Sure they're using tricks, but they were copying tricks off other people! Not all social interaction is genuinely raw.
I thought the article was more about leaning into their own style, becoming more intuitive over time.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
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.
...and the more low-trust becomes the society, as if it's not already the case in plenty of places.
It's no coincidence that people always judged and shunned such overt manipulators, as well as tried to downplay the underlying mechanisms of manipulation in general (outside of the sales types, which are often looked upon as slimy and not deserving of trust).
Why dontou consider it "manipulation"? Would you consider what goes into you resume, or performance/promotion packet "manipulation"? In every interaction there are spoken and unspoken rules, and those who excel tend to be those who can understand the subtext and express themselves effectively.
Depends how you define outright BS. I bet most people at least cherrypick the best data points amongst thousands of possible, giving a look that doesn't really represent them as a whole. And then they omit some undesirable things. Similar to how people on social media will only post their best moments, giving inaccurate representation of their lives and themselves while overall causing others to feel like they are missing out, etc.
So here is the skill of being able to cherrypick data to give the best representation of yourself as opposed to true average honest overview of oneself. Then the skill of avoiding answering questions you don't want to answer to by answering by talking about what you want to talk about (think politicians).
Same is with real life interactions. Among 1000s of things you could say or do there is always some that are more effective than others in reaching a certain goal, whether it is getting a job, making a sale, convincing someone, making a friend or whatever.
Is it manipulative only if you make up something or if you are able to get people to do what you want by being able to cherrypick the most convincing ideas, arguments, facts etc.
If they have thousands of examples to cherry pick from... That's a signal of experience. So it's not entirely manipulation. If you can pick from your experience and find the best examples and you have several... You have experience.
It really depends on the topic. You can do a lot by cherrypicking and omitting stuff. Simple example, I can talk about all the stock trades where I hit big and leave an impression that I am super good with picking the right stocks, but not talk about my losses. This is super obvious example, but in real life there is infinite nuance to all of it. The stories I choose to tell and stories that I choose to leave out.
But in the context of job interviews.. It applies. But also that applies in trading, if you have a bunch of experience winning or losing, that's useful experience and I want your input on my team. The fact that you cherry picked is built into the evaluation. You have experience. Whether or not you have some innate talent for it is aside. I care about your experience.
Yes in interviews it is expected and people do cherrypick. But the ability to cherrypick can show a lower skilled person in better light compared to a higher skilled person who may not cherrypick as well or tends to not like cherrypicking the best examples since it doesn't feel honest. Sometimes this honesty can work well, sometimes not. Sometimes if honesty doesn't work well it just means the job wouldn't have been a good fit anyway, but other times it is just putting you at a huge disadvantage.
I have a friend who is somehow super good at that, it is fascinating to me. But he can't be bothered to do actual work. He performs extemely well in interviews, gets high paying job, and then stays there for 3 months, gets bored. Of course he doesn't put that on his resume. He doesn't really lie, but he definitely cherrypicks, embellishes etc. I am kind of the opposite of him. I have stayed at the same place for years and am naturally passionate about software eng, but troubled socially. He is very confident and has no shame.
I don't know how to filters those people. But I'd say in general if people have positive things to show... It doesn't mean they don't have negatives. They can be hiding all kinds of negatives... That's hard to test. But if you have several good examples you probably have some experience. I assume you pick the best. Maybe that's problematic. Maybe some hyper-honest people try to pick a mixture that better represents their skills. But I don't know how you balance for that. I want them to represent themselves and sell themselves.
But job applications aren't the same as normal life so this is probably a tangent. In normal life, though, I kinda assume I'm seeing what people want me to see. But if it looks really good it probably means they have good sample of experiences to cherry pick from.
Yeah, I mean it is tough, but I guess my main point is that it is never super clear what is manipulation, what is persuasion, what is bs, what is honest, etc. Many people cherrypick and omit intentionally, consciously, many people subconsciously and naturally. Many will simply remember only the good things about themselves and radiate only that, others are extremely self critical of themselves, and radiate that. Sometimes one works better than the other.
Two different people can have the same achievement and one thinks it is the most awesome and special achievement ever, and embellishes it, the other thinks it is not even worth mentioning or words it completely differently.
E.g. for job interviews when are you considered to be "mentoring" someone? Someone might do few code reviews and claim they have mentored juniors, other one can have 1 on 1s giving valuable career advice, tech advice, but still not think of themself as a mentor.
I agree. I don't know which segment you fall into... But for applications and interviews I would recommend to radiate... Find your best work. Open source or otherwise. And sell yourself.
That doesn't mesh with normal human behavior. It feels weird. But the corporate world and the private social worlds are disconnected. For me at least. So it's weird. Actually ... That's a weird concept.
I guess I recommend having two minds... One with friends and one with the corporate world. And they don't play by the same rules.
Yeah, agreed here. Ideally you want to have friends who you can be authentic with just so you can have actually meaningful discussions about each other lives and thoughts. Corporate and career can be totally different. Early dating can be a mixed bag etc. And of course there are some other social events too, different types of people you may need to navigate around etc.
I don't know if this is a toxic thing to say or not... But I enjoy my tech friends and I value our discussions. But I most value my science nerd friends outside of tech. Like.. I kinda don't want my friends to be peers. Not because of competition or anything like that. But I want them to nerd out to me about things I'm not steeped in. And I want to get to nerd out to them about computer science and the boundaries of philosophy and math and logic. But having a friend group is central.
Nah, that's definitely not a norm. By that definition me and a lot of people from where I come from including whole family and friends/classmates would quality as autistic. I know form experience this is baseline for some people and they simply can't work 'naturally' with others but I'd grade them as 1-2 out of 10 in sociopathic spectrum. That is by no means a negative denigration of them just describing their behavior (and struggles) in the best way I can.
Interestingly not current corporate banking work, where this would be true but then this is highly sociopathic environment with dominant culture that doesn't do direct honest feedback generally. But generally finance attracts the worst of the (smart) crowd so thats not in any way a reference of mankind.
So its cultural quite a lot. I presume you meant some rather extreme situation of above by describing it as autistic-spectrum.
> 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.
I suggest re-reading it from some different perspectives. Consider that the narrator may not be entirely reliable. They way they talk about being able to read other people and manipulate them into a sense of openness and connection has some hints of behaviors that are associated with people who view themselves as superior to others and view others as mere targets for their superior intellect to manipulate.
In this case, it’s worth considering that maybe the blog post itself is yet another chapter in their experimentation with manipulating others into a sense of connection, and the text is written in a persuasive way to leave the reader thinking that they have been blessed with some openness and revelation from the author. In other words, it’s crafted in a way to generate some of the same false sense of connection describe in the article, with the stories and claims crafted to target what the target audience wants to hear.
Something to think about when reading it, at least.
It's stages in their life and it goes from manipulation to letting go. Even the manipulation was not malicious -- they just wanted to have "better" experiences with other people (and maybe upsell an entrée at first).
And as a socially awkward individual I found it quite interesting.
From that approach you could view (almost?) all human communication as artificial unreliable manipulation. And not be entirely wrong. But you could also view that same (almost?) all human communication as authentic attempts to connect and heal (including heal the speaker), if sometimes misguided, and not be entirely wrong either.
I am not sure I like what it does to my experience in the world to view all human communication as selfish manipulation. Although I recognize the pull to do so can come from an attempt to protect oneself based on past harm.
I remember being in my early twenties very awkwark. I read a few books on socializing. I basically did what this post is describing. It takes sustained effort and writing those emotional checks costs you more than you think to both parties.
It isnt hard to engage on a deep level with people but most dont for a reason. It is exhausting and can send the wrong signals.
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.
> I am still struggling to understand the way in which many people naturally form casual connections with others.
Repeated exposure. The first "relationship", or deep conversation, or jam session, or whatever, is always way more intense than the 500th. For virtually everyone, neurodivergent or otherwise.
Statistically, your first time is likely to be their 100th time, and so there's a perceived bias towards casualness, even though everyone has been a rookie. This can be daunting but the only real answer is to push through and go to the next interaction with an open mind.
When I read those first two sections I didn't like the guy either, but he arrives at some much healthier takes by the end of the piece. So I think it's intentional to illustrate his growth and the fact that he's willing to put the vulnerability and the mistakes up front and own them to me suggests that he really does get the "secrets" of being socially well adjusted.
My own view is that it's about giving generously to other people without expecting anything in return. People are surprisingly reluctant to do this, but if you do, most people will like you. What are you supposed to give? Well it can be just about anything, time, attention, compliments, money, ideas, a shoulder to cry on, you name it. But probably the most powerful thing if we're talking about building social relationships is to give them your personality. Think of it like there is a big empty jar out there which represents the social environment and we're all wired to not want it to be empty, well go and fill it up with your personality, provide examples of who you are instead of standing off in a corner silently and going unnoticed. Instead of being forgotten you'll be remembered, many will like you, some will love you and some will hate you, the ones who respond most positively are the ones you make an effort to engage with in the future.
Sasha starts figuring this out when he starts working at the fancy restaurant with waiters who would do really odd stuff and it would work. The best waiters were for the most part just displaying a lot of personality. Working at restaurants might have skewed his perspective a bit because when you work as a waiter you're putting on a performance, the goal is to do a job, entertain, get compliments and get tips, beyond the food this is why people go to a nice restaurant. Being authentic and building lasting relationships is secondary to performing a commercial service at a restaurant, but not in real life (and perhaps not at the highest levels of certain commercial services for that matter, the line starts to blur). I think he's realized all this by the end of the article.
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.
> If the limit of someone's behavior winds up making everyone happier-off, I don't understand why I ought to care.
I guess I don’t believe this behavior actually leaves the targets better off.
Doing a lot of experiments where you feign connections and openness with other people is going to leave a lot of the targets feeling unhappy when they realize they were tricked into opening up to someone who was just using them as a target for their experiments.
Take, for example, the section of the post where he talks about getting someone to open up into “cathartic sobbing” but displays zero interest in the person’s problems, only wonder about how he managed to trigger that through yet another technique.
My takeaway was distinctly different about the net effects of these social connection experiments. It was fine in the context of waiting tables where everyone knows the interaction is temporary and transactional, but the parts where it expanded into mind-reading people’s weaknesses and insecurities and then leveraging that into “connections” that he later laments not actually wanting.
Important context is that the author was a social outcast as a child. I also had this experience, and I can tell you, I was just desperate to figure out how to get people to like me. It wasn't that I wanted to manipulate them, I just really, really wanted to have friends and be included. And so I also cycled through different tricks that I thought would help. (I went through a standup comedy phase, for instance.)
Of course, in many ways making friends is all much easier than either I or the author was making it out to be. But I suspect we were both burdened with some unrealized oddities, and, unable to directly identify or compensate for them, sought other, more elaborate ways to fit in.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Whether someone is swearing at me or punched me in the face is not a factor. I believe the point of the book is that criticism tends to be taken personally. I'm sure you can guess what that implies.
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”
I actually like being part of society and don’t need to feed delusions of grandeur to feel content.
Also I want to point out how I referenced his opinion as being like tips on winning the lottery. Getting to a unique position of power like that requires so much luck and other input that you have no control over that I view the “advice” on how to achieve it as useless and just the result of those people grappling with the cognitive dissonance of thinking they got to where they are on their own vs the actual reality
I think the whole "everyone's so very special" shtick that is so pervasive in children's stuff didn't do us any good. Being content with being just an normal everyday human is important.
There are lots of things I am not content with. Some I think are reasonable and won’t change my mind are. Others are irrational and I believe an aspect of maturing is becoming content with the fact that those feelings are irrational and I shouldn’t be unhappy because of it.
The example I use in conversation with friends in this topic is that when I am hungry and pass by someone with a nice steak, I don’t get in a tizzy about not having it myself the same way I would when I was 5.
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.
> 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 is being friends with people other than essentially manipulating them into liking you by being likable and a good friend?
No, that’s not a friendship. That’s just a relationship built on insecurity. You can only hold up the facade for so long. Imagine manipulating a romantic interest in to liking you, or vice versa. That’s not a very nice thing to do. It never ends well.
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.
If I didn't do it on purpose, I will never do it, with anyone, including my own family. It does not happen "automatically" for me. I have to be mindful about it. "Force" myself to do it. Do it "on purpose".
Your proposed course of action would leave me with no friends or relationships.
To me, the phrase "relationships take effort" - means literally that. Because every single interaction takes effort.
Perhaps this is one of those "introvert vs extrovert" things.
Some people’s “being who they are” doesn’t get them any friends, and they don’t understand why. They want to connect with people, but their outwards personality may be unintentionally grating, exhausting, tiring, etc.
Socials skills are “skills” like any other and if you aren’t getting the desired result with your current skill set, what better way to improve than purposeful practice?
I guess you intentionally interact with them (because you like them, you share an interest), but you don't intentionally pretend to be something you are not (even though you know the other person would like that).
not original commenter, but I have. Either through their manipulation, or just being in the same place, doing the same things. Didn't like them as a person, but they were decent to me, so some sort of reciprocation happened, didn't last though.
> I’m curious how you accidentally or unintentionally become friends with someone
Really?
My most enduring friendships seem to just sorta happen, meeting people at random in various ways, figuring out you're into a lot of the same stuff, just sorta rubbing along well... and now we've known each other 25 years, how the hell did that happen? Ha.
It's almost the same argument, but backwards: You think they are a good person, so you want them to do well. Because they are good, they also want you to do well. Same result, but intentions are backwards.
What? You look confused. Empathy and constantly having someone's back is not manipulation. It only ever gets manipulative if you pretend to do these things and then let your peers down at critical moments.
>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 was terrible at this stuff until I learned how to do it, working in a customer facing tech support call centre.
> 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.
If you read the article, you'll see that these are not individual points, but sequential stages that the author went through while learning what it really takes to be social.
So stage 1. was his first attempt, then he decided 2. worked better .. etc. until he finally reached the one that worked best, i.e. 6.
The difference between manipulation and influence is that on the first one you are the only one taking advantage of the situation, and the second one you genuinely believe the other person will end in a better place and if you are wrong no harm is done.
I guess is also about if you care about the other person or you are just pretending, unfortunately in my opinion there is no way to know, because some people are really good at pretending to care, and even supporting you with a hidden score tracking board, basically they are investing.
And then there are people that really care about you and because they know they can't do anything or don't know what to say, they won't reach to you.
I guess we are only left with our instinct and that is something that you learn to calibrate with time.
>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 why the title is "My six stages of learning to be a socially normal person" and not "My story of being a perfectly socially normal person from the day I was born".
When you're learning social skills because you don't have them naturally, it usually starts with "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".
So I'm not sure what your point is. That this sounds calculated and mechanistic? It is. That's explicitly said there in the article. And the progression of the author's stages is towards doing less of that.
Author is trying to improve their social skills and is noticing that some toxic traits have advantages.
It's okay to dazzle people though. I'm not sure you have to make it a core part of your personality but like, maybe as a hobby, a little razzledazzle here and there.
The fact that it’s written as a personal journey and not as advice suggests the author was on a journey to become more genuine/accepting of who they are. It does read as someone who tried to be manipulative at the start but graduated away from that towards the end of their journey.
You can gain a lot from the article and see it as both manipulative, or as insights for working through your own social anxieties. You could bring both attitudes to the article. And one of those is obviously healthier than the other.
I actually went to university with him! It's so weird seeing his posts occasionally pop up on HN.
That was when he was in his, as he accurately describes it, performative NPR phase of reading difficult modernist novels and having opinions about Barthes or whatever. I found him very very smart, as he clearly is, and also incredibly obnoxious (though I was obnoxious too). Part of that was because it was extraordinarily apparent how contrived his persona was to be superficially charming, and part of that was jealousy; then and now I wish that I were so smart and so charming, superficially or otherwise.
Lots of tech people are neurodivergent. I don't see anything wrong with strategizing to get the benefits that many other people get for simply being "lovable goofballs"
I knew a guy that was such a f-up but he was so easy to get along with he just floated his way to upper mgmt anywhere he went. Then inevitable got fired and simply floated his way to upper mgmt at the next company. Meanwhile many highly effective tech people get held back on promotions for being "too realistic"(usually pronounced as "negative") at least thats my life experience.
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 you might want to re-read all of this again.
Manipulation is non-consensual and controlling influence, yes. That part is important.
Just like the difference between a house and a jail is essentially if you are being forced to be there against your will or not.
They both are structures people live in and that provide a degree of structure and protection, but one is generally considered okay or even good, and the other is considered pretty bad and terrible. Largely because one you can choose or do things to change, the other you get stuck in against your will and the environment is outside your control.
Most ‘influencers’ also cross pretty strongly into manipulation many times, so using the title is about as accurate as ‘Democratic Peoples Republic of z’.
I disagree. Short of wearing a blindfold and putting my fingers in my ears there are many opportunities for someone to influence me against my will every day. You have to be exposed to this sort of manipulation to exist in society.
This has gotten a little off-track into pedantry though, I agree.
The parent post's assertion that the author of this post is somehow using "tricks" and that it is unhealthy, is what I take issue with.
It's a bit of unfair framing to claim that people who naturally develop these "tricks" are somehow superior to those who have to learn them. By that reasoning people with poor social skills would be doomed to poor outcomes for the sake of some trick-free "pure" personality.
Or another way... if I take elocution and debate lessons to make my point better and use that to get what I want in life, is this "unhealthy"? I don't think most people would say so. In my eyes this is no different.
There is surely nothing wrong with being charming.
The "manipulate, and game", just per dictionary, would mean in this context something close to "control or influence unscrupulously". What social norms exactly do you see broken/bent by the OP? Because I see none.
Are you trying to influence this comment section unscrupulously?
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.
I mean technically it isn't wrong that (1) how you come across to the other person is important and (2) you need to be with the other person to connect with them.
And that is part of the problem, because the underlying reason why people connect when you do the mentioned things is that these are usually signs that you are in fact an empathic person, that can put themselves in their shoes and thus care to some degree about how things will pan out for them, meaning they may think they can open up to you, etc. This is in a stark contrast with the phrasing of "playing their game" that frames this type of behavior as a superfluous, silly endavour, when in fact it might be the polar opposite:
In a society of social apes (humans) one of the biggest danger to your and your kins life, bodily autonomy, freedom has historically always been other humans. Meaning that judging the intentions of others is not some silly game, but a survival mechanism of existential importance. And not only that, many people derive a lot of ehat makes their lifes worth living from these feelings of mutual understanding and empathy.
So to most empathic people the idea that a seemingly empathic person could feel nothing at all underneath and potentially sell them down the river is something tingling a gutural fear. Many media depiction of evil serial killers will play on that exact fear (among others).
Master conmen, manipulators, cult leaders (so generally horrible people) are all good at understanding the internal processes (thoughts and feelings) of their victims. This understanding is also essential for true empathy, the way it is applied is very different. If a hacker finds a weak point in a system they can exploit it for their own gain, or they can deal with it in a way benifiting all. The skill of understanding the internals is one thing, the skill of understanding what these internals mean and what are the right actions to derive from that knowledge is something else entirely.
That being said, I think the personal journey the author is on is certainly one that may benefit both them and the people around them. I can just imagine how hard parsing all the complexity of human behavior must be if you can't feel it yourself. This is already hard for people who can, as countless cultural artifacts from all of humanities history proof.
I am going to get downvoted for this, but my experience, which recently even got confirmed by a mother of an autistic child, is that genuine empathy is rather hard to find on the spectrum.
> 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.
> 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.
As someone who really struggled with social interactions (and still does at times, just not as bad), this fails already at the first two steps:
> Listen-- really listen --and engage with open ears
How do I understand what is important? People say a lot of stuff, some important parts and some parts that are beside the point. Talking also involves identifying and reacting to the "important" bits, picking up the "wrong" stuff will be very weird. An exaggerated example:
> "We had a really bad traffic accident when we went to Sweden"
The obvious thing to engage with is the accident - but a struggling person might as well ask how they liked Sweden.
> When it's your turn to talk, offer up an anecdote [...]
I really struggled to even notice when it's "my turn" to talk. Either interrupting the other person or awkwardly looking at them until I notice or the other person tries to recover the situation.
Try Improv (comedy) classes. They sell them as something to do on stage, but the real advantage is pattern building around social interactions.
First, you will stop being afraid to say the wrong thing.
Then, you will start to hear the important part in what they said.
Then, you will start to hear the part they did NOT say or super-interesting bit they skimmed over because it is not interesting to them
FINALLY (at least so far for me and with other training), you will start feeling the tension in the conversation, the good time to interrupt and the time to pivot the topic.
Think Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, but in a free-to-fail environment. This, incidentally, may be the reason why I LIKE when there is low audience for the shows I do. Because, then it is really just my personal/group practice.
Operate under the assumption that the person on the other side of the conversation is under the delusion that every sentence they produce is gold.
Active listening = free points. Everyone wants to feel heard.
> but a struggling person might as well ask how they liked Sweden.
And sometimes this is the right question to ask, especially if the party on the other side of the conversation is giving cues suggesting that their memory of the accident is a painful one.
> I really struggled to even notice when it's "my turn" to talk.
Even highly-experienced conversationalists get this wrong at times. Sometimes the person with whom you're speaking has a weird cadence or is uncomfortable or...
---
Look, this is hard work. This requires literally years of deliberate practice, especially if you're on the Autism spectrum as both myself and my son are.
You will make mistakes. You will offend people. You will get depressed about having no charm/charisma. You will feel like the alien in the room.
Keep pushing forward. Force yourself to actively listen to conversations. Watch movies with magnetic characters and try to emulate their demeanor.
Don't beat yourself up. Embrace being the weird person for a while and find a group of weirdos just a bit less weird than yourself. Be vulnerable with them and get yourself a mentor. People, in my experience, love mentoring/teaching.
Just keep doing it. When you get good, it will pay dividends.
I would also add that people generally try too hard with small talk. It's SMALL talk. Tell them about the new brand of jam you put on your toast this breakfast. Ask them what they had for breakfast. Or recount your last trip to the grocery store.
Trying too hard kills the fun of the interaction. You're really just getting a ball rolling. Who cares where it starts, just see where it goes.
Also, as TFA also mentioned, it's not what you say but how you say it. >80% of the value of the interaction is just (non-verbally) showing you're happy that they're there.
I myself also tend to do that, but that is a behavior that is seen by the majority/"normal" people as non-social, unless if you already know them very well or if you are the one initiating the conversation.
Listening to people means that you actively listening and supporting them in their conversation, not bringing up your own angles to it. When you do that it is perceived by most people as you trying to one-up them in the conversation, instead of what you're actually doing.
In your listed example its fine because you started the interaction, but let's turn it around and say you walked into a conversation where people are talking about downtown in ABC. You want to participate and remember that there was a blizzard there in '96, so you bring that up.
Most people will see that as severe ADHD, why are we now talking about a blizzard from 1996? We were just talking about about how DEF is happening in ABC later this month?
Pivoting has the same problem, there are social cues that display your role in the group. Just walking into a conversation while trying to pivot it to your interests is in general quite rude etc.
> When you do that it is perceived by most people as you trying to one-up them in the conversation
This depends entirely on the content of your reply and how well-trained you are in social cues as well as other unspoken parts of conversation.
It's also not comprehensive advice. Of course you should first help the person on the other side of the conversation reach where they're intending to go in what they're saying.
My advice is more applicable to the "sequence points" of a conversation.
> Just walking into a conversation while trying to pivot it
Doing this would be foolish. You have to read the cues for when the time is right. You also need to develop the right conversational demeanor to pull it off. This necessitates practice.
Yes yes yes. You rarely need to DO anything other than listen. Just be a good listener. Maybe identify handles in what they're saying and then occasionally ask them about them:
How did that make you feel?
Wait, you did what?
Why did you do that?
What do you enjoy about that?
There is a particular amount of risk here, this does set you up to interact with attention vacuums. People that will talk constantly without break nor desire to listen to what you have to say. Over any amount of time (weeks/months) a person that you can have a real two way conversation is needed.
In my experience such people are rare. You can always steer the conversation, give your input, tell them (nicely) to stop talking, or - if they're unwilling to take the hint - walk away.
That seems like the most pointless conversation ever though, neither side really got anything out of it. If you can't infodump or listen to someone else infodump, is it really anything but meaningless pleasantries?
Well I doubt I'm going to bond by being subjected to painful boredom, and neither will they. I've found it's so socially common to completely forget all of these things people tell you in small talk too, because I'd remember every one of these facts about the other person due to low frequency interactions, while they'll be like "I've never met this man in my life" the next time I talk to them and I can't help but find that a bit hurtful.
I think smalltalks just didn't bring you to the right topic, if you were to reach topic you both fancy, you would definitely remember each other. If anything, having a smalltalk is nicer than staying in awkward silence.
>I have zero idea how to make small talk with people I haven't known for years.
Here's a trick, it sounds stupid but it works like magic.
Just talk about mundane things that are physically present. Mention the color of the wallpaper. Mention the painting on the wall. Talk about how noisy the room is, or about the food on the plate in front of you. Literally act like you're an image classifier tasked with outputting a text summary of the scene you find yourself in...
If you're the cerebral type like I am, you'll feel afraid these topics will bore the other person. But surprisingly, they don't, if the other person is neurotypical.
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 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
> 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!
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.
You might think so, but a lot of people can tell when you're ELIZA-ing them to death, and they will learn to avoid you.
There are a lot of people on HN who want a technical manual for how to party, and a lot of them keep telling each other that the art of conversation is about attentive listening. Can you imagine a conversation between two people practicing attentive listening on each other?
The "will learn to avoid you" part is what I was getting at in my warning at the end. This only gets you through a few interactions.
The point of small talk is to get to medium talk. It's not directionless. Medium talk just means you've found a topic that both of you are interested in enough to talk about it for five to ten minutes without getting bored. That you both know the host is one of the few things it's culturally safe to assume anymore. Both of you met the host doing something you like well enough to associate with a person you met doing that thing when you're not doing that thing, so if either of those things happen to be an appropriate subject for medium talk, great. Now you're out of small talk and just "talking to this person I just met at this party about a thing we both like." If you're lucky, it's something you both actually like a lot, and then you have a basis for large talk, and large talk opens the door to casual friendship.
If you don't happen to draw a medium or large talk topic out of the gate, that's when you poke around the edges of the small talk, looking for things that could be fodder for medium talk. If you try looking for three or four and aren't getting anywhere, you've still filled the appropriate 5-10 minutes not to seem like a jerk, and now you need a snack, or a drink, and a new conversation partner.
It helps a lot if you're genuinely interested in a wide variety of things, enough that you can ask intelligent questions about them, because it increases the likelihood that you can find a shared interest with this person you've just met. That's not just "attentive listening." It's "finding out why someone cares about something interesting to them because you sincerely want to know."
If the other person isn't engaging with you at all, isn't trying to find one of these topics with you, they actually just don't want to talk to you. That's how people communicate this. It's not usually personal. They haven't known you long enough for it to be really personal. They may not even consciously realize they don't want to talk to you, but it's still true, and you're doing them a favor when you recognize that and excuse yourself.
Yeah if an awkward person does it they can be called out as if they are interrogating or interviewing. I actually remember trying these tactics when I was teenager... and that is how it came off. I tried so many weird things because I was so unhappy with my social performance.
Usually safer way is making observations rather than directly asking or at least continously asking things over and over as if to desperately try to keep the conversation going.
But even then if you are awkward, it will still come off awkward and people will try to excuse them out of that situation no matter how much theory you might read online.
Oh boy do I ever relate to that - “You seem like a very social person, that seems out of character” - I know that’s how I seem, but god almighty do I not feel that way.
I’ve learned that’s its best if I play the role of a social person, but it’s just playing a role.
I don’t think anyone but a handful of my closest loved ones really grasp how very close I have always been to running away to live as a hermit in a cabin in the woods.
>am I really that good at masking that my therapist didn't realize I am absolutely terrified in near all social situations?
Or is your therapist attempting to bootstrap a self-fulfilling prophecy, i.e. when you feel socially overwhelmed, you'd remember that they praised you for being social, and the warm fuzzies of being praised would make you feel less overwhelmed?
You know, as the grand maxim of software engineering goes, "whatever works" lmao
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.
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?
I think you're bang on the money fwiw. But also worth mentioning that it's OK to ask rather than trying to predict and feeling that having to ask means failure
But the same applies to the person you are talking to - it is their job to reach out to you if they need help. It is not your job to prove anything to them by reaching out when (your heightened vigilance picks up that) something is off.
I am never buying the story of "i did not reach out / i betrayed you / i treated you poorly, and you deserved this treatment, because you failed to know me well enough to know what i needed (even if i didn't know that myself)" ever again.
There's no failure in asking. But there's no failure in not asking either - because you might be dealing with your own shit, as a responsible adult does.
One school of phenomenology of empathy makes an interesting point that empathy is an aesthetic category, not a moral one - you don't really choose to feel it. But you can choose to show up for someone. You can choose to show up for yourself as well.
I have been dancing lately, and i think it's helping a little. Our tango teacher says semi-jokingly to followers (usually women, although i find occasionally following quite fun as a man) "if you teach men that you will do everything yourself, they will learn that" - meaning that they should not anticipate a move - if it is not being communicated clearly, it is not your job to guess it. On the other hand, leader's job is to very clearly suggest a move with a gentle push or a shift in their pose, but not force it. Ideally, that's a fun exchange of clearly expressed and contextually relevant suggestions and responses.
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 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.
This resonates. I spent many years going hard at `5: Connection is about projecting love and acceptance`. I focused on providing unconditional acceptance to everyone I met, inviting them to share their burdens and listening empathetically and supportively. People often left our conversations thanking me for the "therapy session."
And in many ways I think this was a positive energy to bring to the world! But eventually I realized that, deep down, I was doing this out of anxiety. I wanted to be accepted and this was a crutch I was using to achieve that. In fact, I was scared of not providing this level of support, because what if I was too aloof and the other person got mad at me? And since people often liked this quality about me, what would I become without it?
Now I mostly focus on ... relaxing. There are times where intense-therapy-like energy will be useful, and I can provide that if I want. But most of the time it's just not necessary. Unlike the author, I don't necessarily have the ability, or practice, to skillfully provide whatever the person in front of me actually wants, but that's ok too. It's ok to just be calm.
> And in many ways I think this was a positive energy to bring to the world!
Or in other words, becoming the landfill of negative energy of the world.
As someone who used to be that person for over a decade, having people endlessly confiding their relationship/health/mental/work/legal/family/gender issues will over time completely wreck your sanity. Because when you're that someone, people will not just tell you the light stuff, but also some really heavyweight and/or deeply fucked up things.
Oh, certainly. And if you have any resources besides attention - money, or social capital, for instance - people will happily take those too. It's not that they are wrong to ask, but the need is truly infinite, and no one will create guardrails for you except yourself.
The weird vibe people are picking up from this essay is because half the phases are about customer service.
As in, the author was working as a waiter or a coach at the time.
A waiter's job is to keep your butt in the seat, get you to order some stuff, and then leave a tip. The waiter may or may not give a shit about you as a person, but it's secondary to their job. That simulation is the creepy vibe.
I've probably never eaten at the kinds of stratospherically high-end restaurants the author writes about. I've eaten at restaurants with Michelin stars. I've never had a waiter flirt with me, daydream with me, or offer ad hoc therapy. And if I ever do, I suspect I might find the charade off-putting.
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.
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?
>obsessive seeking of external validation which I have never felt myself
if you've never felt it, why are you mentioning it? why are you so focused on it?
A useful psychoanalytic rubric is "there is no negation in the unconscious mind". Negation is a conscious mind idea, the unconscious mind just thinks of things, it doesn't think of something and claim it's not thinking of it.
so, rephrasing what you wrote in the unconscious sense, "obsessive seeking of external validation which I have felt myself": yes, you have identified something, identified with something, interesting, about other people and about yourself. If you are aware that you are not seeking external validation, but also aware when other people do, you have to ask yourself...
if your complaint about this argument is along the line of "no fair, i can't escape from this!", you're getting the point.
You're probably right that him being in denial is more likely then him being super special. But I don't think this psychoanalytical reasoning is justified?
>if you've never felt it, why are you mentioning it? why are you so focused on it?
Because it's interesting / frustrating to find out that the common guidelines to living a normal life don't apply to you, and you pinpoint that fact as the reason?
I can come up with infinitely many negative statements in a discussion and it doesn't mean that opposites of them occupy my unconscious day to day.
1. Smart person faces problem, observes what's going on, thinks about it and finds solution
I mention this b/c a lot of folks feel like "I'm me and I know something is wrong in what I'm doing but I don't know what" and stop there.
But a lot of life is just learning new skills. That can be from books, videos, friends, or just opening your eyes and seeing what other people are doing and then modeling that behavior.
2. The pieces you need are already in you
I used to be TERRIBLE at dating. e.g. I would go on dates with smart, funny and attractive women (mostly met online). The date would start out great and then something would happen halfway through and I could tell the energy went away. It go so bad that I almost wanted friends to sit near me and then point out what I was doing wrong.
After reading some dating books, I realized what it was:
There were a LOT of women in my extended family (mostly female cousins, strong personality outgoing aunts etc). I though "dating" == "hanging out with women like my family". The books pointed out that "dating" is has a large component of "playful teasing, being cocky funny".
I already knew how to do that but didn't realize it applied to dating!
3. Work with what you have
Some other commenters have pointed out that some of what he mentions is "being fake" or "being someone else"
I make this analogy:
- You are a certain height
- That is tough to change
- BUT you can work out, get a haircut, get dental work etc
- aka there are MANY small things you can do to improve your physical appearance even if you can't change your height.
The same is true of personality: you have a core set of values and beliefs. That being said, you choose which stories you tell, how you tell them, when to let the other person speak instead of you speaking for longer etc.
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.
• Of course it's very strange; that's why he wrote about it — the point is to convey what is not obvious.
• Of course it's risky, but that's the point of much of the author's journey of social ease, at least the initial stages up to that point. If you're willing to take the risk of coming off <…>, or of an angry reaction, you open yourself up to a wider range of experiences / social interactions. Probably much of the interaction was non-verbal and even the author's paragraph cannot capture exactly what went on.
Not everyone needs to take such risks of course, but the author consciously chose to “install” social skill, and has shared their experience.
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.
> 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) .
I skimmed the article and one of the things that occurred to me is that it was lucky that they worked as a busboy for a bit. Lucky in the sense that there was plenty of opportunity to try various social approaches on the many people they encountered each day. Most of us only interact with a few people in total each week and don't get any encounter resets. I remember a few years ago living in a small town and dreading being invited to the rare party. I'd met everyone, had a brief encounter, and neither they nor I had any desire to further the interaction.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
I've always hated it when people juggle me and when I notice that I'm getting played. "Normal" people seem to absorb this strategy subconsciously throughout their lives and train themselves to do it too because they notice that it works better. To someone who notices this consciously it seems psychotic because well of course it's always easier to cheat, lie and fake your way to an advantage. You should be choosing not to live this way on purpose. I don't think that the person in the article did it from a bad heart which usually makes all the difference but tons and tons of people do it purely for self gain with no regard for the people getting exploited. Here it was his job to do this and arguably it was for the other person's benefit too to get better service so it was not bad. But we should still be able to name it what it is. This tier of strategy is polluting non-work social environments too. The last thing we need is more people who are getting better at faking being interested or caring.
I'm aware that if such people stop fake caring then they will stop caring altogether. Well good, stop gaming yourself to life advantages please that you shouldn't have. Of course it's harder to actually care about things compared to fake caring. It's harder to be an actually good person vs faking being good and it's probably far less rewarding for most to only be getting what they should be getting in life. Luckily most people are not that good at being fake because like you said, it still takes effort. But people who do it all their life no longer feel that effort and this is how you end up with lifelong fake people.
In general we will never get people to stop faking and lying their way to advantages in life so what decent people are left with is to develop an even harder armor that fake people can't get through with these strategies. It's sad but that's what life seems to be: You have to find people who aren't just here play and beat you like you're a videogame or for a darker analogy play you like you are an asset and they are a CIA agent.
Come on, can you really care about a stranger's stupid story?
Isn’t it enough that I care about not being lonely for the rest of my life, and in pursuit of that goal I decided to act like a good person and a good conversation partner?
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.
If you're a tech worker who would like to improve your social skills or overcome mild to moderate social anxiety, I can whole-heartedly recommend working as a server nights and weekends for a few months. As a server, you will always have a clear purpose guiding each interaction, eliminating the sometimes intimidating open-endedness of more casual settings. But you'll be constantly talking to people, and you'll meet all kinds. You'll also have many opportunities to have structured and unstructured interactions with coworkers. It's a fantastic way to get in lots of reps in a short time.
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 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.
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.
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.
> Of course, everybody is on the autism spectrum, even people who show no symptoms (they are on the left hand side).
No, that's not at all how any of this works. People who don't have ASD aren't on the autism spectrum because the spectrum isn't an intensity meter where one end is neurotypical and the other end is non-verbally autistic with 24/7 support requirements.
It's called a spectrum disorder because every autistic person experiences different divergences/impairments to varying degrees of severity. Some people can have intense sensory issues but socially pass as neurotypical, others can have minimal sensory issues but really severe social issues.
The DSM used to exclude people who were clearly autistic but didn't align with any of the rigid definitions that were captured in the DSM as distinct diagnosis, that's why it was eventually recognized as a spectrum disorder.
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.
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.
> You can be technically quite bad and people will still want to dance with you if you have good eye contact,
Yes. Your ability to do so largely depends on the dance. Good luck dancing Viennese Waltz, when you both try to look somewhere else than to your left. For other dances like Quickstep, it is only important, that the woman looks to the left, the man isn't all that important. Then there are dances, where it doesn't matter, so you might as well look at your partner.
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.
Right with you there! All this discourse about 'being you', be anyone you want to be, 'you do you' etc – christ, no! Not unless you understand the downsides to all of that. And they aren't trivial.
People should not dish out that advice so carelessly and wantenly.
Author's problem is that he tries too hard, which is off putting.
The way to connect with people is to genuinely care about them and listen. The world is full of the oddest people who have normal relations because they simply care.
The author seems to show very little empathy or care towards other human beings, in fact the entirety of the article sounds like connecting is all about himself. Me, me and me. How people perceive me, how do they like me.
He never ever shows genuine interest into connection, in the the end comes off as manipulative.
I'm glad it wasn't just me who noticed this. It seems like the author doesn't care at all about other people; only about how to manipulate people into liking them.
Narcissism is a spectrum; everybody's a little narcissistic, and it changes over time. All kids are VERY narcissistic early on, most grow out of it as they experience unconditional love from their parents and are allowed to be their authentic selves in various social contexts.
For various reasons - some kids don't. Bullying can certainly contribute.
So they develop maladaptive strategies (which can look like the first few "stages" in this article) and have to undo the damage later in life (which can look like the later "stages" from the article) to have a chance to experience real human connection.
I think the article can be very beneficial for people who struggle with this, even if it doesn't explicitly mention what the technical name of the struggle is (and BTW it does not have to be NPD - there might be other reasons for people to have similar problems). Maybe even BECAUSE it doesn't mention narcissism (cause narcissism is currently villified on the social media as "they are actual demons that cannot be saved" - so people are very wary of identifying with it, which makes it less likely they will work on themselves).
BTW I'm very disappointed in the current fad on social media of villifying one mental health issue after another only to then come to realize "oh wait, they're actually people not monsters". I've seen it with BPD, now it's the NPD turn. It's usually done for ugly reasons, too (somebody hurt by a person with $mental_health_problem search for validation, so influencers jump in with feel-good validation that portrays the other side as demons).
I mean, it’s literally one of the dark triad. Dark. Not misunderstood.
The DSM basically took all those “traits we think of as evil” and said “we shall make some disorder categories”. People with NPD don’t go and get help, they just run around ruining other peoples lives.
If you’ve never had such a person in your life, good for you! The rest of us don’t care if they can be saved, we just don’t ever want to interact with another one. Ever.
I am a narcissist. I haven't been diagnosed (yet), but I certainly recognize the traits and patterns, and I'm in therapy for it.
> People with NPD don’t go and get help, they just run around ruining other peoples lives.
This is objectively false. There's lots of people in therapy for NPD. And there have been case studies with people who recovered.
Which brings another point
> The DSM basically took all those “traits we think of as evil” and said “we shall make some disorder categories”.
DSM criteria for narcissism are part of the problem. You can have the exact same mental struggle but stop yourself from hurting people (at least to a reasonable degree - "normal" people also hurt others sometimes after all). And you won't be diagnosed as NPD. But you'll still have all the other problems - lack of human connection, vastly higher chance of suicide, autoimmune diseases, relationship problems, etc.
Which is like saying you only have alcoholism if you beat people on the streets. If you define it that way - of course all alcoholics are violent.
But it's not a productive way to define mental health problems. It leaves out people who struggle with it but don't cause harm.
> The rest of us don’t care if they can be saved, we just don’t ever want to interact with another one. Ever.
That's unlikely given that estimated 0.5-5% of the general population have NPD and about 20% have strong narcissistic traits.
In IT it's probably much higher by the way, it's the perfect job (little human contact, high status, well paid).
There is the ever popular book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” I like it in ways that it helps you reflect on your own lifestyle and interactions with people. Of course, one should build up their own ways of living, nonetheless, I like the book and often re-read it.
Accepting that connection is optional, not compulsory feels like the true sign of arrival. Not needing it to prove anything, not using it to fill a void, just being able to be, with or without it
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.
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.
There are only two types of ppl: "the wrong kind of crazy" and "the right kind of crazy". Why would I want to connect with the wrong type of crazy? Ok, I don't work as a waiter.
Does this person have some kind of mental issue? I am seriosuly asking this, not mocking him. Because by reading through this post it stands out to me that he doesn't mention or highlights empathy. And that's where his problem stems from
At a guess, he does have empathy. He didn't know how to get that empathy across, to the other person, and these are the stages he went through in learning how to do it. You see, the intent and the execution can be completely or partially divorced in some people. I can truly empathize the other person, the beginning of the process is there, but I wouldn't know the right words, tone or gestures hot to proceed with my empathy. And then it is fifty/fifty, maybe a person would decide to ignore my lack of execution and will start deep dialog on their own and then my empathy can allow me to honestly respond and continue it. Or maybe they will decide not to do it and the deep dialog wouldn't happen in the first place.
Not every closed-in and awkward person is lacking empathy.
Probably high functioning autism. They go through a process like this, and is in part why they are high functioning in the first place because they solve their problems with their intellect and train whatever else is necessary.
Though, research shows that autistic people among themselves do have empathy. So it’s not as if they don’t but it’s because they tend to communicate differently. It’s called the double empathy problem, if I recall correctly.
Check out some of the other posts there too. There's a certain grandiosity about the writing that makes it feel like the author isn't actually past their own 'Stage 1'. Coupled with the ingratiating comments on each post, something's definitely setting off 'cult leader' alarms to me.
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.
> [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 don't think I looked at social interaction like that. But having had a whole journey of my own, I can really appreciate this blog post and merely by reading it, I felt like I've learned a thing or two. Specifically #5, I can see that.
I'm #3 naturally, always have been. #4 gets practiced within me, the more I meditate. I owe my HN username to it :)
Interesting read about his outlook & experiences, but something about it still feels off, even at his latest (6th) stage. I guess it reminds me of the "pick up artist" approach to relationships, turning them into a game and trying to win it, keeping "the score".
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.
Most people from what I've seen don't want unique as much as they want somewhat famailiar. If it deviates too far away from that then they are repulsed, and I can give you an example right here.
I'm going to commit suicide. I've known this for the last 15 years. It'll probably be another 10 years before I'll die, but I know my end is half laying down with a 1.5 inch nylon strap tied cinched on my neck and a tree trunk in the dead of night so that no one will be able to find me in time. The reason I haven't is because I'm taking of elderly relatives, but they are the only reason I'm still here.
That's the real me. The one that looks forward to dying even though there doesn't seem to be any reason why I want to die.
I wonder how many in this thread would be utterly horrified by this vs accepting of this.
FWIW, I have the same mindset and your comment resonated with me; suicide is a very taboo subject still. The responses to it are either: you need to seek help for mental illness or you're just acting like an edgy teenager.
The term "mental health" is quite terrible because what are we using as a baseline for "healthy" when we throw that term around? No one can answer that. I don't think everyone using that term is being malicious but they don't realize how patronizing it is.
The problem is I don't think the initial reaction is incorrect. How does one tell the difference between someone in pain crying for help and someone that's genuinely ready to go? You can't really, not without long conversations.
What gets to be a tired argument is with people that seem to believe that the former is the only possible explanation, and refuse to believe that the latter is even a possibility. For them I think the problem is that challenges the belief that life is to be held upon a sacred alter above all, and that such a belief is held to be a universal truth.
It's hard to step away from such a belief because it opens an uncomfortable door in asking what makes being alive to be preferable, who gets to decide that, and what if anything should be done about it.
What you have is mental illness. A healthy brain does not decide to kill itself. Please get help and do NOT wait for your elderly relatives to pass before making the call.
And thus my point is illustrated. Few seem to believe that wanting to die is a valid state of mind without some sort of physical or psychological malady.
And hence why as is often the point, being unique isn't a desired thing. Because most people don't want the frightening unfamiliarity.
Every organ in the body, when healthy, supports the life of the whole organism. The suicidal brain is not supporting the life of the organism; it is not healthy.
Get off of internet forums and seek medical help. Your loved ones would tell you the same thing.
If what you say is true, then why did no species evolve immortality?
What about people that give their lives to save others? Are they mentally ill as well?
And again this is what I mean. I don't have anyone close to me anymore outside of the ones in my care. That was a conscious decision to minimize any potential collatoral harm when I do die.
My previous friends have drifted off over the last 15 years from me intentionally neglecting those relationships. I have never had intimate relationships with anyone, I haven't spoken to my sibling in 22 years, and most of my kin lives continents away and to whom I have never even seen in my life.
I am taking care of an aging and physically limited parent. It's brought me to my absolute limit. I often say stuff about wanting to be dead but I don't think I've ever been serious about it. It's the kind of thing I am trying to discourage in myself, but I'm trying to be more compassionate with myself in the times that I do.
Why are you so certain? 15 years is a long time to look down that barrel why do you deserve that?
I don't know if I can answer that well; it's like me asking you how you can be certain you love someone.
But my best attempt would be to say... There hasn't been any contraindications to make me think that think that suicide isn't the correct choice in the end. It feels right to me.
Because people are also different and , surprise, want different things in life. Not everyone is happy being alone (not lonely) like me, and presumably you too.
You want to know why "social connection" is difficult? Because actually social connection is not a generalize abstraction you get good at.
I see this increasingly in contemporary society. People increasingly tackle certain aspects of their life as generalized problems to solve. They want to "get better at social connection" or "be more athletic" or "be more productive". None of these things are ends in themselves. This is a tendency toward egocentrism and needless abstraction that plagues a lot of people.
In reality, life consists of concrete things. We can only become more productive once we have an actual goal in mind. Talking about productivity in the abstract is meaningless. We cannot determine our social connections in advance. We have or desire certain or more friends, we want to improve certain relationships. By starting from such an abstract place as "wanting to connect" or "being socially normal" you are basically doomed from the start. Connect with who? What is normal? These are not generalized problems to solve, they are rather determined by others. Viewing them this way stinks of main character syndrome—you don't actually care about or value other people, you view all of life through the lens of yourself and see all possible engagements as little more than reflections on your own personal player "stats". Yearning to "connect" with "people" is a completely meaningless and empty desire.
The atomization of individuals and hyperindividualism caused this. Social anxieties and struggles to learn how to properly socialize arise the more isolated we become, and the more distant and rare our interactions with others become. People raised in highly group-oriented and community focused environments don't have these issues to nearly the same degree, for obvious reasons—they learn how to actually care about other people, rather than view life as nothing more than "my personal journey" or as a challenge for nothing other than self-oriented improvement or self enlightenment.
This reads like we asked the AI to explain how it tried to manipulate and fake being "a socially normal person". It feels like it's carved out of wood.
That initial fixation on "position in the [social] hierarchy" in #1 can counterintuitively become self-defeating. Many people look at tricks of "climbing the social ladder" as potential signs of narcissism and instinctively steer clear. Unfortunately, that scoops up a lot of people like the author who just desperately wanted to break through an awkward adolescence!
Also counterintuitively, just giving up on that goal often leads to much more fruitful and lasting friendships. "Hi, I'm author. I'm abrasive and abrupt, excitable and sensitive. Interacting with me could be exhausting. Would you like to try? Please say yes or no."
Seriously, HN: if you saw one guy saying that to people, and another playing a ukelele at you as he "tells dramatics stories" about his life, which one would you choose to interact with?
For more than half my life I couldn't do small talk. It made zero sense to me. Why talk and laugh about the same things over and over - are people really that boring? That dumb?
Then it hit me. That ancient sound of two modems pushing static noise at each other, adjusting, until they identified their common frequencies.
Now I strike up low stake conversations with anyone and everyone. It adds interest to life, and it is a lot easier to make connections.
For me this was a profound life changing epiphany explosion.
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.
"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"
I'm a naturally socially awkward person, due partly to personality and partly to social anxiety disorder. I don't think I have the social intelligence/agility to pull off half of these maneuvers. Just reading about the author playing different characters with tables and imagining myself in that position made me want to throw up, I'd fuck it up so badly.
This post gave me extreme psychopathy vibes, a person lacking genuine empathy, but employing utilitarian use of unconscientious, calculated, manipulative, superficial charm to feed one's narcissism and status.
The drummer in my band was the type of person who become anybody's friend in a few minutes. I watched him and gleaned this advice:
When you meet someone, your goal should be to get a little look into their inner world. Find out what they care about. And second, be genuinely interested but don't judge. It shouldn't be fake, you should really care. Pay attention to what they say.
This works pretty well for getting to know a person.
While I have no issues believing that the outlined strategies are effective, and I sincerely congratulate the author on his journey, there is a flip side to engineering "social normalcy" that IMO the author is missing:
Any reasonably "normal" person (anyone that's not severely autistic) will find there are people that we effortlessly connect with and many others we don't. It's the natural state.
Now in any sufficiently intelligent and psychologically OK person the act of eliciting / pushing emotional connection with people from the latter group (where there's no natural connection) should trigger a certain amount of internal disgust.
The fact that it doesn't seem to be the case with the author would indicate that he's more of an outlier. Based on his writing he does seem intelligent and psychologically OK, so there might be other factors at play. My point is that his journey might not be transferable 1:1.
> The other day, someone told me, “I can’t imagine you ever being awkward with people.” And I thought, oh God, yes, say it to me again, again, put it in my veins. Tell me I’m a natural performer. There are no sweeter words.
> Because of course the absolute opposite is true.
Maybe I am cynical or a jerk but I don't like most people. A few people I genuinely dislike, most people I am not interested in and a few people I like.
I don't feel the need to build rapport or have close relations with all people. Either we genuinely click or we don't and it's fine for me anyway.
I trust myself enough and I don't crave the approval of others, I don't crave affection.
That being said, for work, in professional circles, with some aquitances, etc. I need to build good rapport and build trust fast, to the point that we build a good relation but not to the point we are friends. And it seems quite easy: be a good listener, echo their opinions, voice their unspoken concerns, summarize their opinions, be appreciative, repeat some key words from what they are saying, be appreciative, don't be judgemental, be genuinely friendly, tell jokes, look them in the eyes, smile, mind your body language and a few others.
When coming in a new workplace, there are people who still didn't integrate well or get along with other people well, even if they work ed there for a few years. There are people that need years to build a relationship with others. But for me, in a few months more people see me like I worked there since ages. I just signal to people that their ideas are mine, too, that we are very much alike.
People are set up to trust other people because that is the easiest way and takes the least effort. If you help them trust you and like you, they will.
The author appears to have a very large ego. Most "weird" people I know fall into the same trap of desperately trying to be something... to be interesting or dazzling or charming, while forgetting that they're talking to another person.
Connection is being interested in what someone has to say. Not in being "interesting" or playing some kind of game. Ask questions, share similar experiences.
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?
By far the most important advice in here — which isn’t given explicitly — is set yourself up to meet a lot of new people, because that’s how you learn. I worked in a pub a few nights a week, then I worked in a coaching org, then a bunch of new companies, then met lots of new people via the digital nomad community. You’ll get a little better with a bit of time, and with each new human.
Having social power is like owning a gun. Yes it's nice to have it and not use it. But there's often a temptation to use it. And if you use it incorrectly then someone can get hurt.
You spend years honing your skill with a weapon and then you stop using it.
The hard part is feeling like your weapon isn't being used. But you need to accept that disuse can be good. Otherwise you end up hurting people.
Basically, don't treat people like toys.
The author's next step will probably be to find places where he can go at full speed. Perhaps grief counseling, the clergy, hospice visits, or something along those lines.
> 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.
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 can almost guarantee that the number of people who have made substantive scientific contributions to society were far more interested in their chosen object of study than they were with their perceived intelligence. I can think of a few, perhaps, but that number is slim.
I don't know or care about the LLM use, but you are spot on about the egotism. This person is just like every other "i'm smarter than you and I have to show you that, see me, appreciate my intelligence! reward me for knowing things!" insufferable goon I've ever encountered, myself included. One day the author might realize that healthy, social relationships, "connection", stem from actually giving a shit about people who aren't me myself and I, but some people never get there.
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?
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.
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.
We are legion,I am sorry to say.
I can recognise co-sufferers, but not necessarily help them.
In older parlance, we would typically just be described as 'a bore', but there is something a lot more specific going on.
I am old now, but watching my child daughter now going through the exact same motions, including doing her damndest to impress people with her many skills, and tragic-ironically driving people away from her with that exact behaviour.
And I can't figure out how to help her figure it out. (past-50 insights don't resonate with 11year olds, unless you can relate them in youtuber-speak).
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.
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.
>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.
I have to say this strikes me as a very distorted perception. I don't know about 'normal,' but a socially successful person isn't intuiting their behavior subconsciously, they have learned it, and are actively mindful of it as they engage in it. Otherwise I think socializing would be excruciatingly boring. I think the distinction is that they had the capacity to learn from interacting with others, and had the confidence to iterate until they became comfortable with their social skills (which to others may appear 'unconscious').
I also don't think normative social interaction has much tolerance for manipulation. Maybe in the scope of a night out socializing or a business transaction, but in the context of actual relationships, those people are often ostracized or avoided in my experience.
I read parent's wording of "manipulation" as not in the usual negative connotation, and more as making the other person do something specific.
For instance if you wanted a security guard to help you find your way in a shopping mall, there would be approaches that are more effective than others. For instance making it sound more like you have something important to do and they'd save your day by helping isn't specially abusing the person. They might feel pretty good about helping you, it's still somewhat part of their job so you're not tricking them either.
>they had the capacity to learn from interacting with others
Or, were allowed to learn it from others.
>and had the confidence to iterate
Or, the safety to iterate.
This seems to be just shifting where socially-successful people received uncommon benefit-of-the-doubt.
>I have to say this strikes me as a very distorted perception. I don't know about 'normal,' but a socially successful person isn't intuiting their behavior subconsciously, they have learned it, and are actively mindful of it as they engage in it.
Lots and lots of, if not most, social behaviors are intuited subconsciously.
And that's even if the person has actively studied and learned them (and most are picked up by osmosis, not consciously learned anyway).
>I also don't think normative social interaction has much tolerance for manipulation. Maybe in the scope of a night out socializing or a business transaction, but in the context of actual relationships, those people are often ostracized or avoided in my experience.
That's either oblivious to 90% of social interactions out there, or just understands "manipulation" at the con artist or sociopath level.
Even wearing nice clothes to make a better impression is a kind of manipulation. Same for using different manners of speaking and language in different social contexts, and lots of other stuff.
Yes, I think we have different definitions. Some people make a distinction between social behavior and manipulation that you apparently do not.
If I wear nice clothes and make a good impression on someone, I am creating an outcome we both wanted at the outset. If we are meeting socially, they probably wanted to like me, and I wanted them to like me. That was the shared goal. That is cooperative, not manipulative.
It's very strange that people are ok with people charming others "naturally" (while it's probably because they learned by imitation, often from parents) while "practicing it" is seen as bad and manipulative.
It's the same with genetics. Getting lucky with looks is fine but working for the same goal (eg surgery) is somehow bad and people often hide it.
You say ‘somehow’ like the reasoning isn’t obvious. Physical attractiveness is a signal of reproductive fitness when it’s genetic, and not otherwise.
The reductionist biological explanation might be obvious to you, but in the actual world, the reasoning and the moral condemnation of things like plastic surgery is never explicitly about giving false signals regarding one's reproductive fitness. Reasons "haters" cite are about vanity, narcissism, refusing to look your age, etc.
For me, motivation matters. If you want to learn social skills to make your life easier while not harming others, that's perfectly fine, admirable even, but if you learn it to damage others for your own profit, that's immoral.
Same for the motivation of surgeries. You might not be comfortable with yourself, and want to change something, and that's perfectly fine, but again to changing appearance signal something to benefit you and harm others with less effort, it's immoral again.
And, I believe, if you need to change how you behave or look to get acceptance from a circle, this means the circle is toxic and you'll be far happier elsewhere.
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That too is pretty obvious from the same perspective: Admitting you only care about someone’s genes is itself considered shallow, so people make up other justifications based on other, more accepted values.
This is a bullshit rationalization for horrible behavior.
The people doing the judging certainly aren't gonna reproduce with 99.99999% of the people being judged, and I'm being extremely generous here.
While I certainly agree that it is an example of poor judgment and perhaps weak character to be broadly judgy about cosmetic efforts in general, I can understand the theoretical plight of someone who might be taken in by a deceptive person in that regard.
If you steelman the argument you can see the point, but it’s also unreasonable to assume that a person is living the steelman version of life (and being a deceptive person) just because they had a facelift.
OTOH, if you are admiring people’s genetics using their appearance as a proxy, I can see why it might seem like “cheating”
But the problem is not admiring good looks if they're natural, or expecting someone to be truthful, or anything of the sort that might or might not theoretically happen.
The problem is clearly with the bullying. And the assumptions around character. And basically using "changing yourself" as a proxy for hallucinating all sorts of completely unrelated bad characteristics. And the rationalizing around it.
It's the same for behavior: people are fine with the behavior of "naturally charming" people but as soon as someone mentions "learning how to do it" people immediately jump to conclusions and call it manipulative.
Someone having one consciously developed ulterior motive… does increases the likelihood of them having other consciously developed ulterior motives that might be hidden away?
The linkage isn’t as strong for unconsciously or subconsciously developed ulterior motives. Hence the huge gap in how people behave towards that.
Calling it "ulterior motive" is already a judgement call.
Being better at socialization is virtually demanded by society. "Not looking good" is also punished. There is nothing ulterior about anything.
The fact that a certain chunk of society demands both perfection and authenticity already makes it necessary for people to not be transparent about such things.
By definition all discussion about opinions, perceptions, etc., are judgement calls…?
You might think that those people’s opinions don’t matter, but it turns out that ‘lots of other people value me highly’ is in itself a signal.
And yes, it is horrible, but if you want to solve a problem, you must first understand the problem, and ‘some people are just born with Evil in their hearts’ is not a very good sociological model.
Sure, but why would they care? And why do you think it matters?
That's precisely my point. If you're not gonna reproduce with someone, their "reproductive fitness" is none of your business.
Once again this is just a rationalization for horrible behavior.
You could argue that they are ruining the value of the signal for everyone.
If it was about signal-to-noise, there would be no bullying of bald people, or short people.
Or it could still be, but have other explanation. E.g. you're called out if you ruin the signal to noise ration, but you're also called out if you genuinely give the unfit signal.
(Don't approve doing this or anything, just pointing the blind spot in your dichotomy, interested in the argument on a purely technical manner).
HN never ceases to surprise me with the rationalizations for any kind of behavior.
You keep using this word rationalization. I don't think it means what you think it means
Nope. I'm using it correctly. You might be in denial, though ;)
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But this is the neurodivergent ‘just world’ blind spot.
The world isn’t just. People like people with good genetics, because being friendly with the strong gets you benefits more than it gets you costs. Especially if you’re able to influence (or even pathologically manipulate) them.
Most people just know this, subconsciously. So they would probably even deny it. But it’s transparently easy to test, and even easier to see evidence of by just looking around.
Also, most attractive people work to be attractive because it’s often mutually beneficial (assuming they can counter manipulate or influence appropriately). Having people attracted to you gives you the ability to use other people’s resources for your benefit.
Most attractive people just know this, subconsciously. So they would probably even deny it. But it’s transparently easy to test, and even easier to see evidence of by just looking around.
This is generally kept covert, because like most covert power, it attracts negative attention if brought to conscious awareness - as then it’s perceived as manipulation, not influence, or encourages more jealousy, etc. as it’s not fair.
But life isn’t fair, except where we make it, and making something fair requires power.
And acquiring and maintaining power is fundamentally unfair.
I'm not saying the word is just anywhere in my message.
I'm just saying I can call a spade a spade.
If anything, it's the rationalizations around certain behaviors that are claiming the world is perfect and just as is.
> Physical attractiveness is a signal of reproductive fitness when it’s genetic, and not otherwise.
Nay, artificial physical attractiveness is also a signal of reproductive fitness. It isn't a given. It's the subject's genes that made a brain that was able to design (and to arrange to pay for!) the improved attractiveness.
It's not qualitatively different from brushing hair.
Yes, technically, having spare resources to devote to your own appearance is considered a positive signal, but it is an unreliable one, and often one not as valued by the people making the judgement. If there are many ways to signal wealth, a signal that has some intrinsic downside will lose its value if lots of people are sending the other wealth-signals.
>It's the same with genetics. Getting lucky with looks is fine but working for the same goal (eg surgery) is somehow bad and people often hide it.
We also tend to hide how hard we work to make our success look natural, but we reveal how hard we work on the extremes of success. For example, if I work hard and take a score of 17 out of 20 in a test people will say "I barely read last evening, phew", but if you're consistently scoring 19-20/20 people may even approach you to learn your studying methods and for tips, because they assume there are important takeaways that they can adopt.
It's my pet peeve with how society recognizes that someone is talented, which is blatantly flawed because all you can do is see what they're capable of doing. Someone may be talented yet unable (or unwilling?) to tap into their talent, but since we recognize talent by the output you can't really tell the existence of talent unless it's at the extremes of success, like the 8 year old who can solve mathematics that are a grade or more above the current grade.
I see talent like a genetic predisposition that can be appropriately cultivated to attain success. It's not much different than my height, because I didn't choose it, yet I can guess that there are men out there who hate the fact that I have their desirable height yet I never hit the gym, cultivate my social skills, or take advantage the fact that I look younger than I am. I am willing to bet everything that I met at least one person who thought of all of these things the first moments they looked at me.
But at least genetic predispositions like height are visible to the naked eye and no one can dispute the differences. When it comes to differences in the brain it's where we ignorantly proclaim that things are obscure therefore they can violate the very facts of observable nature.
In sort, not only I fully agree with you, but I also agree with the obvious double standards in society around it. If I take ADHD medication and that helps with my focus to improve my performance in school or work then I deserve that success as much as someone who naturally had no problems with ADHD. Why is this different for looks (like hair transplants, etc.) is beyond me.
Playing the hand you were dealt is fine. Pulling an ace out of your sleeve is cheating.
Cheating in whose game? We make our own luck.
You might not play it, but others do play the game and take it rather seriously.
I'm talking about real life, not a card game.
I am sure you are familiar with the concept of a metaphor.
Of course, but just because you can throw a metaphor around doesn't make it true.
There is no "rule" in life that says that people have to be judgmental assholes to each other. Using a card game to justify the behavior is just a rationalization.
>There is no "rule" in life that says that people have to be judgmental assholes to each other.
Apparently there is, which is why this judgement you speak of happens.
It just happens to be a social rule, and you don't like it, but it's a rule nonetheless. Doesn't have to be an official rule, agreed upon, and signed by each participant, or some physical law.
Hence, the card game metaphor has some merit. Like people think you shouldn't cheat in a card game, many people also think you shouldn't cheat with cosmetic surgery.
I 100% disagree. It is a minority making the noise and turning everything into life as a game.
Most people don't care, and I'm willing to bet that the ones rationalizing the behavior here don't go out of their way to care or talk about any of this.
Being judgmental assholes to each other isn't a social rule. It's in no way the expectation of behavior.
And yet, it’s how it is.
Yes, people who judge others like this are anti-social assholes.
Of course that's not as bad as people who try to rationalize bad behavior behind a veil of pseudo-intellectuality.
Once again: rationalizations don't make something true.
>Yes, people who judge others like this are anti-social assholes
On the contrary, since many (if not most) people do it, they're on the social side.
>Once again: rationalizations don't make something true
When it comes to social truths, what most people do make them so.
If most people think X bad, X is bad is a social truth. Doens't matter if you think X is "not bad in reality". Reality doesn't care about good or bad anyway, it doesn't have a morality.
Nope. Actions that harm social bonds, judging that shames, excludes, or hurts is antisocial even if many people do it.
Also this post has the classic logical error of assuming that because something is a certain way, it should be that way.
> Reality doesn't care about good or bad
Likewise: What you call "social truths" are real in that they shape behavior and consequences, but they’re conventions, not objective moral facts, and they can be unjust or oppressive.
>judging that shames, excludes, or hurts is antisocial even if many people do it.
That's a modern dellusion.
Sociology (and common wisdom) tells us that judgment "that shames, excludes, or hurts" is necessary for the development of morality, social cohesion, and cooperation.
Note: not any random judgment "that shames, excludes, or hurts" has this possitive role, but plenty of judgements that "shame, exclude, or hurt", meaning that judgement that "shames, excludes, or hurts" is a useful social tool.
And there is nothing positive or productive about the kind of judgement I'm talking about.
What kind are you talking about?
Refusing to be an asshole to someone being an asshole just enables them being an asshole.
Refusing to judge if someone is being an asshole, ensures that someone being an asshole will see no consequences for being an asshole.
I'm criticizing being an asshole to people who are not naturally the way society expects and had to work their way through.
But to be fair I'm mostly criticizing useless HN post-hoc rationalization.
> Refusing to be an asshole to someone being an asshole just enables them being an asshole.
I have nothing to do with this.
> Refusing to judge if someone is being an asshole, ensures that someone being an asshole will see no consequences for being an asshole.
I also have nothing to do with this.
How is someone supposed to know that the person acting like an asshole is doing it because of some ‘good’ reason, or because they are just a jerk?
Says the person trying to rationalize away obviously common human behavior as not existing because it is bad?
Or do you think anti-social assholes do not exist or are not common? Or that any system of identification of people should not attempt to understand them?
I'm not saying anywhere that those behaviors don't exist.
I'm just saying that there is no game anywhere, except in the head of people who are pretending to play a game.
Huh?
Isn’t that…. Every game?
That is a mistake I think. Many 'normal' people who grow up (emotionally) make a conscious effort not to instrumentalize their social interactions even if they do know how to do it. Certainly with friends they aim to be authentic.
I think emulating things that a serious person discards is a step backwards.
My take living as a relatively high functioning autistic (& other things) person and having many neurodivergent friends is that instrumentalizing is more often due to relational failures due to developmental social differences. The underlying of those is most often a hypersensitive (to sight, sound, smells, touch) individual having periods of being overwhelmed by the world around them. Couple that with parents who really don't have either the time, energy, or temperament to connect with such a kid.
This makes trying to figure out social cues difficult. After enough failures to connect, or being picked on to the point of feeling constant betrayal, we go to the safest place we can to try to play out interactions to avoid being hurt: our imagination. We make systems to predict behavior, we take to shallow taxonomies and try them on like tinted sunglasses. We are so masked, so protected, so... hardcore avoidant of the shame we feel just for existing, and we lean on this until we finally figure out that what we went through was really, really hard, and we find again the threads of our things that we never got a chance to develop, and start to grow them from the level they are, not where we pretend they are.
There's a lot of ways away from that, and those who instrumentalize might still be on the pathway upwards. Its hard to know where someone is from.
I(non autistic) would love to be friends with someone like you.
I think this is where the high incidence of neurodivergence in the trans community and certain subcultures (furries, roleplaying) comes to fore. Autism is often accompanied by identity conflicts - between what you're labeled as, and how people treat you, and how you feel about yourself - because communication disruptions are common when neurotypes are unaligned, and identity is both the reason for and the means by which much interpersonal communication takes place.
People who don't feel resonance between their label, treatment, and self-concept will question why that is, up to questioning aspects of their identity themselves. Once unmoored from a proscribed identity, people can find the ambiguity uncomfortable and untenable, and may adopt a concrete identity that fits more closely.
That doesn't make the adopted identities any less true, of course. Identity is socially-constructed, so deciding that you feel more comfortable presenting as a woman isn't any less justifiable than being assigned good ol' football-playin', roughhousin', English class-hatin', red-blooded American manhood at birth. Calling yourself a wolf or an orc is probably more extreme, especially in general contexts, but at a convention where you're surrounded by a thousand other people who find it easier to connect when they've thrown on a (literal or figurative) bear sark? Go ham.
In the end, of course, you're just you. All of the labels - even the ones you internalize and externalize - are just ways of trying to communicate, and to make being around you easier for other people, in part by giving them a box to put you in and to understand you by, because that's what our pattern-matching ape-brains like. The mask is a mask; it's a cover, not a substitute, for the totality of a person's being.
> in part by giving them a box to put you in and to understand you
Identity is a lookup for a custom zlib dictionary, so communication compresses better! Which means we can pick and choose per communication channel. :) Thanks for that thought!
It heartens me that someone else could make that connection between identity seeking and masking.
I completely disagree, I find this claim to also be unsupported by the current evidence. Identity is only a part of being trans and often comes much later.
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> presenting as a woman
When autism meets sexism.
The goalposts for "sexism" have moved to the edge of the galaxy if people today think that's sexism.
Parent says that "identity is socially-constructed", they defend trans people, they say it "isn't any less justifiable than being assigned good ol' football-playin', roughhousin', English class-hatin', red-blooded American manhood"
- but the fact they said "presenting" as opposed to "being" a woman is sexism, as if they're some "chauvinist pig"?
That's why we can't have nice things...
This poster is a well known transphobic troll that makes new accounts every week and implies that trans women are autistic males who "pretend" to be women because of sexism.
That being said, saying presenting instead of being is not ideal indeed.
It is sexism, in that this promotes sexist stereotypes regarding how women should present themselves. There is similar sexism inherent in the concept of "manhood", as well.
The irony of your white knighting is that its in reply to a kind thoughtful and insightful reply to probably one of the most gender non conforming people you've ever interacted with, who didn't see any problem with it.
lol
I think many of the “manipulations” are actually more like dances; both people engage in a consensual proxy display of willingness to cooperate. Any “manipulation” occurs only when one person is unaware that the “dance” exists and mistakes a protocol negotiation for a call to action, or where one person is deceptive and intentionally mis-signals their intentions.
I can see why someone not understanding the “dance” could easily mistake it for “innocent” manipulation… but when it’s basically a scripted give-and-take that serves as a symbolic representation of a persons willingness to cooperate and their advertised intentions, it isn’t really manipulation at all, but rather a type of communication that allows (hazy) inferences about a person’s character and intellect in the guise of insignificant banter.
Although, I agree that for average people, over instrumentalizing your interactions becomes fake (although, to be honest, most could use a bit more, including myself, to communicate more effectively with those close to us).
Still, agree with others, seems like you're generalizing what is good for the average person is also good for those with personalities that are more at the extremes. Yeah, know a couple of people who just don't understand what people are thinking or feeling, ever. And so they have to learn a system of cues to look for to figure out whether a person is angry or sad or happy... These people need to create systems to make socialization work.
> Many 'normal' people who grow up (emotionally) make a conscious effort not to instrumentalize their social interactions
That's definitely not true if we include "work" as a "social interaction".
I wouldn't say just friends either. The biggest leap I made in social stuff is to simply stop caring what other people think. If somebody doesn't like me, cool - there's plenty of other people. If they do? Awesome, because they're getting the 'real' me, so it's probably going to be a good relationship.
Basically I think a lot of people's issues with social stuff starts with something analogous to a boy who never asks a girl out for fear that she'll say no. People don't engage in interactions, or try to be overly pleasing, to try to appeal to other people.
But that's never going to lead to a good relationship, because it's fake, and it'll feel exhausting. By contrast when you stop caring, you might be surprised to find people like you even more, it becomes even easier to form "real" relationships, and suddenly social interactions aren't tiring at all.
This becomes even easier after having kids because you're probably not really seeking relations in any meaningful way, so you completely genuinely just don't care. And then paradoxically it becomes so much easier. Well, at least it becomes wisdom you can hand down to your own kids, or random anons online.
> The biggest leap I made in social stuff is to simply stop caring what other people think.
If you do care what other think, you alter your behavior to make them think what you prefer, and it becomes inauthentic on your part and manipulation of others. That's not to say that all things for others are manipulation; if you find out that you don't listen to people well and improve that, they might like being around you more because being heard is an important core part of relating.
> If somebody doesn't like me, cool - there's plenty of other people
And what if no one likes me?
You might not be understanding what is annoying to people, or you might understand it quite well and are using that adopted identity as a shield. You can’t lose what you don’t have.
Either way, if you aren’t content with your situation in this regard, I would recommend study, introspection, and perhaps therapy. Dale Carnegie produced some excellent work in this regard, aiming towards win/win interactions. He’s more business oriented, but that context is easy to strip away, and the principles stand on their own.
You should probably figure out why - unless you are ok with nobody liking you. If _everyone_ finds you annoying or difficult being around, you most like are annoying and difficult to deal with.
How you go about figuring what bugs people is perhaps the hard part.
I can tell you exactly why people don't like you.
You speak as if you are an expert on everything in the universe at all times. Way too much black-and-white thinking. And many people often strongly disagree with your statements... a great deal of your comments are quite often downvoted and/or flagged.
There is a reason you have been banned from several different platforms now. Disagreeing/arguing with their actions is not how you improve yourself, and you can't explain your way out of it, you have to want to change how you act, and work hard at it. You have to be ok with being wrong. Your weaponization of logic has destroyed your empathy. You are craving validation through technical dominance, but this just further isolates you/alienates others.
I think real intelligence by definition requires empathy and humility, which is typically the opposite of such dogmatism in my opinion. "As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding."
The Dunning-Kruger effect also applies to smart people. You don't stop when you are estimating your ability correctly. As you learn more, you gain more awareness of your ignorance and continue being conservative with your self estimates.
Also you seem to like to claim that almost everything is illegal and then not back up your claims with any useful sources, instead telling people to look it up themselves or give vague non-answers like "it's in the German law code". That and most of your comments are just plain negative in general, and I think this ultimately stems from some kind of childhood trauma that you have not dealt with.
Many of your comments are you condescendingly implying other people are stupider than you, and you have a disproportionate number of comments targeting me specifically.
Isn’t aiming to be authentic a form of “instrumentalizing”?
Excellent point, especially since most people “aiming to come across as authentic” are anything but.
Being authentic, is about understanding oneself, and being able to communicate oneself better to others so they can understand you better too.
When we win, by being a better collaborator with others, it isn't operating in a shallow or selfish sense.
It isn't treating others like instruments for our benefit over theirs. It isn't manipulation.
We are mincing words.
I don’t think collaboration, altruism, and other pro social traits are exclusive of instrumentalizing.
Whatever word you want to use that encompasses pro social behaviors, let’s use that word if you don’t like instrumentalizing.
> We are mincing words.
Good point.
These words are unfortunately loaded. "instrumentalizing" is so close to "instrument" for me to see them as unrelated in meaning. But lots of similar words drift in meaning, or have several interpretations.
I don't have any issue with people doing things for "natural" reasons, vs. realpolitik analytical reasons, when the motive is still benefit-neutral, or benefit-benefit relative to ourselves-others.
> 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.
I don’t think that’s a fair comparison to what’s describe in this blog post.
The writer describes taking on different personas and trying different tricks with other people portrayed as subjects of some sort of experiment.
The casual mentions of how they tried some conversational trick and got someone into full on sobbing was particularly striking because there was hardly a mention of concern for the other person. The only discussion was about the trick used to elicit the response.
That is what I do not agree is consistent with normal interactions. Most people would feel some degree of guilt or dirtiness, for lack of a better word, if they used some of these tricks to lure random interactions into a false sense of connection and feigned friendship, especially if for no other reason to experiment on the other person.
> The writer describes taking on different personas and trying different tricks with other people portrayed as subjects of some sort of experiment.
It’s typically not done quite so intentionally, but this sounds like most folks’ junior high and high school years. Sometimes also college.
I know I totally changed in those years, and it was mostly by noticing what “worked” and leaning into it.
It is also how a lot of people behave professionally and in their dating life, even later in life.
I don’t think neurotypical people can ever understand this process but I’ll try to explain what it was like for myself, a neurodiverse person:
- yes, I was consciously trying different ways to fit in
- yes, I felt uncomfortable that it was forced and unnatural
- no, it didn’t occur to me at all this was a deeper issue; I had all kinds of naive explanations: oh I’m not as confident because I because I started school a year earlier than the other guys; girls don’t like me because I’m not as handsome as other guys; I’m not as social because I don’t have an older brother to learn it from, etc.
- over the years, as I got better at what I now know to be “masking”, I just subconsciously embodied the idea that consciously working on every little aspect of social interactions is “normal”
- it took me 30 years to realise, wait a minute, it’s probably not normal that I had to put so much effort into all of this, and got myself a brand new shiny autism diagnosis at 40
the only book worth reading on this topic is "how to appear normal at social events" by Lord Birthday
Like you I was disgusted to see OP's link posted to these hallowed grounds, a bunch of filthie normie jibber jabber waxing poetic about how great it is to have cracked the normie code
The “trick” you are referring to, requires you to care about other people in the first place.
As I recall, the section this came up was when they were coaching.
This does feel like another instance of how people have a deep instinctual grasp of social interactions, but a shallow ability to articulate the moving parts in detail.
I think the analogy was “everyone know how to use the flush, but they can’t explain the mechanisms behind it”
What comes across as creepy about the techniques is that the approach doesn't seem to involve personal consequences; it seems to be sterile, like a game with no negative effects if it goes wrong. Normal people have all sorts of anxiety and potential hurt if they do these things, since they know how they affect others.
Personally I'd prefer that "spectrum" individuals just be themselves. I take it as my own shortcoming if I can't establish a dialog. I like the challenge of interacting with someone who does things very differently. This of course assumes there's a genuine desire to connect. I knew someone who had some techniques like this, and it was weird interacting with him. The techniques put up a barrier and it didn't feel authentic.
Maybe I'm jaded but I see it as a failure of the "normal" person if they can't deal with someone who communicates differently. All their issues just get triggered, not the fault of the spectrum individual, and not their responsibility to overcome. As a practical measure for just dealing with these people, I could see using techniques. But not when you actually want to relate with someone.
This is very strange to me.
As a neurotypical person (I don't think the term "normal" is appropriate) I'm probably doing or did the same things the article is talking about. And I never thought about negative consequences, except when I was extremely anxious.
If anything, people on the spectrum, introvert, or just awkward are probably thinking about the consequences (positive or negative) way more than someone like me.
I also agree with the sibling post. The failure of most (?) neurotypical people to accept people on the spectrum as-is shouldn't be a burden on them. If society can't make them safe, they should do whatever is best for them. "Authenticity" (which is just an illusion anyway) be damned.
By authenticity I mean being able to speak your thoughts without having to strategize around the other party being unable to handle it like a mature adult.
> I'd prefer that "spectrum" individuals just be themselves
Society at large teaches them this is not safe and they will be excluded (e.g. no friends, no dates, etc) if they do not adapt.
Or worse, actively targeted by bullies.
> I like the challenge of interacting with someone who does things very differently.
So this is about you?
Yes, my whole comment was about me and my experiences. That specific point was that I don't see it as a burden that someone is interacting me differently than most people do.
A lot of normal people may routinely act charming and game social interactions, but they generally aren't being "manipulative" in the process. "Manipulation" is really just a polite word for routinely lying and BS'ing people on the off-chance that they are going to be fooled and/or not want to call you out on it.
If you're reasonably socially skilled, you can usually see it coming a mile away and react accordingly, but what gets you in trouble is the not-so-common case where you actually fall for it, since the consequences can be quite bad. None of this is describing ordinary social interaction, tough; these are really two entirely separate topics, and there's little reason to conflate them.
So for the same set of actions, it's fine if you're unaware of the underlying mechanisms, and manipulation if you are aware?
If you dig through the weeds of it you can argue just about everything we do socially is manipulation. We are social because we're social animals and will die without help from other humans (well, particularly thousands of years ago). At the end of the day, we are nice to people to get things from them that we need - food, shelter, knowledge, strength. It's always been like that. But because it makes us feel fuzzy and good, apparently that's not manipulation, that's being nice.
You can absolutely be charming towards people and play the "game" of social interaction while being quite aware that this is what you're doing. The point is that this need not involve outright lying or BS at all and that the latter is what such terms as "manipulation" actually imply in a very practical sense; not that it somehow counts against you if you're aware of what's happening at a pure level of social interaction. (In fact, the opposite is generally the case; active social awareness and mindfulness is a big part of what people variously call "EQ", "empathy", "cross-cultural competence", etc.)
Fair point about lying. I agree, outright lying is not ethical and would be more manipulative, I agree. Is the author lying?
Looking at the definition of manipulation, it occurs to me that manipulation must be a win-lose situation. Otherwise it is persuasion. You could use the same technique, but if it is win win for both it is persuasion, but if you are gaining from their expense it is manipulation. At least according to Wikipedia.
There are also white lies. Are you manipulating children if you are claiming santa exists? Are you manipulating a person if you either omit a truth or do a white lie because you know truth at that moment in time would be worse for their life.
That seems a little bit of an odd interpretation to me.
Persuasion is honest. "Hey, I think you should do this thing because of reasons a, b, and c, there are some downsides like y and z. It may mean something to me peronally, so I may also to appeal to you to do it for me as a favour. I may even play up how important I think it is."
Manipulation is dishonest. "Hey, I'm going to use an underhanded technique to make you feel like you're missing out on something, or are inadequate, to get you to do this thing. Maybe I'll go overboard on flattery and inflate your ego to achieve my end. I also might lie or omit some of the downsides to give a distorted view of the risks"
Even if it's a win-win situation, it's still manipulation if you're seeking to bypass someone's agency.
> Are you manipulating a person if you either omit a truth or do a white lie because you know truth at that moment in time would be worse for their life.
Yes, certainly, and that's why people often get upset about "little white lies" too. Maybe you are doing a good thing, maybe you're not, but removing agency from someone by keeping the truth from them is always manipulative.
The wiser question may be "is manipulation always wrong?" And I'd argue that if it gets your kids to calm down and go to bed on Christmas Eve, maybe not ...
"we are nice to people to get what we want" is flat out not true. We are nice to people because cooperative societies out performed the non-cooperative ones on the macro level. On a micro level this kind of attitude sometimes/often prevails, we call the people who act like this "jerks", and the people who try to justify it with these kinds of rationale "sociopaths", because to the group as a whole its so incredibly damaging, and to the individuals on the other side of it, insufferable.
> We are nice to people because cooperative societies out performed the non-cooperative ones on the macro level
I.e. biology gets what it wants... We want to survive, mother nature wants us to survive, society wants to survive.
I am absolutely not suggesting that outright jerkish behaviour is acceptable (although to suggest jerks have no social success is probably untrue; plenty of people who are attracted to jerks). I am arguing that if there was no personal advantage whatsoever to being social and nice to people, we wouldn't do it. We'd be lone animals, spread out across the land rather than concentrated in towns and cities. There's a spectrum of selfish behaviour, right? We are somewhere in the middle because it's advantageous to be.
Both are true. We want to survive and being nice to others increases our likelihood of survival. Wanting to survive is also selected by evolution and wanting to be nice in order to survive in a group setting that increases survival odds too.
What about intentionally making conscious effort to remember to use people's names when talking to them?
And other similar things that increase someone's odds of being liked or convincing or getting someone to do what they want more likely?
Doing those things is not BSing, not lying, yet people can consciously be doing those to increase the likelihood of getting what they want.
Many people will obviously do it naturally. I personally have to make a conscious effort every time for such things.
Does having to consciously decide to do those things make me a sociopath? I certainly wouldn't bother saying someone's name if I didn't think it mattered for reaching my life goals. Extra same with small talk.
Then what about memorising some funny, self deprecating stories from my life to make people laugh so they would like me more?
Then what about asking questions, keeping up conversation etc, etc, even though I would rather be in my own thoughts doing my own thing?
I do it all consciously and intentionally for my own self benefit. Some to avoid bad things happening to me, some to make good things more likely to happen to me.
If I didn't do those things people might think I am awkward, weird, silent, boring, pass me on for promotion at work, etc.
Do you really think you're the only person who's heard of that "technique"?
When someone uses my name in conversation, it makes me think less of them, because it's so unnatural and clearly they might be doing it to manipulate me.
Names are dumb - we are people, not labels
> When someone uses my name in conversation, it makes me think less of them, because it's so unnatural and clearly they might be doing it to manipulate me.
Oh man, I always find it so slimy when people do that! I've also noticed it's mostly HR people or sales people who do this, so clearly it's a phony technique they learned somewhere. But I suppose it gets taught because it works, maybe for people who don't pick up on the fact that it's so forced?
I'm not entirely sure what constitutes "normal" anyway. A frequent tongue-in-cheek topic of conversation between my wife (a counselling psychologist) and me is how we're weird, and everyone else seems to be normal, where "normal" in this thread of conversation usually describes some sort of puzzling behaviour.
Each one of us occupies our hallowed space in the rich tapestry of neurodiversity. Only a few people design our social institutions though. "Normal" is looking like those few, and tbh, varies widely. Compare normal at a Cambridge academic department and normal at the local gym and normal at the BBC.
Recommend this book about how we have evolved to deceive ourselves about our true motives, in order to better deceive others...
The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28820444-the-elephant-in...
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.
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".
Yeah. I wonder why that is - is it because it highlights a conflict between our actions and values? If left unexamined, it's a non-issue, so having it spelled out feels like a problem being created?
I like your description.
I think sometimes this is when we find our way to the middle of two relatively simple drives: "be an orthodox group member/ avoid being a social outcast" and "avoid the discomfort of cognitive dissonance / admitting hypocrisy".
If there aren't immediate consequences for inaction (especially if there ARE costs and/or social consequences for action) were very good at convincing ourselves to ignore it (or tell ourselves we will EVENTUALLY deal with it but just not right now)
I would much rather assume the people I'm interacting with are honest and conveying their real feelings, vs playing some (probably) Machiavellian game with N levels of dishonesty and manipulation from what could easily be a malevolent person at the core. At least that tends to be the assumption when you pick up on a lack of authenticity in this way.
When you have a real indication of dealing with a master manipulator, it's very understandable that you should use an abundance of caution. That's probably an instinct in us at this level.
Of course everyone is at least a little aware that they're putting on a bit of a ruse with their public persona, but that needs to be tethered to some level of authenticity or you'll just be sending out Patrick Bateman vibes.
This strikes me as a glass-half-empty interpretation. Why is the stuff from the blog post necessarily machiavellian and manipulative? I didn't read any of that into that blog post. Rather, it was about how to create win-win situations where the people involved genuinely enjoy each others company. No need for bad intentions here.
Wouldn't you think it is more important what the goal for the other person is? If their goal is to enrich and make both of your lives better, does it matter whether they consicously use social techniques or have natural automatic ability to do so?
It is also autism vs psychopathy. Patrick Bateman is nowhere close to someone autistic trying to learn those socially successful behaviours. Patrick Bateman is a terrible human being not because they are inauthentic, he is a terrible human being because of the acts he did and wanted to do.
It may be the first time many people are actively considering these things if they haven't generally felt social struggles / aren't on the spectrum.
Sometimes doing something explicit that is typically done without thought or plan feels phony and off. This is such a scenario.
That's not what I got from the article. Firstly they seem to be saying that they were not seen as phony (hard to judge). Sure they're using tricks, but they were copying tricks off other people! Not all social interaction is genuinely raw.
I thought the article was more about leaning into their own style, becoming more intuitive over time.
Embracing the bliss of ignorance.
100% correct.
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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
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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.
...and the more low-trust becomes the society, as if it's not already the case in plenty of places.
It's no coincidence that people always judged and shunned such overt manipulators, as well as tried to downplay the underlying mechanisms of manipulation in general (outside of the sales types, which are often looked upon as slimy and not deserving of trust).
A low-trust society is not fun a place to live in
Why dontou consider it "manipulation"? Would you consider what goes into you resume, or performance/promotion packet "manipulation"? In every interaction there are spoken and unspoken rules, and those who excel tend to be those who can understand the subtext and express themselves effectively.
It depends, of course. Some people might fill their resume with outright BS, and this would be widely regarded as manipulative.
Depends how you define outright BS. I bet most people at least cherrypick the best data points amongst thousands of possible, giving a look that doesn't really represent them as a whole. And then they omit some undesirable things. Similar to how people on social media will only post their best moments, giving inaccurate representation of their lives and themselves while overall causing others to feel like they are missing out, etc.
So here is the skill of being able to cherrypick data to give the best representation of yourself as opposed to true average honest overview of oneself. Then the skill of avoiding answering questions you don't want to answer to by answering by talking about what you want to talk about (think politicians).
Same is with real life interactions. Among 1000s of things you could say or do there is always some that are more effective than others in reaching a certain goal, whether it is getting a job, making a sale, convincing someone, making a friend or whatever.
Is it manipulative only if you make up something or if you are able to get people to do what you want by being able to cherrypick the most convincing ideas, arguments, facts etc.
If they have thousands of examples to cherry pick from... That's a signal of experience. So it's not entirely manipulation. If you can pick from your experience and find the best examples and you have several... You have experience.
It really depends on the topic. You can do a lot by cherrypicking and omitting stuff. Simple example, I can talk about all the stock trades where I hit big and leave an impression that I am super good with picking the right stocks, but not talk about my losses. This is super obvious example, but in real life there is infinite nuance to all of it. The stories I choose to tell and stories that I choose to leave out.
But in the context of job interviews.. It applies. But also that applies in trading, if you have a bunch of experience winning or losing, that's useful experience and I want your input on my team. The fact that you cherry picked is built into the evaluation. You have experience. Whether or not you have some innate talent for it is aside. I care about your experience.
Yes in interviews it is expected and people do cherrypick. But the ability to cherrypick can show a lower skilled person in better light compared to a higher skilled person who may not cherrypick as well or tends to not like cherrypicking the best examples since it doesn't feel honest. Sometimes this honesty can work well, sometimes not. Sometimes if honesty doesn't work well it just means the job wouldn't have been a good fit anyway, but other times it is just putting you at a huge disadvantage.
I have a friend who is somehow super good at that, it is fascinating to me. But he can't be bothered to do actual work. He performs extemely well in interviews, gets high paying job, and then stays there for 3 months, gets bored. Of course he doesn't put that on his resume. He doesn't really lie, but he definitely cherrypicks, embellishes etc. I am kind of the opposite of him. I have stayed at the same place for years and am naturally passionate about software eng, but troubled socially. He is very confident and has no shame.
I don't know how to filters those people. But I'd say in general if people have positive things to show... It doesn't mean they don't have negatives. They can be hiding all kinds of negatives... That's hard to test. But if you have several good examples you probably have some experience. I assume you pick the best. Maybe that's problematic. Maybe some hyper-honest people try to pick a mixture that better represents their skills. But I don't know how you balance for that. I want them to represent themselves and sell themselves.
But job applications aren't the same as normal life so this is probably a tangent. In normal life, though, I kinda assume I'm seeing what people want me to see. But if it looks really good it probably means they have good sample of experiences to cherry pick from.
Yeah, I mean it is tough, but I guess my main point is that it is never super clear what is manipulation, what is persuasion, what is bs, what is honest, etc. Many people cherrypick and omit intentionally, consciously, many people subconsciously and naturally. Many will simply remember only the good things about themselves and radiate only that, others are extremely self critical of themselves, and radiate that. Sometimes one works better than the other.
Two different people can have the same achievement and one thinks it is the most awesome and special achievement ever, and embellishes it, the other thinks it is not even worth mentioning or words it completely differently.
E.g. for job interviews when are you considered to be "mentoring" someone? Someone might do few code reviews and claim they have mentored juniors, other one can have 1 on 1s giving valuable career advice, tech advice, but still not think of themself as a mentor.
I agree. I don't know which segment you fall into... But for applications and interviews I would recommend to radiate... Find your best work. Open source or otherwise. And sell yourself.
That doesn't mesh with normal human behavior. It feels weird. But the corporate world and the private social worlds are disconnected. For me at least. So it's weird. Actually ... That's a weird concept.
I guess I recommend having two minds... One with friends and one with the corporate world. And they don't play by the same rules.
Yeah, agreed here. Ideally you want to have friends who you can be authentic with just so you can have actually meaningful discussions about each other lives and thoughts. Corporate and career can be totally different. Early dating can be a mixed bag etc. And of course there are some other social events too, different types of people you may need to navigate around etc.
I don't know if this is a toxic thing to say or not... But I enjoy my tech friends and I value our discussions. But I most value my science nerd friends outside of tech. Like.. I kinda don't want my friends to be peers. Not because of competition or anything like that. But I want them to nerd out to me about things I'm not steeped in. And I want to get to nerd out to them about computer science and the boundaries of philosophy and math and logic. But having a friend group is central.
A self-help book that took off saying the quiet part out loud is How to Win Friends & Influence People. It predates the 'influencer'.
https://dn720004.ca.archive.org/0/items/english-collections-...
Nah, that's definitely not a norm. By that definition me and a lot of people from where I come from including whole family and friends/classmates would quality as autistic. I know form experience this is baseline for some people and they simply can't work 'naturally' with others but I'd grade them as 1-2 out of 10 in sociopathic spectrum. That is by no means a negative denigration of them just describing their behavior (and struggles) in the best way I can.
Interestingly not current corporate banking work, where this would be true but then this is highly sociopathic environment with dominant culture that doesn't do direct honest feedback generally. But generally finance attracts the worst of the (smart) crowd so thats not in any way a reference of mankind.
So its cultural quite a lot. I presume you meant some rather extreme situation of above by describing it as autistic-spectrum.
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.
> This post actually kind of blows my mind.
I suggest re-reading it from some different perspectives. Consider that the narrator may not be entirely reliable. They way they talk about being able to read other people and manipulate them into a sense of openness and connection has some hints of behaviors that are associated with people who view themselves as superior to others and view others as mere targets for their superior intellect to manipulate.
In this case, it’s worth considering that maybe the blog post itself is yet another chapter in their experimentation with manipulating others into a sense of connection, and the text is written in a persuasive way to leave the reader thinking that they have been blessed with some openness and revelation from the author. In other words, it’s crafted in a way to generate some of the same false sense of connection describe in the article, with the stories and claims crafted to target what the target audience wants to hear.
Something to think about when reading it, at least.
It's stages in their life and it goes from manipulation to letting go. Even the manipulation was not malicious -- they just wanted to have "better" experiences with other people (and maybe upsell an entrée at first).
And as a socially awkward individual I found it quite interesting.
Yes. He literally started his journey as being the most bullied kid in school. His intention was mainly to be accepted.
No it was to learn the biggest bully tricks to become the best bully
Did we read the same article?
If so, I missed all references of him bullying other people.
So an emotional quine?
From that approach you could view (almost?) all human communication as artificial unreliable manipulation. And not be entirely wrong. But you could also view that same (almost?) all human communication as authentic attempts to connect and heal (including heal the speaker), if sometimes misguided, and not be entirely wrong either.
I am not sure I like what it does to my experience in the world to view all human communication as selfish manipulation. Although I recognize the pull to do so can come from an attempt to protect oneself based on past harm.
I remember being in my early twenties very awkwark. I read a few books on socializing. I basically did what this post is describing. It takes sustained effort and writing those emotional checks costs you more than you think to both parties.
It isnt hard to engage on a deep level with people but most dont for a reason. It is exhausting and can send the wrong signals.
It’s the root of secure attachment and clear boundaries something missing in the majority of the world unfortunately
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.
> I am still struggling to understand the way in which many people naturally form casual connections with others.
Repeated exposure. The first "relationship", or deep conversation, or jam session, or whatever, is always way more intense than the 500th. For virtually everyone, neurodivergent or otherwise.
Statistically, your first time is likely to be their 100th time, and so there's a perceived bias towards casualness, even though everyone has been a rookie. This can be daunting but the only real answer is to push through and go to the next interaction with an open mind.
When I read those first two sections I didn't like the guy either, but he arrives at some much healthier takes by the end of the piece. So I think it's intentional to illustrate his growth and the fact that he's willing to put the vulnerability and the mistakes up front and own them to me suggests that he really does get the "secrets" of being socially well adjusted.
My own view is that it's about giving generously to other people without expecting anything in return. People are surprisingly reluctant to do this, but if you do, most people will like you. What are you supposed to give? Well it can be just about anything, time, attention, compliments, money, ideas, a shoulder to cry on, you name it. But probably the most powerful thing if we're talking about building social relationships is to give them your personality. Think of it like there is a big empty jar out there which represents the social environment and we're all wired to not want it to be empty, well go and fill it up with your personality, provide examples of who you are instead of standing off in a corner silently and going unnoticed. Instead of being forgotten you'll be remembered, many will like you, some will love you and some will hate you, the ones who respond most positively are the ones you make an effort to engage with in the future.
Sasha starts figuring this out when he starts working at the fancy restaurant with waiters who would do really odd stuff and it would work. The best waiters were for the most part just displaying a lot of personality. Working at restaurants might have skewed his perspective a bit because when you work as a waiter you're putting on a performance, the goal is to do a job, entertain, get compliments and get tips, beyond the food this is why people go to a nice restaurant. Being authentic and building lasting relationships is secondary to performing a commercial service at a restaurant, but not in real life (and perhaps not at the highest levels of certain commercial services for that matter, the line starts to blur). I think he's realized all this by the end of the article.
And it's hard to talk about personal growth without showing your missteps, and he does that pretty fearlessly
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.
> If the limit of someone's behavior winds up making everyone happier-off, I don't understand why I ought to care.
I guess I don’t believe this behavior actually leaves the targets better off.
Doing a lot of experiments where you feign connections and openness with other people is going to leave a lot of the targets feeling unhappy when they realize they were tricked into opening up to someone who was just using them as a target for their experiments.
Take, for example, the section of the post where he talks about getting someone to open up into “cathartic sobbing” but displays zero interest in the person’s problems, only wonder about how he managed to trigger that through yet another technique.
My takeaway was distinctly different about the net effects of these social connection experiments. It was fine in the context of waiting tables where everyone knows the interaction is temporary and transactional, but the parts where it expanded into mind-reading people’s weaknesses and insecurities and then leveraging that into “connections” that he later laments not actually wanting.
The assumption is that it’s feigned. Frankly you do not develop these skills to this degree if you are inauthentic.
Even the “zen openness” bit is mimicry of people whose vibe they liked, and they were surprised by the results.
Important context is that the author was a social outcast as a child. I also had this experience, and I can tell you, I was just desperate to figure out how to get people to like me. It wasn't that I wanted to manipulate them, I just really, really wanted to have friends and be included. And so I also cycled through different tricks that I thought would help. (I went through a standup comedy phase, for instance.)
Of course, in many ways making friends is all much easier than either I or the author was making it out to be. But I suspect we were both burdened with some unrealized oddities, and, unable to directly identify or compensate for them, sought other, more elaborate ways to fit in.
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.
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 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.
Whether someone is swearing at me or punched me in the face is not a factor. I believe the point of the book is that criticism tends to be taken personally. I'm sure you can guess what that implies.
> Winning by Jack Welch
Why do I get the impression that this book is very much in line with Charlie Sheen's personal philosophy?
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”
Do you think you are a common man? Are you content with it?
Yes and yes.
I actually like being part of society and don’t need to feed delusions of grandeur to feel content.
Also I want to point out how I referenced his opinion as being like tips on winning the lottery. Getting to a unique position of power like that requires so much luck and other input that you have no control over that I view the “advice” on how to achieve it as useless and just the result of those people grappling with the cognitive dissonance of thinking they got to where they are on their own vs the actual reality
I think the whole "everyone's so very special" shtick that is so pervasive in children's stuff didn't do us any good. Being content with being just an normal everyday human is important.
Arguably, you are the lucky one to be able to be a part of society in a way that you are also content with it.
You asked about this in a specific context.
There are lots of things I am not content with. Some I think are reasonable and won’t change my mind are. Others are irrational and I believe an aspect of maturing is becoming content with the fact that those feelings are irrational and I shouldn’t be unhappy because of it.
The example I use in conversation with friends in this topic is that when I am hungry and pass by someone with a nice steak, I don’t get in a tizzy about not having it myself the same way I would when I was 5.
> I liked the book Winning by Jack Welch more
Jack Welch the sociopath?? Or is there another author with that same name?
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.
> 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.
> What is being friends with people other than essentially manipulating them into liking you by being likable and a good friend?
No, that’s not a friendship. That’s just a relationship built on insecurity. You can only hold up the facade for so long. Imagine manipulating a romantic interest in to liking you, or vice versa. That’s not a very nice thing to do. It never ends well.
>Imagine manipulating a romantic interest in to liking you, or vice versa. That’s not a very nice thing to do. It never ends well.
Someone better tell the makeup and fashion industries...
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.
If I didn't do it on purpose, I will never do it, with anyone, including my own family. It does not happen "automatically" for me. I have to be mindful about it. "Force" myself to do it. Do it "on purpose".
Your proposed course of action would leave me with no friends or relationships.
To me, the phrase "relationships take effort" - means literally that. Because every single interaction takes effort.
Perhaps this is one of those "introvert vs extrovert" things.
Some people’s “being who they are” doesn’t get them any friends, and they don’t understand why. They want to connect with people, but their outwards personality may be unintentionally grating, exhausting, tiring, etc.
Socials skills are “skills” like any other and if you aren’t getting the desired result with your current skill set, what better way to improve than purposeful practice?
I’m curious how you accidentally or unintentionally become friends with someone. Being friends almost always requires intent.
I guess you intentionally interact with them (because you like them, you share an interest), but you don't intentionally pretend to be something you are not (even though you know the other person would like that).
not original commenter, but I have. Either through their manipulation, or just being in the same place, doing the same things. Didn't like them as a person, but they were decent to me, so some sort of reciprocation happened, didn't last though.
> I’m curious how you accidentally or unintentionally become friends with someone
Really?
My most enduring friendships seem to just sorta happen, meeting people at random in various ways, figuring out you're into a lot of the same stuff, just sorta rubbing along well... and now we've known each other 25 years, how the hell did that happen? Ha.
It's almost the same argument, but backwards: You think they are a good person, so you want them to do well. Because they are good, they also want you to do well. Same result, but intentions are backwards.
Empathy.
What? You look confused. Empathy and constantly having someone's back is not manipulation. It only ever gets manipulative if you pretend to do these things and then let your peers down at critical moments.
>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 was terrible at this stuff until I learned how to do it, working in a customer facing tech support call centre.
> 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.
If you read the article, you'll see that these are not individual points, but sequential stages that the author went through while learning what it really takes to be social. So stage 1. was his first attempt, then he decided 2. worked better .. etc. until he finally reached the one that worked best, i.e. 6.
The difference between manipulation and influence is that on the first one you are the only one taking advantage of the situation, and the second one you genuinely believe the other person will end in a better place and if you are wrong no harm is done.
I guess is also about if you care about the other person or you are just pretending, unfortunately in my opinion there is no way to know, because some people are really good at pretending to care, and even supporting you with a hidden score tracking board, basically they are investing.
And then there are people that really care about you and because they know they can't do anything or don't know what to say, they won't reach to you.
I guess we are only left with our instinct and that is something that you learn to calibrate with time.
>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 why the title is "My six stages of learning to be a socially normal person" and not "My story of being a perfectly socially normal person from the day I was born".
When you're learning social skills because you don't have them naturally, it usually starts with "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".
So I'm not sure what your point is. That this sounds calculated and mechanistic? It is. That's explicitly said there in the article. And the progression of the author's stages is towards doing less of that.
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.
> Look at the first two subheadings
Which the author says are stages he grew out of. He's not saying that those things are what connecting with people is actually about.
Author is trying to improve their social skills and is noticing that some toxic traits have advantages.
It's okay to dazzle people though. I'm not sure you have to make it a core part of your personality but like, maybe as a hobby, a little razzledazzle here and there.
The fact that it’s written as a personal journey and not as advice suggests the author was on a journey to become more genuine/accepting of who they are. It does read as someone who tried to be manipulative at the start but graduated away from that towards the end of their journey.
You can gain a lot from the article and see it as both manipulative, or as insights for working through your own social anxieties. You could bring both attitudes to the article. And one of those is obviously healthier than the other.
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 actually went to university with him! It's so weird seeing his posts occasionally pop up on HN.
That was when he was in his, as he accurately describes it, performative NPR phase of reading difficult modernist novels and having opinions about Barthes or whatever. I found him very very smart, as he clearly is, and also incredibly obnoxious (though I was obnoxious too). Part of that was because it was extraordinarily apparent how contrived his persona was to be superficially charming, and part of that was jealousy; then and now I wish that I were so smart and so charming, superficially or otherwise.
Lots of tech people are neurodivergent. I don't see anything wrong with strategizing to get the benefits that many other people get for simply being "lovable goofballs"
I knew a guy that was such a f-up but he was so easy to get along with he just floated his way to upper mgmt anywhere he went. Then inevitable got fired and simply floated his way to upper mgmt at the next company. Meanwhile many highly effective tech people get held back on promotions for being "too realistic"(usually pronounced as "negative") at least thats my life experience.
Yet the author isn't claiming to have started out with the healthiest mindset
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 you might want to re-read all of this again.
Manipulation is non-consensual and controlling influence, yes. That part is important.
Just like the difference between a house and a jail is essentially if you are being forced to be there against your will or not.
They both are structures people live in and that provide a degree of structure and protection, but one is generally considered okay or even good, and the other is considered pretty bad and terrible. Largely because one you can choose or do things to change, the other you get stuck in against your will and the environment is outside your control.
Most ‘influencers’ also cross pretty strongly into manipulation many times, so using the title is about as accurate as ‘Democratic Peoples Republic of z’.
I disagree. Short of wearing a blindfold and putting my fingers in my ears there are many opportunities for someone to influence me against my will every day. You have to be exposed to this sort of manipulation to exist in society.
This has gotten a little off-track into pedantry though, I agree.
The parent post's assertion that the author of this post is somehow using "tricks" and that it is unhealthy, is what I take issue with.
It's a bit of unfair framing to claim that people who naturally develop these "tricks" are somehow superior to those who have to learn them. By that reasoning people with poor social skills would be doomed to poor outcomes for the sake of some trick-free "pure" personality.
Or another way... if I take elocution and debate lessons to make my point better and use that to get what I want in life, is this "unhealthy"? I don't think most people would say so. In my eyes this is no different.
> to charm, manipulate, and game
There is surely nothing wrong with being charming.
The "manipulate, and game", just per dictionary, would mean in this context something close to "control or influence unscrupulously". What social norms exactly do you see broken/bent by the OP? Because I see none.
Are you trying to influence this comment section unscrupulously?
skip to the end
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.
I mean technically it isn't wrong that (1) how you come across to the other person is important and (2) you need to be with the other person to connect with them.
And that is part of the problem, because the underlying reason why people connect when you do the mentioned things is that these are usually signs that you are in fact an empathic person, that can put themselves in their shoes and thus care to some degree about how things will pan out for them, meaning they may think they can open up to you, etc. This is in a stark contrast with the phrasing of "playing their game" that frames this type of behavior as a superfluous, silly endavour, when in fact it might be the polar opposite:
In a society of social apes (humans) one of the biggest danger to your and your kins life, bodily autonomy, freedom has historically always been other humans. Meaning that judging the intentions of others is not some silly game, but a survival mechanism of existential importance. And not only that, many people derive a lot of ehat makes their lifes worth living from these feelings of mutual understanding and empathy.
So to most empathic people the idea that a seemingly empathic person could feel nothing at all underneath and potentially sell them down the river is something tingling a gutural fear. Many media depiction of evil serial killers will play on that exact fear (among others).
Master conmen, manipulators, cult leaders (so generally horrible people) are all good at understanding the internal processes (thoughts and feelings) of their victims. This understanding is also essential for true empathy, the way it is applied is very different. If a hacker finds a weak point in a system they can exploit it for their own gain, or they can deal with it in a way benifiting all. The skill of understanding the internals is one thing, the skill of understanding what these internals mean and what are the right actions to derive from that knowledge is something else entirely.
That being said, I think the personal journey the author is on is certainly one that may benefit both them and the people around them. I can just imagine how hard parsing all the complexity of human behavior must be if you can't feel it yourself. This is already hard for people who can, as countless cultural artifacts from all of humanities history proof.
I am going to get downvoted for this, but my experience, which recently even got confirmed by a mother of an autistic child, is that genuine empathy is rather hard to find on the spectrum.
> 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.
> 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.
As someone who really struggled with social interactions (and still does at times, just not as bad), this fails already at the first two steps:
> Listen-- really listen --and engage with open ears
How do I understand what is important? People say a lot of stuff, some important parts and some parts that are beside the point. Talking also involves identifying and reacting to the "important" bits, picking up the "wrong" stuff will be very weird. An exaggerated example:
> "We had a really bad traffic accident when we went to Sweden"
The obvious thing to engage with is the accident - but a struggling person might as well ask how they liked Sweden.
> When it's your turn to talk, offer up an anecdote [...]
I really struggled to even notice when it's "my turn" to talk. Either interrupting the other person or awkwardly looking at them until I notice or the other person tries to recover the situation.
Try Improv (comedy) classes. They sell them as something to do on stage, but the real advantage is pattern building around social interactions.
First, you will stop being afraid to say the wrong thing. Then, you will start to hear the important part in what they said. Then, you will start to hear the part they did NOT say or super-interesting bit they skimmed over because it is not interesting to them FINALLY (at least so far for me and with other training), you will start feeling the tension in the conversation, the good time to interrupt and the time to pivot the topic.
Think Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, but in a free-to-fail environment. This, incidentally, may be the reason why I LIKE when there is low audience for the shows I do. Because, then it is really just my personal/group practice.
> How do I understand what is important?
Operate under the assumption that the person on the other side of the conversation is under the delusion that every sentence they produce is gold.
Active listening = free points. Everyone wants to feel heard.
> but a struggling person might as well ask how they liked Sweden.
And sometimes this is the right question to ask, especially if the party on the other side of the conversation is giving cues suggesting that their memory of the accident is a painful one.
> I really struggled to even notice when it's "my turn" to talk.
Even highly-experienced conversationalists get this wrong at times. Sometimes the person with whom you're speaking has a weird cadence or is uncomfortable or...
---
Look, this is hard work. This requires literally years of deliberate practice, especially if you're on the Autism spectrum as both myself and my son are.
You will make mistakes. You will offend people. You will get depressed about having no charm/charisma. You will feel like the alien in the room.
Keep pushing forward. Force yourself to actively listen to conversations. Watch movies with magnetic characters and try to emulate their demeanor.
Don't beat yourself up. Embrace being the weird person for a while and find a group of weirdos just a bit less weird than yourself. Be vulnerable with them and get yourself a mentor. People, in my experience, love mentoring/teaching.
Just keep doing it. When you get good, it will pay dividends.
I would also add that people generally try too hard with small talk. It's SMALL talk. Tell them about the new brand of jam you put on your toast this breakfast. Ask them what they had for breakfast. Or recount your last trip to the grocery store.
Trying too hard kills the fun of the interaction. You're really just getting a ball rolling. Who cares where it starts, just see where it goes.
Also, as TFA also mentioned, it's not what you say but how you say it. >80% of the value of the interaction is just (non-verbally) showing you're happy that they're there.
I myself also tend to do that, but that is a behavior that is seen by the majority/"normal" people as non-social, unless if you already know them very well or if you are the one initiating the conversation.
Listening to people means that you actively listening and supporting them in their conversation, not bringing up your own angles to it. When you do that it is perceived by most people as you trying to one-up them in the conversation, instead of what you're actually doing.
In your listed example its fine because you started the interaction, but let's turn it around and say you walked into a conversation where people are talking about downtown in ABC. You want to participate and remember that there was a blizzard there in '96, so you bring that up.
Most people will see that as severe ADHD, why are we now talking about a blizzard from 1996? We were just talking about about how DEF is happening in ABC later this month?
Pivoting has the same problem, there are social cues that display your role in the group. Just walking into a conversation while trying to pivot it to your interests is in general quite rude etc.
> When you do that it is perceived by most people as you trying to one-up them in the conversation
This depends entirely on the content of your reply and how well-trained you are in social cues as well as other unspoken parts of conversation.
It's also not comprehensive advice. Of course you should first help the person on the other side of the conversation reach where they're intending to go in what they're saying.
My advice is more applicable to the "sequence points" of a conversation.
> Just walking into a conversation while trying to pivot it
Doing this would be foolish. You have to read the cues for when the time is right. You also need to develop the right conversational demeanor to pull it off. This necessitates practice.
What if I don’t have it in me to listen? I want to savour my active listening capacity with the people I love, not everyone I interact with.
Nobody is compelling you to do anything, but there's no free lunch.
Yes yes yes. You rarely need to DO anything other than listen. Just be a good listener. Maybe identify handles in what they're saying and then occasionally ask them about them:
How did that make you feel? Wait, you did what? Why did you do that? What do you enjoy about that?
>You rarely need to DO anything other than listen
There is a particular amount of risk here, this does set you up to interact with attention vacuums. People that will talk constantly without break nor desire to listen to what you have to say. Over any amount of time (weeks/months) a person that you can have a real two way conversation is needed.
In my experience such people are rare. You can always steer the conversation, give your input, tell them (nicely) to stop talking, or - if they're unwilling to take the hint - walk away.
That seems like the most pointless conversation ever though, neither side really got anything out of it. If you can't infodump or listen to someone else infodump, is it really anything but meaningless pleasantries?
You perceive it that way because you aren't into snowboarding, tubing or experienced the blizzard of '96.
If only I'd experienced the blizzard of '96, the bedrock of all modern socialization.
FWIW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_blizzard_of_199...
haha
The goal isn't to exchange facts, it's to bond.
Well I doubt I'm going to bond by being subjected to painful boredom, and neither will they. I've found it's so socially common to completely forget all of these things people tell you in small talk too, because I'd remember every one of these facts about the other person due to low frequency interactions, while they'll be like "I've never met this man in my life" the next time I talk to them and I can't help but find that a bit hurtful.
I think smalltalks just didn't bring you to the right topic, if you were to reach topic you both fancy, you would definitely remember each other. If anything, having a smalltalk is nicer than staying in awkward silence.
> I doubt I'm going to bond by being subjected to painful boredom, and neither will they
Which is why it's important to surround yourself with likeminded folk.
Nobody is compelling you to do this with every single person you meet.
>I have zero idea how to make small talk with people I haven't known for years.
Here's a trick, it sounds stupid but it works like magic.
Just talk about mundane things that are physically present. Mention the color of the wallpaper. Mention the painting on the wall. Talk about how noisy the room is, or about the food on the plate in front of you. Literally act like you're an image classifier tasked with outputting a text summary of the scene you find yourself in...
If you're the cerebral type like I am, you'll feel afraid these topics will bore the other person. But surprisingly, they don't, if the other person is neurotypical.
Non-weird people are really weird.
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 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
> 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!
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.
You might think so, but a lot of people can tell when you're ELIZA-ing them to death, and they will learn to avoid you.
There are a lot of people on HN who want a technical manual for how to party, and a lot of them keep telling each other that the art of conversation is about attentive listening. Can you imagine a conversation between two people practicing attentive listening on each other?
The "will learn to avoid you" part is what I was getting at in my warning at the end. This only gets you through a few interactions.
The point of small talk is to get to medium talk. It's not directionless. Medium talk just means you've found a topic that both of you are interested in enough to talk about it for five to ten minutes without getting bored. That you both know the host is one of the few things it's culturally safe to assume anymore. Both of you met the host doing something you like well enough to associate with a person you met doing that thing when you're not doing that thing, so if either of those things happen to be an appropriate subject for medium talk, great. Now you're out of small talk and just "talking to this person I just met at this party about a thing we both like." If you're lucky, it's something you both actually like a lot, and then you have a basis for large talk, and large talk opens the door to casual friendship.
If you don't happen to draw a medium or large talk topic out of the gate, that's when you poke around the edges of the small talk, looking for things that could be fodder for medium talk. If you try looking for three or four and aren't getting anywhere, you've still filled the appropriate 5-10 minutes not to seem like a jerk, and now you need a snack, or a drink, and a new conversation partner.
It helps a lot if you're genuinely interested in a wide variety of things, enough that you can ask intelligent questions about them, because it increases the likelihood that you can find a shared interest with this person you've just met. That's not just "attentive listening." It's "finding out why someone cares about something interesting to them because you sincerely want to know."
If the other person isn't engaging with you at all, isn't trying to find one of these topics with you, they actually just don't want to talk to you. That's how people communicate this. It's not usually personal. They haven't known you long enough for it to be really personal. They may not even consciously realize they don't want to talk to you, but it's still true, and you're doing them a favor when you recognize that and excuse yourself.
Yeah if an awkward person does it they can be called out as if they are interrogating or interviewing. I actually remember trying these tactics when I was teenager... and that is how it came off. I tried so many weird things because I was so unhappy with my social performance.
Usually safer way is making observations rather than directly asking or at least continously asking things over and over as if to desperately try to keep the conversation going.
But even then if you are awkward, it will still come off awkward and people will try to excuse them out of that situation no matter how much theory you might read online.
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.
Exact same problem I have with being fully remote. It’s turned into near total isolation from everyone except immediate family.
I found there's a transition period where you eventually learn how to reach out via the internet to your remote peers and have good conversations.
Oh boy do I ever relate to that - “You seem like a very social person, that seems out of character” - I know that’s how I seem, but god almighty do I not feel that way.
I’ve learned that’s its best if I play the role of a social person, but it’s just playing a role.
I don’t think anyone but a handful of my closest loved ones really grasp how very close I have always been to running away to live as a hermit in a cabin in the woods.
I think I can do small talk, but still it stresses me out and I would rather be alone.
>am I really that good at masking that my therapist didn't realize I am absolutely terrified in near all social situations?
Or is your therapist attempting to bootstrap a self-fulfilling prophecy, i.e. when you feel socially overwhelmed, you'd remember that they praised you for being social, and the warm fuzzies of being praised would make you feel less overwhelmed?
You know, as the grand maxim of software engineering goes, "whatever works" lmao
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.
It's like we're all solving the same puzzle, just with different pieces
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?
I think you're bang on the money fwiw. But also worth mentioning that it's OK to ask rather than trying to predict and feeling that having to ask means failure
But the same applies to the person you are talking to - it is their job to reach out to you if they need help. It is not your job to prove anything to them by reaching out when (your heightened vigilance picks up that) something is off.
I am never buying the story of "i did not reach out / i betrayed you / i treated you poorly, and you deserved this treatment, because you failed to know me well enough to know what i needed (even if i didn't know that myself)" ever again.
There's no failure in asking. But there's no failure in not asking either - because you might be dealing with your own shit, as a responsible adult does.
One school of phenomenology of empathy makes an interesting point that empathy is an aesthetic category, not a moral one - you don't really choose to feel it. But you can choose to show up for someone. You can choose to show up for yourself as well.
I have been dancing lately, and i think it's helping a little. Our tango teacher says semi-jokingly to followers (usually women, although i find occasionally following quite fun as a man) "if you teach men that you will do everything yourself, they will learn that" - meaning that they should not anticipate a move - if it is not being communicated clearly, it is not your job to guess it. On the other hand, leader's job is to very clearly suggest a move with a gentle push or a shift in their pose, but not force it. Ideally, that's a fun exchange of clearly expressed and contextually relevant suggestions and responses.
Thanks for being the thread of sanity in a sea of "wtf manipulation even is"
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 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.
This resonates. I spent many years going hard at `5: Connection is about projecting love and acceptance`. I focused on providing unconditional acceptance to everyone I met, inviting them to share their burdens and listening empathetically and supportively. People often left our conversations thanking me for the "therapy session."
And in many ways I think this was a positive energy to bring to the world! But eventually I realized that, deep down, I was doing this out of anxiety. I wanted to be accepted and this was a crutch I was using to achieve that. In fact, I was scared of not providing this level of support, because what if I was too aloof and the other person got mad at me? And since people often liked this quality about me, what would I become without it?
Now I mostly focus on ... relaxing. There are times where intense-therapy-like energy will be useful, and I can provide that if I want. But most of the time it's just not necessary. Unlike the author, I don't necessarily have the ability, or practice, to skillfully provide whatever the person in front of me actually wants, but that's ok too. It's ok to just be calm.
> And in many ways I think this was a positive energy to bring to the world!
Or in other words, becoming the landfill of negative energy of the world.
As someone who used to be that person for over a decade, having people endlessly confiding their relationship/health/mental/work/legal/family/gender issues will over time completely wreck your sanity. Because when you're that someone, people will not just tell you the light stuff, but also some really heavyweight and/or deeply fucked up things.
Oh, certainly. And if you have any resources besides attention - money, or social capital, for instance - people will happily take those too. It's not that they are wrong to ask, but the need is truly infinite, and no one will create guardrails for you except yourself.
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.
The weird vibe people are picking up from this essay is because half the phases are about customer service.
As in, the author was working as a waiter or a coach at the time.
A waiter's job is to keep your butt in the seat, get you to order some stuff, and then leave a tip. The waiter may or may not give a shit about you as a person, but it's secondary to their job. That simulation is the creepy vibe.
I've probably never eaten at the kinds of stratospherically high-end restaurants the author writes about. I've eaten at restaurants with Michelin stars. I've never had a waiter flirt with me, daydream with me, or offer ad hoc therapy. And if I ever do, I suspect I might find the charade off-putting.
Well, he'd have adapted to your vibe anyway as he wrote about learning that.
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?
>obsessive seeking of external validation which I have never felt myself
if you've never felt it, why are you mentioning it? why are you so focused on it?
A useful psychoanalytic rubric is "there is no negation in the unconscious mind". Negation is a conscious mind idea, the unconscious mind just thinks of things, it doesn't think of something and claim it's not thinking of it.
so, rephrasing what you wrote in the unconscious sense, "obsessive seeking of external validation which I have felt myself": yes, you have identified something, identified with something, interesting, about other people and about yourself. If you are aware that you are not seeking external validation, but also aware when other people do, you have to ask yourself...
if your complaint about this argument is along the line of "no fair, i can't escape from this!", you're getting the point.
You're probably right that him being in denial is more likely then him being super special. But I don't think this psychoanalytical reasoning is justified?
>if you've never felt it, why are you mentioning it? why are you so focused on it?
Because it's interesting / frustrating to find out that the common guidelines to living a normal life don't apply to you, and you pinpoint that fact as the reason?
I can come up with infinitely many negative statements in a discussion and it doesn't mean that opposites of them occupy my unconscious day to day.
If you were actually disinterested in people there'd be no point in writing to them here on HN
I liked this post for three reasons:
1. Smart person faces problem, observes what's going on, thinks about it and finds solution
I mention this b/c a lot of folks feel like "I'm me and I know something is wrong in what I'm doing but I don't know what" and stop there.
But a lot of life is just learning new skills. That can be from books, videos, friends, or just opening your eyes and seeing what other people are doing and then modeling that behavior.
2. The pieces you need are already in you
I used to be TERRIBLE at dating. e.g. I would go on dates with smart, funny and attractive women (mostly met online). The date would start out great and then something would happen halfway through and I could tell the energy went away. It go so bad that I almost wanted friends to sit near me and then point out what I was doing wrong.
After reading some dating books, I realized what it was:
There were a LOT of women in my extended family (mostly female cousins, strong personality outgoing aunts etc). I though "dating" == "hanging out with women like my family". The books pointed out that "dating" is has a large component of "playful teasing, being cocky funny".
I already knew how to do that but didn't realize it applied to dating!
3. Work with what you have
Some other commenters have pointed out that some of what he mentions is "being fake" or "being someone else"
I make this analogy:
- You are a certain height
- That is tough to change
- BUT you can work out, get a haircut, get dental work etc
- aka there are MANY small things you can do to improve your physical appearance even if you can't change your height.
The same is true of personality: you have a core set of values and beliefs. That being said, you choose which stories you tell, how you tell them, when to let the other person speak instead of you speaking for longer etc.
Spot the blue pill propaganda.
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.
You're right, but consider:
• Of course it's very strange; that's why he wrote about it — the point is to convey what is not obvious.
• Of course it's risky, but that's the point of much of the author's journey of social ease, at least the initial stages up to that point. If you're willing to take the risk of coming off <…>, or of an angry reaction, you open yourself up to a wider range of experiences / social interactions. Probably much of the interaction was non-verbal and even the author's paragraph cannot capture exactly what went on.
Not everyone needs to take such risks of course, but the author consciously chose to “install” social skill, and has shared their experience.
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.
Britney Spears did it in the music video for Toxic.
early 2000s Britney Spears could get away with a lot of things
> 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.
I skimmed the article and one of the things that occurred to me is that it was lucky that they worked as a busboy for a bit. Lucky in the sense that there was plenty of opportunity to try various social approaches on the many people they encountered each day. Most of us only interact with a few people in total each week and don't get any encounter resets. I remember a few years ago living in a small town and dreading being invited to the rare party. I'd met everyone, had a brief encounter, and neither they nor I had any desire to further the interaction.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
I've always hated it when people juggle me and when I notice that I'm getting played. "Normal" people seem to absorb this strategy subconsciously throughout their lives and train themselves to do it too because they notice that it works better. To someone who notices this consciously it seems psychotic because well of course it's always easier to cheat, lie and fake your way to an advantage. You should be choosing not to live this way on purpose. I don't think that the person in the article did it from a bad heart which usually makes all the difference but tons and tons of people do it purely for self gain with no regard for the people getting exploited. Here it was his job to do this and arguably it was for the other person's benefit too to get better service so it was not bad. But we should still be able to name it what it is. This tier of strategy is polluting non-work social environments too. The last thing we need is more people who are getting better at faking being interested or caring.
I'm aware that if such people stop fake caring then they will stop caring altogether. Well good, stop gaming yourself to life advantages please that you shouldn't have. Of course it's harder to actually care about things compared to fake caring. It's harder to be an actually good person vs faking being good and it's probably far less rewarding for most to only be getting what they should be getting in life. Luckily most people are not that good at being fake because like you said, it still takes effort. But people who do it all their life no longer feel that effort and this is how you end up with lifelong fake people.
In general we will never get people to stop faking and lying their way to advantages in life so what decent people are left with is to develop an even harder armor that fake people can't get through with these strategies. It's sad but that's what life seems to be: You have to find people who aren't just here play and beat you like you're a videogame or for a darker analogy play you like you are an asset and they are a CIA agent.
Come on, can you really care about a stranger's stupid story?
Isn’t it enough that I care about not being lonely for the rest of my life, and in pursuit of that goal I decided to act like a good person and a good conversation partner?
[dead]
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.
If you're a tech worker who would like to improve your social skills or overcome mild to moderate social anxiety, I can whole-heartedly recommend working as a server nights and weekends for a few months. As a server, you will always have a clear purpose guiding each interaction, eliminating the sometimes intimidating open-endedness of more casual settings. But you'll be constantly talking to people, and you'll meet all kinds. You'll also have many opportunities to have structured and unstructured interactions with coworkers. It's a fantastic way to get in lots of reps in a short time.
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.
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.
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.
> Of course, everybody is on the autism spectrum, even people who show no symptoms (they are on the left hand side).
No, that's not at all how any of this works. People who don't have ASD aren't on the autism spectrum because the spectrum isn't an intensity meter where one end is neurotypical and the other end is non-verbally autistic with 24/7 support requirements.
It's called a spectrum disorder because every autistic person experiences different divergences/impairments to varying degrees of severity. Some people can have intense sensory issues but socially pass as neurotypical, others can have minimal sensory issues but really severe social issues.
The DSM used to exclude people who were clearly autistic but didn't align with any of the rigid definitions that were captured in the DSM as distinct diagnosis, that's why it was eventually recognized as a spectrum disorder.
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.
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.
+1. Ballroom dancing changed my life. Started small and two years in I was doing classes four times a week.
I was in my early 30s and I could go out dance basically any day of the week except Monday and Tuesday.
> You can be technically quite bad and people will still want to dance with you if you have good eye contact,
Yes. Your ability to do so largely depends on the dance. Good luck dancing Viennese Waltz, when you both try to look somewhere else than to your left. For other dances like Quickstep, it is only important, that the woman looks to the left, the man isn't all that important. Then there are dances, where it doesn't matter, so you might as well look at your partner.
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.
Right with you there! All this discourse about 'being you', be anyone you want to be, 'you do you' etc – christ, no! Not unless you understand the downsides to all of that. And they aren't trivial.
People should not dish out that advice so carelessly and wantenly.
Author's problem is that he tries too hard, which is off putting.
The way to connect with people is to genuinely care about them and listen. The world is full of the oddest people who have normal relations because they simply care.
The author seems to show very little empathy or care towards other human beings, in fact the entirety of the article sounds like connecting is all about himself. Me, me and me. How people perceive me, how do they like me.
He never ever shows genuine interest into connection, in the the end comes off as manipulative.
I'm glad it wasn't just me who noticed this. It seems like the author doesn't care at all about other people; only about how to manipulate people into liking them.
Gives real narcissist vibes.
Narcissism is a spectrum; everybody's a little narcissistic, and it changes over time. All kids are VERY narcissistic early on, most grow out of it as they experience unconditional love from their parents and are allowed to be their authentic selves in various social contexts.
For various reasons - some kids don't. Bullying can certainly contribute.
So they develop maladaptive strategies (which can look like the first few "stages" in this article) and have to undo the damage later in life (which can look like the later "stages" from the article) to have a chance to experience real human connection.
I think the article can be very beneficial for people who struggle with this, even if it doesn't explicitly mention what the technical name of the struggle is (and BTW it does not have to be NPD - there might be other reasons for people to have similar problems). Maybe even BECAUSE it doesn't mention narcissism (cause narcissism is currently villified on the social media as "they are actual demons that cannot be saved" - so people are very wary of identifying with it, which makes it less likely they will work on themselves).
BTW I'm very disappointed in the current fad on social media of villifying one mental health issue after another only to then come to realize "oh wait, they're actually people not monsters". I've seen it with BPD, now it's the NPD turn. It's usually done for ugly reasons, too (somebody hurt by a person with $mental_health_problem search for validation, so influencers jump in with feel-good validation that portrays the other side as demons).
I mean, it’s literally one of the dark triad. Dark. Not misunderstood.
The DSM basically took all those “traits we think of as evil” and said “we shall make some disorder categories”. People with NPD don’t go and get help, they just run around ruining other peoples lives.
If you’ve never had such a person in your life, good for you! The rest of us don’t care if they can be saved, we just don’t ever want to interact with another one. Ever.
I am a narcissist. I haven't been diagnosed (yet), but I certainly recognize the traits and patterns, and I'm in therapy for it.
> People with NPD don’t go and get help, they just run around ruining other peoples lives.
This is objectively false. There's lots of people in therapy for NPD. And there have been case studies with people who recovered.
Which brings another point
> The DSM basically took all those “traits we think of as evil” and said “we shall make some disorder categories”.
DSM criteria for narcissism are part of the problem. You can have the exact same mental struggle but stop yourself from hurting people (at least to a reasonable degree - "normal" people also hurt others sometimes after all). And you won't be diagnosed as NPD. But you'll still have all the other problems - lack of human connection, vastly higher chance of suicide, autoimmune diseases, relationship problems, etc.
Which is like saying you only have alcoholism if you beat people on the streets. If you define it that way - of course all alcoholics are violent.
But it's not a productive way to define mental health problems. It leaves out people who struggle with it but don't cause harm.
> The rest of us don’t care if they can be saved, we just don’t ever want to interact with another one. Ever.
That's unlikely given that estimated 0.5-5% of the general population have NPD and about 20% have strong narcissistic traits.
In IT it's probably much higher by the way, it's the perfect job (little human contact, high status, well paid).
There is the ever popular book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” I like it in ways that it helps you reflect on your own lifestyle and interactions with people. Of course, one should build up their own ways of living, nonetheless, I like the book and often re-read it.
https://brajeshwar.com/2016/how-to-win-friends-and-influence...
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.
This is some of the best writing I've read in a while, and truly fascinating.
Accepting that connection is optional, not compulsory feels like the true sign of arrival. Not needing it to prove anything, not using it to fill a void, just being able to be, with or without it
Connection with any given person may be optional, but everyone should have at least some kind of social connections in this world.
The author seems to be pointing toward the freedom of not chasing connection out of insecurity, which is healthy
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.
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.
> Honestly I think lesson 7 is nobody's normal.
There are only two types of ppl: "the wrong kind of crazy" and "the right kind of crazy". Why would I want to connect with the wrong type of crazy? Ok, I don't work as a waiter.
Does this person have some kind of mental issue? I am seriosuly asking this, not mocking him. Because by reading through this post it stands out to me that he doesn't mention or highlights empathy. And that's where his problem stems from
At a guess, he does have empathy. He didn't know how to get that empathy across, to the other person, and these are the stages he went through in learning how to do it. You see, the intent and the execution can be completely or partially divorced in some people. I can truly empathize the other person, the beginning of the process is there, but I wouldn't know the right words, tone or gestures hot to proceed with my empathy. And then it is fifty/fifty, maybe a person would decide to ignore my lack of execution and will start deep dialog on their own and then my empathy can allow me to honestly respond and continue it. Or maybe they will decide not to do it and the deep dialog wouldn't happen in the first place.
Not every closed-in and awkward person is lacking empathy.
Probably high functioning autism. They go through a process like this, and is in part why they are high functioning in the first place because they solve their problems with their intellect and train whatever else is necessary.
Though, research shows that autistic people among themselves do have empathy. So it’s not as if they don’t but it’s because they tend to communicate differently. It’s called the double empathy problem, if I recall correctly.
Check out some of the other posts there too. There's a certain grandiosity about the writing that makes it feel like the author isn't actually past their own 'Stage 1'. Coupled with the ingratiating comments on each post, something's definitely setting off 'cult leader' alarms to me.
Precisely. And it's quite concerning that several people think this is a good exemplar to follow.
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 don't think I looked at social interaction like that. But having had a whole journey of my own, I can really appreciate this blog post and merely by reading it, I felt like I've learned a thing or two. Specifically #5, I can see that.
I'm #3 naturally, always have been. #4 gets practiced within me, the more I meditate. I owe my HN username to it :)
Interesting read about his outlook & experiences, but something about it still feels off, even at his latest (6th) stage. I guess it reminds me of the "pick up artist" approach to relationships, turning them into a game and trying to win it, keeping "the score".
Retitle the blog article to
"I'm Autistic and this is how I learned to mask"
Why do we need to be normal anyway? Why can't we just be unique?
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.
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.
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.
Most people from what I've seen don't want unique as much as they want somewhat famailiar. If it deviates too far away from that then they are repulsed, and I can give you an example right here.
I'm going to commit suicide. I've known this for the last 15 years. It'll probably be another 10 years before I'll die, but I know my end is half laying down with a 1.5 inch nylon strap tied cinched on my neck and a tree trunk in the dead of night so that no one will be able to find me in time. The reason I haven't is because I'm taking of elderly relatives, but they are the only reason I'm still here.
That's the real me. The one that looks forward to dying even though there doesn't seem to be any reason why I want to die.
I wonder how many in this thread would be utterly horrified by this vs accepting of this.
FWIW, I have the same mindset and your comment resonated with me; suicide is a very taboo subject still. The responses to it are either: you need to seek help for mental illness or you're just acting like an edgy teenager.
The term "mental health" is quite terrible because what are we using as a baseline for "healthy" when we throw that term around? No one can answer that. I don't think everyone using that term is being malicious but they don't realize how patronizing it is.
The problem is I don't think the initial reaction is incorrect. How does one tell the difference between someone in pain crying for help and someone that's genuinely ready to go? You can't really, not without long conversations.
What gets to be a tired argument is with people that seem to believe that the former is the only possible explanation, and refuse to believe that the latter is even a possibility. For them I think the problem is that challenges the belief that life is to be held upon a sacred alter above all, and that such a belief is held to be a universal truth.
It's hard to step away from such a belief because it opens an uncomfortable door in asking what makes being alive to be preferable, who gets to decide that, and what if anything should be done about it.
Neither horrified nor accepting.
What you have is mental illness. A healthy brain does not decide to kill itself. Please get help and do NOT wait for your elderly relatives to pass before making the call.
And thus my point is illustrated. Few seem to believe that wanting to die is a valid state of mind without some sort of physical or psychological malady.
And hence why as is often the point, being unique isn't a desired thing. Because most people don't want the frightening unfamiliarity.
Every organ in the body, when healthy, supports the life of the whole organism. The suicidal brain is not supporting the life of the organism; it is not healthy.
Get off of internet forums and seek medical help. Your loved ones would tell you the same thing.
If what you say is true, then why did no species evolve immortality?
What about people that give their lives to save others? Are they mentally ill as well?
And again this is what I mean. I don't have anyone close to me anymore outside of the ones in my care. That was a conscious decision to minimize any potential collatoral harm when I do die.
My previous friends have drifted off over the last 15 years from me intentionally neglecting those relationships. I have never had intimate relationships with anyone, I haven't spoken to my sibling in 22 years, and most of my kin lives continents away and to whom I have never even seen in my life.
Who exactly are these loved ones you think exist?
I am taking care of an aging and physically limited parent. It's brought me to my absolute limit. I often say stuff about wanting to be dead but I don't think I've ever been serious about it. It's the kind of thing I am trying to discourage in myself, but I'm trying to be more compassionate with myself in the times that I do.
Why are you so certain? 15 years is a long time to look down that barrel why do you deserve that?
I don't know if I can answer that well; it's like me asking you how you can be certain you love someone.
But my best attempt would be to say... There hasn't been any contraindications to make me think that think that suicide isn't the correct choice in the end. It feels right to me.
Ugh ... people are the worst! Why would you want to connect with them???
Because people are also different and , surprise, want different things in life. Not everyone is happy being alone (not lonely) like me, and presumably you too.
"Normal" is what people are until you get to know them. I like genuine wierdos and freaks.
I've met his kind of waiter and I definitely don't like it except if there are kids present or I'm at Disneyland.
This may only be tangentially related, but a good piece of advice I heard once was "Don't try to be cool (ie. impressive), try to be nice."
I think it goes a long way in treating people properly.
You want to know why "social connection" is difficult? Because actually social connection is not a generalize abstraction you get good at.
I see this increasingly in contemporary society. People increasingly tackle certain aspects of their life as generalized problems to solve. They want to "get better at social connection" or "be more athletic" or "be more productive". None of these things are ends in themselves. This is a tendency toward egocentrism and needless abstraction that plagues a lot of people.
In reality, life consists of concrete things. We can only become more productive once we have an actual goal in mind. Talking about productivity in the abstract is meaningless. We cannot determine our social connections in advance. We have or desire certain or more friends, we want to improve certain relationships. By starting from such an abstract place as "wanting to connect" or "being socially normal" you are basically doomed from the start. Connect with who? What is normal? These are not generalized problems to solve, they are rather determined by others. Viewing them this way stinks of main character syndrome—you don't actually care about or value other people, you view all of life through the lens of yourself and see all possible engagements as little more than reflections on your own personal player "stats". Yearning to "connect" with "people" is a completely meaningless and empty desire.
The atomization of individuals and hyperindividualism caused this. Social anxieties and struggles to learn how to properly socialize arise the more isolated we become, and the more distant and rare our interactions with others become. People raised in highly group-oriented and community focused environments don't have these issues to nearly the same degree, for obvious reasons—they learn how to actually care about other people, rather than view life as nothing more than "my personal journey" or as a challenge for nothing other than self-oriented improvement or self enlightenment.
This was an interesting and thought provoking read. I appreciate the author's openness in sharing all that they did.
The author learned that the main value of communication is relational, nor informational.
It's all about the vibes.
I am still getting the hang of that one. But baby steps :)
This reads like we asked the AI to explain how it tried to manipulate and fake being "a socially normal person". It feels like it's carved out of wood.
That initial fixation on "position in the [social] hierarchy" in #1 can counterintuitively become self-defeating. Many people look at tricks of "climbing the social ladder" as potential signs of narcissism and instinctively steer clear. Unfortunately, that scoops up a lot of people like the author who just desperately wanted to break through an awkward adolescence!
Also counterintuitively, just giving up on that goal often leads to much more fruitful and lasting friendships. "Hi, I'm author. I'm abrasive and abrupt, excitable and sensitive. Interacting with me could be exhausting. Would you like to try? Please say yes or no."
Seriously, HN: if you saw one guy saying that to people, and another playing a ukelele at you as he "tells dramatics stories" about his life, which one would you choose to interact with?
For more than half my life I couldn't do small talk. It made zero sense to me. Why talk and laugh about the same things over and over - are people really that boring? That dumb?
Then it hit me. That ancient sound of two modems pushing static noise at each other, adjusting, until they identified their common frequencies.
Now I strike up low stake conversations with anyone and everyone. It adds interest to life, and it is a lot easier to make connections.
For me this was a profound life changing epiphany explosion.
I try the other way around: I am fine. It is everyone ELSE who is insane!
I learned this from the old movie called The Shining, by the way.
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.
This feels like instructions for masking
"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"
I'm a naturally socially awkward person, due partly to personality and partly to social anxiety disorder. I don't think I have the social intelligence/agility to pull off half of these maneuvers. Just reading about the author playing different characters with tables and imagining myself in that position made me want to throw up, I'd fuck it up so badly.
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.
This post gave me extreme psychopathy vibes, a person lacking genuine empathy, but employing utilitarian use of unconscientious, calculated, manipulative, superficial charm to feed one's narcissism and status.
The drummer in my band was the type of person who become anybody's friend in a few minutes. I watched him and gleaned this advice:
When you meet someone, your goal should be to get a little look into their inner world. Find out what they care about. And second, be genuinely interested but don't judge. It shouldn't be fake, you should really care. Pay attention to what they say.
This works pretty well for getting to know a person.
While I have no issues believing that the outlined strategies are effective, and I sincerely congratulate the author on his journey, there is a flip side to engineering "social normalcy" that IMO the author is missing:
Any reasonably "normal" person (anyone that's not severely autistic) will find there are people that we effortlessly connect with and many others we don't. It's the natural state.
Now in any sufficiently intelligent and psychologically OK person the act of eliciting / pushing emotional connection with people from the latter group (where there's no natural connection) should trigger a certain amount of internal disgust.
The fact that it doesn't seem to be the case with the author would indicate that he's more of an outlier. Based on his writing he does seem intelligent and psychologically OK, so there might be other factors at play. My point is that his journey might not be transferable 1:1.
> The other day, someone told me, “I can’t imagine you ever being awkward with people.” And I thought, oh God, yes, say it to me again, again, put it in my veins. Tell me I’m a natural performer. There are no sweeter words.
> Because of course the absolute opposite is true.
Average LLM conversation.
Maybe I am cynical or a jerk but I don't like most people. A few people I genuinely dislike, most people I am not interested in and a few people I like.
I don't feel the need to build rapport or have close relations with all people. Either we genuinely click or we don't and it's fine for me anyway.
I trust myself enough and I don't crave the approval of others, I don't crave affection.
That being said, for work, in professional circles, with some aquitances, etc. I need to build good rapport and build trust fast, to the point that we build a good relation but not to the point we are friends. And it seems quite easy: be a good listener, echo their opinions, voice their unspoken concerns, summarize their opinions, be appreciative, repeat some key words from what they are saying, be appreciative, don't be judgemental, be genuinely friendly, tell jokes, look them in the eyes, smile, mind your body language and a few others.
When coming in a new workplace, there are people who still didn't integrate well or get along with other people well, even if they work ed there for a few years. There are people that need years to build a relationship with others. But for me, in a few months more people see me like I worked there since ages. I just signal to people that their ideas are mine, too, that we are very much alike.
People are set up to trust other people because that is the easiest way and takes the least effort. If you help them trust you and like you, they will.
People are like AI and everybody has their own prompt. Including the prompts you tell yourself :)
To me this article seems more like a long story of self administered therapy than a story of connecting with people.
The author appears to have a very large ego. Most "weird" people I know fall into the same trap of desperately trying to be something... to be interesting or dazzling or charming, while forgetting that they're talking to another person.
Connection is being interested in what someone has to say. Not in being "interesting" or playing some kind of game. Ask questions, share similar experiences.
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?
Please go to a therapist.
11 em dashes
By far the most important advice in here — which isn’t given explicitly — is set yourself up to meet a lot of new people, because that’s how you learn. I worked in a pub a few nights a week, then I worked in a coaching org, then a bunch of new companies, then met lots of new people via the digital nomad community. You’ll get a little better with a bit of time, and with each new human.
Also stay the fuck off IRC.
internet relay chat? what do you mean?
Having social power is like owning a gun. Yes it's nice to have it and not use it. But there's often a temptation to use it. And if you use it incorrectly then someone can get hurt.
You spend years honing your skill with a weapon and then you stop using it.
The hard part is feeling like your weapon isn't being used. But you need to accept that disuse can be good. Otherwise you end up hurting people.
Basically, don't treat people like toys.
The author's next step will probably be to find places where he can go at full speed. Perhaps grief counseling, the clergy, hospice visits, or something along those lines.
If you're writing Substack articles and posting them on HN about how you're socially normal...
Well, it speaks for itself.
> 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.
For better or worse, it was probably the main driver. Since time immemorial, people have been competing for mates and resources in a social hierarchy.
I can almost guarantee that the number of people who have made substantive scientific contributions to society were far more interested in their chosen object of study than they were with their perceived intelligence. I can think of a few, perhaps, but that number is slim.
I know this article wasn't written by an LLM because the writing isn't mediocre.
I don't know or care about the LLM use, but you are spot on about the egotism. This person is just like every other "i'm smarter than you and I have to show you that, see me, appreciate my intelligence! reward me for knowing things!" insufferable goon I've ever encountered, myself included. One day the author might realize that healthy, social relationships, "connection", stem from actually giving a shit about people who aren't me myself and I, but some people never get there.
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?
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 just. Don’t care?
I mean, I want to connect to a few people. I’m human, I love, I feel.
I don’t care about connection with most of the people I would interact with.
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.
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.
We are legion,I am sorry to say. I can recognise co-sufferers, but not necessarily help them. In older parlance, we would typically just be described as 'a bore', but there is something a lot more specific going on. I am old now, but watching my child daughter now going through the exact same motions, including doing her damndest to impress people with her many skills, and tragic-ironically driving people away from her with that exact behaviour. And I can't figure out how to help her figure it out. (past-50 insights don't resonate with 11year olds, unless you can relate them in youtuber-speak).
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?