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My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

sashachapin.substack.com

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Re: My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

#151

Post by gausswho »

pseidemann wrote: post #102
etangent wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 u…

Agreed. It's the playbook of social interaction written out. Nothing offensive about that.

A self-help book that took off saying the quiet part out loud is How to Win Friends & Influence People. It predates the 'influencer'.

Re: My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

#152

Post by ajpikul »

Aurornis wrote: post #47

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 rollercoa…

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.

Re: My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

#153

Post by koakuma-chan »

ozim wrote: post #108
koakuma-chan wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 F…

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 some…

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.

Re: My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

#154

Post by throwaway2037 »

switchbak wrote: post #140
jamilton wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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…

    > 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.

Re: My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

#155

Post by socalgal2 »

ZpJuUuNaQ5 wrote: post #12

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.

If you were actually disinterested in people there'd be no point in writing to them here on HN

Re: My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

#156

Post by zozbot234 »

etangent wrote: post #72
Aurornis wrote: post #47

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 rollercoa…

> 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 u…

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.

Re: My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

#157

Post by mcdeltat »

zozbot234 wrote: post #156
etangent wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 u…

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, b…

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.

Re: My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

#158

Post by protocolture »

Aurornis wrote: post #47

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 rollercoa…

>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.

Re: My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

#159

Post by lovich »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #148
lovich wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Re: My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

#160

Post by citizenpaul »

Aurornis wrote: post #47

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 rollercoa…

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.

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