How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences • Hacker News Board

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#221

Post by dugidugout » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 6:23 PM UTC

justonceokay wrote: post #128

em-bee wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i am not autistic, but i hate smalltalk too. i can't bear it. it takes all the fun out of talking to people and i feel like it's a waste of time. not sure where i am going with this argument other than maybe saying that it's ok not to like smalltalk. maybe learning to be better at it would help, because the biggest pain and discomfort for me is that i don't know what to say and that anything i can think of feels mean…

As someone who used to feel like they were bad at small talk, maybe this resonates with you. I wasn’t bad at small talk. I was bad at sharing my thoughts and feelings because it didn’t feel safe. As a result the only things that felt like safe small talk topics were the weather and sports. Overtime I’ve become better at sharing my feelings, even if they are “embarrassing“. I ended up talking for three hours on a plan…

This is what I suggest too, what a good way of putting it!

Some people have very funny ways at looking at the most mundane context in my mind. It would be a shame if I didnt spend time sharing my funny head in ways that can't be captured in a record!

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#222

Post by justonceokay » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 6:24 PM UTC

mhurron wrote: post #176

legacynl wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that a fully grown person (i.e. adult) should be able to regulate their emotions to the point of being able to have a conversation with 3 strangers. You might not like it, it might stress you out a bunch, you can cry afterwards, or have a stiff drink after, but you should be able to set those emotions aside for 30 minutes, especially for something important like a job interview. If someone cannot do that…

lol, go be yourself on your own time. On my time, you better be normal and happy about it. None of the many many reasons someone may act this way mean they are broken, and therapy is not about 'fixing' someone to be the member of society you deem appropriate.

Therapy is (or at least can be!) about trying to achieve goals that you have. I’m the GP commenter above. I went to therapy twice a week for two years to get over social anxiety and my entire life has completely opened up in a new way that would never have been possible without that work.

If relating to people is not a goal of yours then I would agree that you should not go to therapy for it. On the other hand, it is difficult for me to believe that anyone with anxiety is truly comfortable, considering that discomfort is the main feature of anxiety.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#223

Post by asdfman123 » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 6:26 PM UTC

DoughHook wrote: post #220

This is a list about how to have a flame war. If you really want incoherent and isolating social experiences here is what you do: - spend most of your time online - overthink any form of social outreach and don't do it - open reddit/HN/youtube/content_platform when you feel anything negative - look at porn when you feel lonely - constantly analyze other people's perception of you You will then stifle your social skil…

Right. Almost no one is that kind of asshole in person. Even in nerd meetups <5% are like this.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#224

Post by asdfman123 » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 6:29 PM UTC

reedf1 wrote: post #172

ge96 wrote: post #123

I'm bad at this, not that I want to be. Well I'm bad at it with women. I go to these workplace happy hours and I just sit there in silence. Hard to relate to people talking about the house they own or kids since I don't have either. I know to be a good conversationalist you just gotta ask them questions. It's not good to be alone, I was in a car crash one time and my buddies pulled up on the scene and gave me a ride…

hey not to give unsolicited advice but to share my experience - it took me a long time to realize that I'm not anti-social, but just anti-party and anti-work social. I flourish in most other spaces - especially hobby spaces.

I've been scraping my way through life the last few years and I recently started doing improv again.

God, it's such a breath of fresh air. I can be silly and goofy and have fun again.

I know it's not for everyone but the point is it may help to find your scene. If you actually enjoy being there, people will enjoy being with you.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#225

Post by deejaaymac » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 6:31 PM UTC

poemxo wrote: post #194

I am guessing the author is either criticizing people who are anti-social (in the pop culture definition) or believes he was before and after some thinking arrived at the conclusion that antisociety was not the way. But I don't feel it describes my internal motivations, so I've translated them to my behaviors: - if someone is confusing or upsetting you, assume it is your fault - interpret others' actions in the conte…

I mean, some of these are legitimate stragety to surviving corp America.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#226

Post by justonceokay » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 6:31 PM UTC

dogleash wrote: post #205

hackable_sand wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they are saying is true. It just might take a lot of work to get the ball moving.

I can agree with you while still agreeing with parent poster that it's basically "git gud"-tier bullying. Very very few orators can successfully pull off "just fix your problems bro" as anything beyond a generic kick in the pants for the people presently predispositioned to be motivated by one.

I regularly bully my close friends into being better people. It just so happens that I fell down the staircase of life much earlier than a lot of people do. I had to do most of my “midlife crisis” thinking in my early 20s because most of my family died and I had to come out as gay without any support.

Now that I’m in my 30s I have the joy of helping my friends along on this journey called life. Sometimes people just need a gentle nudge up the staircase. Sometimes they need to be carried against their will

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#227

Post by asdfman123 » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 6:32 PM UTC

labrador wrote: post #94

As a anti-social person and a misanthrope, these are all tips for amateurs that assume you must be in a relationship with other people. This is not true. One can be a hermit and enjoy the solitude. My comment here is not designed for replies and social interaction. I'm making it to test my idea against the wisdom of the crowds in case someone can enlighten me about where I might be wrong. I'm seeking information, not…

I think you should try a bimodal approach.

By all means, continue learning how to enjoy yourself alone, and stop feeling like you "should" be more like everyone else. That's actually healthy.

At the same time, though, consider the possibility that there may be more for you outside your house, and you just haven't found it yet. You don't have to force yourself to be social, but try different things that sound like they might be appealing to you.

It doesn't have to be either/or. Keep enjoying your solitude, but budget a small amount of your energy to exploring in case it unexpectedly pays off.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#228

Post by asdfman123 » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 6:34 PM UTC

arximboldi wrote: post #147

reedf1 wrote: post #23

The other day someone described themselves to me as an 'empath' which was odd, because in the context of the discussion it was invalidating to hear. And ironic considering they hadn't forseen how I would take it. Some people have ultimate confidence in their social judgements and the true sign of empathy is a kind of meta-empathy that allows you to consider truly alternative understandings of the world i.e. empathy f…

Almost every every person I've met that describes themselves as empath tends to rank rather low on empathy, under my own judgement at least. One explanation I have for this is that precisely because empathy is a more rare experience for them, it becomes a more remarkable one, perhaps even overwhelming at times. This leads them to believe that they experience it more than or more intensely than others, when on the con…

Yeah, it's just narcissism. Spiritual bypassing. The people who have really figured it out feel no need to tell others, and simply live quiet, decent lives.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#229

Post by xg15 » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 6:35 PM UTC

nnowack wrote: post #210

xg15 wrote: post #187

Drama! It's an interesting list, and yeah, I'd say most are common sense and well put. But I'm still a bit very of those "negative lists". (I actually just found a webcomic which tries a similar approach - gives their characters intentionally the worst possible ways of interaction, with the "quest" of the story essentially being if they manage to grow and learn the right ones.) But in both, its easy to employ "persua…

its very interesting to see the meaning folks have projected onto this haha i wrote this bulleted list in a couple minutes as a way to rant about the lack of charity i was noticing in 2 places - my family, where 2 members aren't speaking to each other for petty reasons, looking for the other to capitulate and admit they're the aggressor - on bluesky, where users are blaming every outage on "vibe coding"

Lol, well at least I was right about it being written in anger then.

But yeah, that makes more sense - and in that context, those are some good observations.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#230

Post by RiverCrochet » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 6:37 PM UTC

labrador wrote: post #94

As a anti-social person and a misanthrope, these are all tips for amateurs that assume you must be in a relationship with other people. This is not true. One can be a hermit and enjoy the solitude. My comment here is not designed for replies and social interaction. I'm making it to test my idea against the wisdom of the crowds in case someone can enlighten me about where I might be wrong. I'm seeking information, not…

If you are an "anthrope" (human), then the position of hating humans (misanthropia) is inherently contradictory, hence not valid. Disliking/not wanting to be part of what groups of people do is valid, and striving to keep yourself separate yourself from those groups is also valid. It doesn't make you a misanthrope, though.

What you really want to hate is time, because that's the true limiting factor. Given enough time, anything is possible, but you {insert any modal here} run out of it. Hence, why projecting things onto descendants is a thing. Writing and other methods of symbolic information reproduction have been great inventions to facilitate this.