271–280 of 444 posts
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 n…
I'm #3 naturally, always have been. #4 gets practiced within me, the more I meditate. I owe my HN username to it :)
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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
If so, I missed all references of him bullying other people.
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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…
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 natura…
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> 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…
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 shortcomin…
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.
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> 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 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 so…
- 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
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…
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Agreed. It's the playbook of social interaction written out. Nothing offensive about that.
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.
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