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 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.
I think emulating things that a serious person discards is a step backwards.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Almost all honest signals are about a similar tradeoff.
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)
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.
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.
> When you have a real indication of dealing with a master manipulator
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
And as a socially awkward individual I found it quite interesting.
> 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Why do I get the impression that this book is very much in line with Charlie Sheen's personal philosophy?
Jack Welch the sociopath?? Or is there another author with that same name?
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
I was terrible at this stuff until I learned how to do it, working in a customer facing tech support call centre.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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’.
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
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How did that make you feel? Wait, you did what? Why did you do that? What do you enjoy about that?
> 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.
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.
it's kind of like farting in public. you know you did, and you think everyone noticed, but in reality most didn't
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> I was one social notch above children who were so pitiable it would be rude to mock them.
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!
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
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.
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.
• 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 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.
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) .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
People should not dish out that advice so carelessly and wantenly.
"Just be yourself" is only good advice for people whose 'self' is acceptable and well-functioning.
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.
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.
Why are you so certain? 15 years is a long time to look down that barrel why do you deserve that?
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.
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?
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.
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.
I learned this from the old movie called The Shining, by the way.
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.
What's that cure?
"I'm Autistic and this is how I learned to mask"
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
Or not being able to connect with most people?
> 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.
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.
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.