Comment by Aurornis
21 hours ago
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.
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.
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>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.
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>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.
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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.
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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.
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Isn’t aiming to be authentic a form of “instrumentalizing”?
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> 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.
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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
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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.
> 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.
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> I like the challenge of interacting with someone who does things very differently.
So this is about you?
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...
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.
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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.
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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".
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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.
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A self-help book that took off saying the quiet part out loud is How to Win Friends & Influence People. It predates the 'influencer'.
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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.
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.
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.
So an emotional quine?
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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 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.
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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.
>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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
Yet the author isn't claiming to have started out with the healthiest mindset
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.
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
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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.