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My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

(sashachapin.substack.com)
631 points eatitraw | 3 comments | 15 Nov 25 13:24 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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Aurornis ◴[17 Nov 25 20:24 UTC] No.45957863[source]▶
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.

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1. thundergolfer ◴[17 Nov 25 20:45 UTC] No.45958066[source]▶
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.
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2. Aurornis ◴[17 Nov 25 20:52 UTC] No.45958133[source]▶
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.

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3. BJones12 ◴[17 Nov 25 20:59 UTC] No.45958211[source]▶
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.