My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

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.

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.