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My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

(sashachapin.substack.com)
631 points eatitraw | 6 comments | 15 Nov 25 13:24 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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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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etangent ◴[17 Nov 25 21:16 UTC] No.45958403[source]▶
> 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.

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1. Aurornis ◴[18 Nov 25 02:10 UTC] No.45960622[source]▶
> 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.

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2. phantasmish ◴[18 Nov 25 02:19 UTC] No.45960668[source]▶
> 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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3. intended ◴[18 Nov 25 04:21 UTC] No.45961353[source]▶
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”

4. ryanjshaw ◴[18 Nov 25 08:29 UTC] No.45962712[source]▶
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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5. amypetrik8 ◴[18 Nov 25 12:41 UTC] No.45964894[source]▶
the only book worth reading on this topic is "how to appear normal at social events" by Lord Birthday

Like you I was disgusted to see OP's link posted to these hallowed grounds, a bunch of filthie normie jibber jabber waxing poetic about how great it is to have cracked the normie code

6. whstl ◴[18 Nov 25 16:45 UTC] No.45968678[source]▶
It is also how a lot of people behave professionally and in their dating life, even later in life.