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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
> I was one social notch above children who were so pitiable it would be rude to mock them.
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.
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.
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.
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
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’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?
Or not being able to connect with most people?
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.
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) .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
"I'm Autistic and this is how I learned to mask"
rogual•2d ago
fgonzag•2d ago
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.