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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 fe

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.

testing22321 1y ago
The book is called “how to win friends and influence people”, after all.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  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.
  - dijit 1y ago
    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.
    - y-curious 1y ago
      Disagree with your reading, respectfully. The majority of that book is putting into words the things we like about people. It helped me immensely, especially points like not criticizing people and thinking it’s helpful. I would say the title aged terribly and comes off as sociopathic.
    - RealityVoid 1y ago
      Interesting, I felt the exact opposite. I used to be guarded and aggressive and was careful not to give other people too much else they might take advantage of me. My takeaway from that was... It's fine to be nice and caring and helping people out genuinely (I know, a shocker, but coming from a more... Uhh.. predatory... World it might not be something that crosses your mind.)
    - ghurtado 1y ago
      > and especially how the author was talking about them. To really get the best out of this book, you need to realize that it was written in 1936. I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much without regularly having this fact top of mind while reading it. 90 years ago, think about how different the world was then. This is before WWII!
  - card_zero 1y ago
    Mutual preferences is the best idea in the Dale Carnegie book. Resolving conflicts by being imaginative enough to suggest a win-win option.
  - koakuma-chan 1y ago
    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.
    - warkdarrior 1y ago
      > I liked the book Winning by Jack Welch more Jack Welch the sociopath?? Or is there another author with that same name?
    - lovich 1y ago
      The sociopath who destroyed GE in the quest for more money is someone I would only take social advice from if I was done with humanity and had started to use society for entirely selfish ends. He got away with “candor” because he was at the top and anyone who disagreed with him was removed. Honestly any self help books from people in unique positions in society trying to tell the common man how to improve always read to me as “my top 10 tips for winning the lottery: tip one buy a winning lottery ticket”
      - koakuma-chan 1y ago
        Do you think you are a common man? Are you content with it?
        lovich 1y ago
        Yes and yes. I actually like being part of society and don’t need to feed delusions of grandeur to feel content. Also I want to point out how I referenced his opinion as being like tips on winning the lottery. Getting to a unique position of power like that requires so much luck and other input that you have no control over that I view the “advice” on how to achieve it as useless and just the result of those people grappling with the cognitive dissonance of thinking they got to where they are on their own vs the actual reality
thundergolfer 1y ago
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.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  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.
  - BJones12 1y ago
    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.
niam 1y ago
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.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > 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.
  - intended 1y ago
    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.
flatline 1y ago
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.
- sctb 1y ago
  > 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.
aethrum 1y ago
He seems like an odd duck.
- teekert 1y ago
  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.
  - wk_end 1y ago
    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.
etangent 1y ago
> 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.
- pseidemann 1y ago
  Agreed. It's the playbook of social interaction written out. Nothing offensive about that.
  - collingreen 1y ago
    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".
    - etangent 1y ago
      100% correct.
    - guy2345 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - tomhow 1y ago
        Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
munchbunny 1y ago
> 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.
micromacrofoot 1y ago
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.
- lazide 1y ago
  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’.
  - micromacrofoot 1y ago
    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
    - lazide 1y ago
      I think you might want to re-read all of this again. Manipulation is non-consensual and controlling influence, yes. That part is important. Just like the difference between a house and a jail is essentially if you are being forced to be there against your will or not. They both are structures people live in and that provide a degree of structure and protection, but one is generally considered okay or even good, and the other is considered pretty bad and terrible. Largely because one you can choose or do things to change, the other you get stuck in against your will and the environment is outside your control. Most ‘influencers’ also cross pretty strongly into manipulation many times, so using the title is about as accurate as ‘Democratic Peoples Republic of z’.
dlahoda 1y ago
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.
nkrisc 1y ago
> 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.
- ozim 1y ago
  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.
  - nkrisc 1y ago
    I’m curious how you accidentally or unintentionally become friends with someone. Being friends almost always requires intent.
    - yarekt 1y ago
      not original commenter, but I have. Either through their manipulation, or just being in the same place, doing the same things. Didn't like them as a person, but they were decent to me, so some sort of reciprocation happened, didn't last though.
    - Nursie 1y ago
      > I’m curious how you accidentally or unintentionally become friends with someone Really? My most enduring friendships seem to just sorta happen, meeting people at random in various ways, figuring out you're into a lot of the same stuff, just sorta rubbing along well... and now we've known each other 25 years, how the hell did that happen? Ha.
    - mordnis 1y ago
      I guess you intentionally interact with them (because you like them, you share an interest), but you don't intentionally pretend to be something you are not (even though you know the other person would like that).
RangerScience 1y ago
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.
ghurtado 1y ago
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.
perfmode 1y ago
skip to the end
jrochkind1 1y ago
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.
- AndrewKemendo 1y ago
  It’s the root of secure attachment and clear boundaries something missing in the majority of the world unfortunately
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > 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.
  - pstuart 1y ago
    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.
tibbar 1y ago
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.
ajpikul 1y ago
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.
protocolture 1y ago
>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.
citizenpaul 1y ago
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.
laserbeam 1y ago
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.
safety1st 1y ago
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.
- SwtCyber 1y ago
  And it's hard to talk about personal growth without showing your missteps, and he does that pretty fearlessly
atoav 1y ago
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.
misja111 1y ago
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.
SwtCyber 1y ago
Yet the author isn't claiming to have started out with the healthiest mindset
lynx97 1y ago
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.
coldtea 1y ago
>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.
alfonsodev 1y ago
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.
kubanczyk 1y ago
> 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?
pdonis 1y ago
> Look at the first two subheadings Which the author says are stages he grew out of. He's not saying that those things are what connecting with people is actually about.

testing22321 1y ago

The book is called “how to win friends and influence people”, after all.

Aurornis 1y ago
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.
- dijit 1y ago
  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.
  - y-curious 1y ago
    Disagree with your reading, respectfully. The majority of that book is putting into words the things we like about people. It helped me immensely, especially points like not criticizing people and thinking it’s helpful. I would say the title aged terribly and comes off as sociopathic.
  - RealityVoid 1y ago
    Interesting, I felt the exact opposite. I used to be guarded and aggressive and was careful not to give other people too much else they might take advantage of me. My takeaway from that was... It's fine to be nice and caring and helping people out genuinely (I know, a shocker, but coming from a more... Uhh.. predatory... World it might not be something that crosses your mind.)
  - ghurtado 1y ago
    > and especially how the author was talking about them. To really get the best out of this book, you need to realize that it was written in 1936. I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much without regularly having this fact top of mind while reading it. 90 years ago, think about how different the world was then. This is before WWII!
- card_zero 1y ago
  Mutual preferences is the best idea in the Dale Carnegie book. Resolving conflicts by being imaginative enough to suggest a win-win option.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
  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.
  - warkdarrior 1y ago
    > I liked the book Winning by Jack Welch more Jack Welch the sociopath?? Or is there another author with that same name?
  - lovich 1y ago
    The sociopath who destroyed GE in the quest for more money is someone I would only take social advice from if I was done with humanity and had started to use society for entirely selfish ends. He got away with “candor” because he was at the top and anyone who disagreed with him was removed. Honestly any self help books from people in unique positions in society trying to tell the common man how to improve always read to me as “my top 10 tips for winning the lottery: tip one buy a winning lottery ticket”
    - koakuma-chan 1y ago
      Do you think you are a common man? Are you content with it?
      - lovich 1y ago
        Yes and yes. I actually like being part of society and don’t need to feed delusions of grandeur to feel content. Also I want to point out how I referenced his opinion as being like tips on winning the lottery. Getting to a unique position of power like that requires so much luck and other input that you have no control over that I view the “advice” on how to achieve it as useless and just the result of those people grappling with the cognitive dissonance of thinking they got to where they are on their own vs the actual reality

thundergolfer 1y ago

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.

Aurornis 1y ago
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.
- BJones12 1y ago
  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.

niam 1y ago

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.

Aurornis 1y ago
> 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.
- intended 1y ago
  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.

flatline 1y ago

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.

sctb 1y ago
> 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.

aethrum 1y ago

He seems like an odd duck.

teekert 1y ago
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.
- wk_end 1y ago
  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.

etangent 1y ago

> 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.

pseidemann 1y ago
Agreed. It's the playbook of social interaction written out. Nothing offensive about that.
- collingreen 1y ago
  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".
  - etangent 1y ago
    100% correct.
  - guy2345 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - tomhow 1y ago
      Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

munchbunny 1y ago

> 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.

micromacrofoot 1y ago

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.

lazide 1y ago
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’.
- micromacrofoot 1y ago
  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
  - lazide 1y ago
    I think you might want to re-read all of this again. Manipulation is non-consensual and controlling influence, yes. That part is important. Just like the difference between a house and a jail is essentially if you are being forced to be there against your will or not. They both are structures people live in and that provide a degree of structure and protection, but one is generally considered okay or even good, and the other is considered pretty bad and terrible. Largely because one you can choose or do things to change, the other you get stuck in against your will and the environment is outside your control. Most ‘influencers’ also cross pretty strongly into manipulation many times, so using the title is about as accurate as ‘Democratic Peoples Republic of z’.

dlahoda 1y ago

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.

nkrisc 1y ago

> 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.

ozim 1y ago
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.
- nkrisc 1y ago
  I’m curious how you accidentally or unintentionally become friends with someone. Being friends almost always requires intent.
  - yarekt 1y ago
    not original commenter, but I have. Either through their manipulation, or just being in the same place, doing the same things. Didn't like them as a person, but they were decent to me, so some sort of reciprocation happened, didn't last though.
  - Nursie 1y ago
    > I’m curious how you accidentally or unintentionally become friends with someone Really? My most enduring friendships seem to just sorta happen, meeting people at random in various ways, figuring out you're into a lot of the same stuff, just sorta rubbing along well... and now we've known each other 25 years, how the hell did that happen? Ha.
  - mordnis 1y ago
    I guess you intentionally interact with them (because you like them, you share an interest), but you don't intentionally pretend to be something you are not (even though you know the other person would like that).

RangerScience 1y ago

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.

ghurtado 1y ago

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.

perfmode 1y ago

skip to the end

jrochkind1 1y ago

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.

AndrewKemendo 1y ago
It’s the root of secure attachment and clear boundaries something missing in the majority of the world unfortunately
Aurornis 1y ago
> 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.
- pstuart 1y ago
  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.

tibbar 1y ago

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.

ajpikul 1y ago

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.

protocolture 1y ago

citizenpaul 1y ago

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.

laserbeam 1y ago

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.

safety1st 1y ago

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.

SwtCyber 1y ago
And it's hard to talk about personal growth without showing your missteps, and he does that pretty fearlessly

atoav 1y ago

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.

misja111 1y ago

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.

SwtCyber 1y ago

Yet the author isn't claiming to have started out with the healthiest mindset

lynx97 1y ago

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.

coldtea 1y ago

>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.

alfonsodev 1y ago

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.

kubanczyk 1y ago

> 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?

pdonis 1y ago

> Look at the first two subheadings Which the author says are stages he grew out of. He's not saying that those things are what connecting with people is actually about.