[Vokrel]

It doesn't pay to please all people all of the time.

It pays to please some people some of the time.

As with a number of other tools and strategies, you have to leverage it at the right moment, the right rhythm. If you don't have an intuitionistic idea of the ratio between truth and small lies that are necessary to functioning. People don't talk to exchange truth about the world, they talk mostly to repeat signals at a constant rhythm which sends a larger signal of "confidence" or "competency" or "trustworthiness" or even "this person is safe and stable to be around".

Yeah, there's a cognitive cost to anticipating other minds unless you're blessed with some capacity that is never stressed. There's also a cognitive cost to maintaining executive function without being swallowed by groupthink.

>people pleasing is selfish and manipulative

Your entire edifice of actions is the selfish and manipulative desires of your morality to instantiate itself in real space.