[bluedino]

I’ve taken these classes and it comes down to “be someone you aren’t in order to make conversation”

It just feels so fake and scripted. I can easily tell in a business setting when people are just putting on their Dale Carnegie hat.

[BurningFrog]

You can also think of it as "make an effort to act in a way others enjoy".

[username90]

Problem is that only people with bad empathy enjoys it since otherwise you can see through peoples superficiality. So going through the motions and pretending to like each other doesn't work with/for many.

[BurningFrog]

You can see through the people who do it badly.

Those who do it well, which is most of us, just seem like nice, friendly and interesting people.

[bigbubba]

> Those who do it well, which is most of us,

Most people have not read that book nor any like it. Most people appear pleasant because that's the way they genuinely are, not because they went to a seminar or read a book to learn how to fake it.

[the-smug-one]

That's just not true. I often fail to be pleasant when I am in England, because the culture is different enough that when I try to be nice I mess it up in some manner. We can have the intent of being pleasant but fail to appear pleasant.

[bigbubba]

That doesn't conflict with anything I said.

[BurningFrog]

Yeah, I wasn't talking about the book, just making real efforts to appear nice and friendly.

[bluedino]

It also takes a lot of effort/energy to “handle” people with these techniques. Ask them this, ask them that. Give them two compliments, come up with an open ended question.

[bigbubba]

I don't enjoy the superficiality of a sleezeball who took courses in 'pretending to care.' But for each their own I suppose.