[brtkdotse]

> There's a (repeating) notion in this thread that keeping up with people is somehow linked to how much you care about them. I care deeply about many people I meet, personally, but I don't think the two are necessarily correlated.

I wholeheartedly agree. There’s a similar resistance towards books like “How to win friends...”, like you’re a sleazy car salesman for trying to improve your social skills.

It’s like harping on people going to the gym and watching their diet for not being “naturally” fit.

[ALittleLight]

I have a friend who does this. It used to be that every year or so he would come out to where I live for a convention he liked to go to and he would stay at my house for 3-4 days and we'd catch up, go do some stuff in the evening when he wasn't at the convention, etc.

One year he resolved to "do better about keeping up" - apparently feeling bad that our entire message history was him texting me a month before the convention asking if he could stay with me, and me saying that he could. True to his word, ever after that, he has periodically texted me every few months just to make idle conversation. He even stopped going to the convention but still keeps messaging me periodically - which I appreciate because it shows he didn't view me only as a hotel replacement.

Still, I prefer our old arrangement. Frankly, I don't need to know how he is doing every few months and I find it a bit awkward to make small talk any way. As I just have one friend that does this it's not so bad, but if I had more friends who wanted to just regularly "check in" like this, I'd have to start blocking people, ending friendships, or developing an automated routine to tell the curious that I'm doing well and to ask about their family and our mutual friends, etc.

[tomgs]

> Frankly, I don't need to know how he is doing every few months and I find it a bit awkward to make small talk any way.

There's a bit of secret sauce here that I tend to rely on to prevent myself from being considered "that guy".

First and foremost, I do this as much as possible via e-mail. Phone or WhatsApp is indeed too "personal" for these type of things (save for one person, an old boss of mine, who I have a scheduled zoom call with once a month. But that's just because he and I just like the chit-chat, it appears).

I write up a long-form message, something like 5-8 paragraphs with real news about myself and the things I've been up to, and ship that alongside the usual casual chit-chat.

It's surprisingly useful - I think this is the only context in which long-form e-mail is a good thing.

But then again, I grew up in an era where e-mail is the devil, and this was not always the case (or so they tell me).

[hammock]

What strikes me as the secret sauce there is the 5-8 paragraphs of info that gets dumped at once. There is something value in there that the other can pick up on and continue the thread.

Compare that to a text , where you might send a sentence or two and expect them to come back with something- when in fact, they weren't thinking about YOU and therefore aren't prepared to respond. Hence awkward.

[tomgs]

Yep, yep. Makes all the difference.

Liking to write helps a lot with keeping in touch.

[ath92]

I think the resistance towards that particular book is because the full title is "How to win friends and influence people". The last part in particular is what makes it sound sleazy. It would be very different if the book had just been called "How to make friends".

[brtkdotse]

The book was published in 1936. I think the meaning of the word “influence” has evolved to mean something more sinister than what the book is about.

[weinzierl]

> It would be very different if the book had just been called "How to make friends".

I think it is the other way round. People criticize it because "How to make friends" is the first and more prominent part of the title, while the book is not primarily about that. "How to influence people" fits the content much better than "How to win friends" but "influence" isn't the most appropriate word either and I guess that would not have sold the book nearly as well as its actual title.

Apart from that I think there is nothing to criticize about the content, it might be trivial to a degree, but it is solid and ethical advice, if I remember it correctly.

[Kye]

I only read a few chapters of the 1981 revision, but the author always made sure to emphasize that all the tools and techniques were boosters for good intentions, not a replacement for them.

[Ma8ee]

I think many people read the title as “How to befriend people to influence them.”

[bucephale]

Actually, the french translation or this book has got the title "how to make friend" (comment se faire des amis)

[tomgs]

> It’s like harping on people going to the gym and watching their diet for not being “naturally” fit.

Exactly. I have this thing that I'm not good at. I have this tool I use to be better at it. Everybody wins.

One might say that computers in general are tools for computational work, since people are not as good at crunching numbers in their head at a consistent, repetitive and deterministic fashion over time.

One might even be right. :)

[wh-uws]

I figured out how to deal with cognitive dissonance people are feeling about this years ago.

I would rather make a calendar invite / use <insert your fav software> and remember to call <valued loved one or friend> and feel bad about having to do that...

Then forget to call and feel worse about forgetting.

[tomgs]

> Then forget to call and feel bad about forgetting.

This. I feel really, really guilty if I hear something great or awful happened to someone I used to be in touch with, but the relationship faded away into the flow of life.

Why wasn't I there? What? It's been 3 years since we last talked? How did that happen?

So, no to all that jazz. Enter Monica. :)

[throwaway_pdp09]

for some reason you omitted the sleazier half of the title "...and influence people".

Improving social skills and using them manipulatively are entirely different things. If you've ever known or worked with psychopaths you'll get that immediately. I suppose there's a continuum but still.

[monsieurbanana]

I don't agree. Influencing and social skills cannot be dissociated. Making friends is the process of making a person like you, which seems to fall under the definition of influence.

As many things, influencing people isn't inherently bad, but depends on how and why.

[brtkdotse]

Have you read the book? It’s very far from being sleazy or manipulative, but rather a guide to what people tend to think are agreeable qualities.

[throwaway_pdp09]

Fair enough, I have not and was going on hearsay, but from wikipedia "As time passed however, scholarly reviews became more critical, chiding Carnegie for being insincere and manipulative" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...)

And it also says "Charles Manson used what he learned from the book in prison to manipulate women into killing on his behalf" but I don't know if that can be blamed on the book.

[dvtrn]

I have not and was going on hearsay

This is unfortunate.