[Aurornis]

> 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.

I don’t think that’s a fair comparison to what’s describe in this blog post.

The writer describes taking on different personas and trying different tricks with other people portrayed as subjects of some sort of experiment.

The casual mentions of how they tried some conversational trick and got someone into full on sobbing was particularly striking because there was hardly a mention of concern for the other person. The only discussion was about the trick used to elicit the response.

That is what I do not agree is consistent with normal interactions. Most people would feel some degree of guilt or dirtiness, for lack of a better word, if they used some of these tricks to lure random interactions into a false sense of connection and feigned friendship, especially if for no other reason to experiment on the other person.

[phantasmish]

> The writer describes taking on different personas and trying different tricks with other people portrayed as subjects of some sort of experiment.

It’s typically not done quite so intentionally, but this sounds like most folks’ junior high and high school years. Sometimes also college.

I know I totally changed in those years, and it was mostly by noticing what “worked” and leaning into it.

[whstl]

It is also how a lot of people behave professionally and in their dating life, even later in life.

[ryanjshaw]

I don’t think neurotypical people can ever understand this process but I’ll try to explain what it was like for myself, a neurodiverse person:

- yes, I was consciously trying different ways to fit in

- yes, I felt uncomfortable that it was forced and unnatural

- no, it didn’t occur to me at all this was a deeper issue; I had all kinds of naive explanations: oh I’m not as confident because I because I started school a year earlier than the other guys; girls don’t like me because I’m not as handsome as other guys; I’m not as social because I don’t have an older brother to learn it from, etc.

- over the years, as I got better at what I now know to be “masking”, I just subconsciously embodied the idea that consciously working on every little aspect of social interactions is “normal”

- it took me 30 years to realise, wait a minute, it’s probably not normal that I had to put so much effort into all of this, and got myself a brand new shiny autism diagnosis at 40

[amypetrik8]

the only book worth reading on this topic is "how to appear normal at social events" by Lord Birthday

Like you I was disgusted to see OP's link posted to these hallowed grounds, a bunch of filthie normie jibber jabber waxing poetic about how great it is to have cracked the normie code

[intended]

The “trick” you are referring to, requires you to care about other people in the first place.

As I recall, the section this came up was when they were coaching.

This does feel like another instance of how people have a deep instinctual grasp of social interactions, but a shallow ability to articulate the moving parts in detail.

I think the analogy was “everyone know how to use the flush, but they can’t explain the mechanisms behind it”