Table of Contents
Notice for socially inexperienced people trying to learn
Hi! Thank you for making it here! The fact that you are here indicates that you are willing to learn, to improve, to become a better person. This is a coveted, valuable trait that requires a lot of dedication, hard work, patience and resilience. It would be so much easier to just ignore other people, be stuck in your own ways, reject and never think about other people's criticisms, treat other people like you are above them. We are all bad at some things, and it would be undue for anyone to act like they are not. However, you are here, so you want to learn and you may or may not be running out of patience at this text telling you about yourself - so, I will get straight to what I want to say:
It is important, when trying and/or acquiring new social skills/strategies, to keep in mind that you are probably not good at them. This puts you at risk of it becoming painfully obvious, ie. awkward. Especially for beginners, attempting new skills will look very plastic, inorganic, unnatural. It's like a bad movie actor who reads off their text from a screen, who very obviously is an actor playing a character rather than “being” that character.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It communicates intent to improve one's skills and shows that a person wants in on the social interaction they are engaging in. But on the other side, if you are too artificial, you may come off as insincere or mocking and, in general, it is just very awkward. There is no easy fix or solution, but whatever one is trying to improve, you need to be aware of this tradeoff and potentially consider that - in some situations - not trying too hard may in fact be better a lot of the time than trying too hard.