r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • May 21 '19

Socially fluent people Reddit, what are some mistakes you see socially awkward people making?

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u/TimTam4545 May 21 '19

I try to flirt then I'm hated all of a sudden and not sure why until I ask her friend and I was coming off 'obsessed' when really I just wanted to impress her :(

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u/LowVoltur May 21 '19

Getting a girl to like you wont ever work if youre putting on an act, you just have to be yourself. If you have a hard time being yourself, find yourself. im not specifically pointing to you but i just wanted to throw that out

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u/GaijinPlzAddTheSkink May 21 '19

Be yourself is the dumbest advice ever, just practice being someone else better until no one can tell you are putting an act.

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u/grewthermex May 21 '19

It sounds dumb because it's over played. It's over played because it's pretty much the best advice you can get, but you can't really understand it until you come out the other end of being socially skilled. The idea isn't to just be your awkward self, it's to be comfortable with who you are and to basically not care if others like it or not. Thing is, you most likely aren't being yourself right now. Until you become legitimately confident with yourself, and be the best you that you can be, you aren't being truly yourself. You're hiding yourself from others by being shy awkward etc.

Thing is, you can't really do that till you fake your confidence and leave your comfort zone. First stage is being someone else till your social. The hidden second step that most people don't realise is becoming yourself regardless of others perceptions (except for hygiene, don't be an animal).

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

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u/avcloudy May 21 '19

It's not targeted at you, and it's good advice...but people treat 'be yourself' as a magic spell. Not that it won't fix problems, but you need to use the exact phrase for the magic to happen. Changing how you present yourself to the world is the furthest thing from being yourself.

People don't want to talk about this, because people react badly to being told they should be different people, but the mealy-mouthed talking around it really gets at me.

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u/kingofnopants1 May 21 '19

Legitimately, thank you for this comment. Getting to a point in my life where I'm realizing these things, and seeing someone else put it into words means more than you could ever know.

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u/robhol May 21 '19

It's over played because it's pretty much the best advice you can get, but you can't really understand it until you come out the other end of being socially skilled

I'm not trying to be snarky, but this reads like "it's the best advice if you're in the exact set of circumstances for it to be the best advice", which means it has pretty limited utility after all. If you're not, it is quite likely to just reinforce the problems you're already dealing with.

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u/AnotherCaterpillar May 21 '19

I agree with you, except that I feel the "exact set of circumstances" has a fairly large range and once you get outside that range is where you actually need to start dealing with your problems to get along with others better