Good Morning DeGens!
This is the third episode of my new series “How to Stop Being Weird”.
A COMPLETLY FREE series aiming at helping those who lack the basic social skills to make it in a world that gets more social by the day and punishes harder the ones that don’t get it.
I highly recommend reading the introduction to the substack to know where I came from and where we’re going. (LINK)
Bullying and getting picked on was normal occurrence in my life. No matter where I went, school or the park, even my home. This continued until I became 20 or so. Before that, I was already learning the mechanics of the social but they were just concepts devoid of experience.
Looking back, I wouldn’t blame the people of the past for treating me like that (except the adults). If you pay close attention, my behavior was an open invitation to getting bullied. One of the hardest things I went through was coming to the realization that no matter which circumstances brought me here, my attitude was holding me back. It was pushing people off.
Think about it. Would you want to spend time with a guy that never reads the room and says inappropriate things? Would you try to be friendly to a person that never catches a joke or takes everything at face value? Sometimes even getting mad about it? Would you want to have a conversation with someone that will bash you for being an idiot, while trying to start a debate over every minor disagreement?
If you value yourself and your mental health, the answer should be a gigantic NO.
Today you will learn the harsh reality of social dynamics.
This is not something you should speak freely about. You play the game, not explain it. Doing so will get you more ostracised than you already are. I’ll just explain the things you should be noticing in your everyday life.
Social dynamics are based on roles and hierarchies. This should be obvious but to be social is to interact with one or more people. Therefore, we will be talking about interactions in a group. Groups can be as small as a family or a group of friends and as big as society as a whole.
In every group, there is a “chain of command” so to speak. Every person is assigned a certain value and a role. How are you placed will be decided entirely on your initial behavior. Hierarchies are born from first impressions. This means that everything will be in place in the first MINUTES of an interaction. No matter if this is you going into a new group of friends, getting a new job, or approaching a girl.
Said behaviors are rooted in the individual’s social skills at that moment. Charisma, stress tolerance, knowledge of social cues, sense of humor, etc. All of that comes into play.
You could grab 3 random men on the street, put them together and give them a task. In the first 3 minutes, you will know who’s the leader, who’s the follower and how much they let themselves be influenced by the leader.
Long story short. No matter how good you are at something or how much value you can provide, the first thing that comes into play are your social skills. Those going to be the factors that will influence your place in the societal hierarchy.
Lacking the necessary social skills will mean that you may be placed at the bottom of the food chain.
Disclaimer: Everything I just explained happens naturally and without explicit explanation. Don’t think that people gather and say “ok, James is the funny one and Chad will lead us”. It’s a natural process.
I’ll use Me as an example: I got put into a new school. On the first day, the teachers make me do a presentation. I spoke with submissive body language and a faint voice. I sat down at my desk and I tried to avoid eye contact with my classmates. A couple of minutes pass and one kid goes and tries to talk to me. He makes an innocent joke about my presentation, probably to make me joke back and lighten the mood a little bit. Instead, I took the joke way too seriously and personally and I got mad and started screaming. This happened numerous times.
What do you think happened after this?
This is how people profiled me:
A guy that can’t take a joke. He get’s really mad when picked on and it’s funny to see. He’s small and weak so there are no repercussions of doing this over and over. Being around him is annoying, you have to be really careful if you want to avoid a temper tantrum out of nowhere. If you tried to be nice to him he’ll respond with passive-aggressiveness, because in his head he sees you as an enemy. You can’t make a joke or banter with him or you will get the usual screaming.
In short: being around me is miserable and certainly not fun.
Who the fuck would want to spend time with me?
No one. And they are right.
Here’s the harsh reality of social dynamics: Sure, I was that way because of my circumstances. Those were caused due to bad luck. I wasn’t at fault for my childhood. I was 9 at the time of this story, there was absolutely no way that I could manage to do something about it, I wasn’t even conscious of what was happening to me.
But guess what? They are not at fault either. And for sure they shouldn’t deal with the consequences of a kid who was not raised period.
Is it harsh? Yes. Is it unfair? Of course. Is there something you can do about it? No.
Consider yourself lucky that you are reading this. Most people in your situation are doomed for life. The filter is put on by nature and nature cannot be fought against. Just focus on getting yourself out of this situation and make sure it doesn’t happen with your children.
Being bad at the social will wring you misfortune in every area of your life.
How are you going to going to launch a business if you suck at networking and marketing (sales and marketing are social skills)?
How will you keep a good reputation when you cannot handle criticism?
How will you tackle the hardships of life if you have zero stress tolerance?
Just imagine the number of things that you are missing just because you can’t take a joke. Because you take everything at face value. Because you’re boring and annoying.
Being good at the social is a matter of life and death.
Nothing will replace it.
Living in denial of this fact will ostracize you from success.
Don’t worry tho.
You are in the right place.
You will make it in due time, it just takes practice.
Last week I told you to go for a walk and ask random people for the time. If you followed my advice, you should be getting more comfortable with initiating social interactions. You should keep doing it for now. If you’re bored of the same question try changing it, it doesn’t matter as long as you are following the plan.
This week’s exercise will be something to do in conjunction with everything from now on:
Find groups of people, sit down and OBSERVE.
You should do this in a lot of environments. Parks, schools, bars, workplaces, nightclubs. As long as you’re not dumb enough to get caught and appear creepy you should be fine.
What I want you to do is to watch and point out what is the role and the place in the hierarchy of every person in that group.
If the place involves some kind of sexual tone like a nightclub, watch the things the winners and the losers do.
Once you do this, go back to your house and WRITE NOTES on who you thought was at the top, middle, bottom, etc. And why you reached that conclusion. This is important, writing your thought process is a fantastic way to know how your brain works, this will make it easier to replicate in the future and it helps with self-introspection. Your best weapon.
After you have some insight, take a moment and look a what you are doing.
Compare your behavior with the behaviors you noticed from others.
Don’t try to imitate them. You should get there naturally. Don’t fake it till you make it. It doesn’t work.
This is it for this week. Write down in the comments how your first approaches went from last week. The next episodes are going to be shorter. This is because we will focus on more practice and less theory. For now, you should have every tool at your disposal to get to a basic level of understanding. If you have any questions, leave them in the comment section.
This will be a weekly series. However, I recommend not jumping to the next episode until you think you’re ready. If you skip steps you are NGMI. You cannot be a dating expert if you are scared of asking a random for the time.
I wish you the best of luck on this journey and I’ll see you again next week!