the thing about “oh no i can’t do X what if people think i’m weird” is that you constantly participate in the process of deciding what is weird and what is normal. do something with enough relaxed confidence and the local definition of weirdness warps to accommodate you
Conversation
generally there’s a pattern of talking about social stuff esp. status that i see nerdy men in particular fall into, of talking about social norms as if you don’t have any control over them. but you constantly participate in the process of deciding local social norms!
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“i don’t have any control over social norms” can become very self-fulfilling; if you continue to believe it you’ll continue to not try to exert any such control and social norms will continue to feel like they are something that happen to you
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which is not to say that all you have to do is believe it’s possible. there are real social skills involved in syncing up enough with a group of people to influence them. but i think it mostly boils down to
1) be somewhat likable
2) find something about them to like
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I think you're slightly underselling how difficult this is
basically the process is that if you acquire social status & power, you can buy the ability to influence norms/be weird with them
you and I are good at easily acquiring social status and power, but not everyone is
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yeah i was thinking about that 😅 tricky to talk about this i guess