4 Ways Mainstream Social Skills Advice Is Ruining Your Life

Most mainstream social skills advice for adults… is complete bullshit.

Only a cabal of villains, publishing counterproductive social advice as a practical joke, could be this wrong, this often.

If you’ve ever searched keywords like, “How to make friends as an adult” or “How to get a girlfriend as adult”, you found bucketloads of ineffective, unhelpful advice like:

Ask Questions!

Make eye contact!

Say the other person’s name a lot!

It sounds good on paper.

However, when try the cookie cutter “tips” in real life, you discover that, not only do they NOT work to create friendships and dating opportunities, they actually produce WORSE results than whatever you were doing before.

Asking a ton of questions, holding creepy, stalker-like eye contact, and invoking someone’s name like you’re repeating an incantation , make you come off like a neurodivergent serial killer… the OPPOSITE of the attractive, friendly person you were trying to project.

If you’ve ever gone out to practice mainstream “social hacks”, then felt frustrated by the complete failure that ensued, I understand.

I’ve crashed and burned in social situations more times than I can count. 

I know the sting that comes from trying to connect with other people.. and having the situation blow up in your face: texts ignored, plans flaked, finding about an event that everyone was invited to… but you.

Ignored and Rejected

When I went out to try to “Make friends and Influence People”, following traditional advice mostly got me ignored and rejected, the opposite of what I actually wanted: to be popular, well-liked, and appreciated by others. 

If you’re like me, you’re at the end of your rope with outdated social skills advice that might have worked great in 1935, but gets you laughed at and seen as a “weird” social outcast in the modern day.

Through 40 years of trial and (mostly) error, I figured out that the basic social skills wisdom that gets repeated over and over… sucks.

After a lifetime of being treated like the “odd man out” in more situations than I can count, I came up with a list of the main things that mainstream social advice gets wrong.

This list will help you quickly correct the major flaws in your social skills, so you can finally start to make more friends, be attractive and interesting to romantic prospects, and earn the respect you deserve.

Feeling connected to other people is a basic human need.

Intimacy (not just sex), affection, and love are as important for a healthy, fulfilling life as food, air, and water.

Don’t be discouraged.

A lot of people, especially men, struggle with developing friendships and relationships.

Luckily, there is a plan of action that can help you know exactly what to do to start creating friends and a dating life that excites you.

There is a simple list of actions you should do, and (more importantly), NOT do, to start making connections, relationships, and finally build a fun social life… even if you’ve failed a million times before.

1. Asking questions makes you look needy

This is the #1 worst advice that everyone’s says you should do, that will repeatedly create the worst results.

In fact, I can guarantee that your social results will skyrocket, if you just stop doing this one thing.

The problem with asking a ton of questions is that it makes you seem nosy and uncalibrated at best, and creepy and like a potential stalker, at worst. 

Traditional information dictates that asking questions is good; it makes someone feel that you’re interested in them.

According to social skills books written at the dawn of time, the person should feel flattered that you’re curious about their lives.

In reality, when you ask a bunch of intrusive questions to someone you just met, people treat you more like an aspiring serial killer than a potential new friend or romantic interest.

You think you’re being “interested”, but most of the time you’re making the person uncomfortable.

The person doesn’t know you, so probing for a lot of personal information is invasive and unsettling, more than flattering.

Asking questions, and appearing super interested in the other person is only appropriate once the other person is also interested and invested in you.

2. Don’t smile so much

Another common trope is that smiling like an inflatable jack o’lantern lawn decoration will make people like you more.

While a genuine smile is an effective way to show that you are a friendly, open person, smiling too much makes you more look like a grinning idiot, than an intriguing figure that someone else would like to befriend.

The key of all my “counter-intuitive social skills advice” is this:

Everyone wants to meet people that they perceive to be of higher status than they are.

Career, education, car, and physical attractiveness are all way less important than perceived social status. 

Both men and women do this, so this post won’t become another whining tirade about “hypergamy”.

Grinning like a bobble head toy, for no reason makes you seem like someone who needs something (validation, friendship, approval) from the other person.

Another key here is that most people, even (especially) hot girls, popular guys, Instagram celebrities, etc. know, deep down, they aren’t that cool.

The 10/10 bikini model or charismatic local celebrity, that looks perfect on the surface, is harboring a closet full of embarrassing personal secrets- just like everyone else.

On Instagram, they have a flawless smile, a hot sports car, and an exciting life.

But that person remembers how they used to wet the bed, feel scared of the dark, and had to ask their cousin to prom, just to have a date.

No matter what someone looks like on the outside, they’re just as human as you.

Who would be so low value to need approval from someone they don’t even know?

The Salt Analogy

Think of your smile like salt in a dish.

You could have the most beautifully prepared food, with the highest quality ingredients, plated in front of you in a 5 star establishment,… but if there’s not enough salt sprinkled in, the amazing looking dish will be bland and boring.

By contrast, the best ingredients, prepared by a world famous chef, served in an exclusive rooftop restaurant, will be disgusting and inedible, if he dumped in too much salt.

Salt is a necessary ingredient in preparing food, like a warm smile is a crucial aspect of a good conversation.

What’s important is to use the right amount.

It’s better to have a face of mild amusement and relaxed, confident body language, sprinkling in a genuine smile when you, or the other person, says something funny- than to sport a maniacal ear to ear grin like Heath Ledger portraying The Joker.

3. Why being too “nice” will backfire

The master key that unlocked better social skills for me, is understanding the Game of Status.

Everyone wants to meet people who appear to have HIGHER social status than them.

Human beings instinctively avoid others of LOWER status, especially if they feel like the lower status person wants something from them.

For example:

Have you ever been walking down a city street, and seen a vagrant coming toward you?

His hair is matted and dirty.

His clothes are ragged and torn.

His shoes, if he’s wearing any, are busted with holes.

He looks like he smells bad... and he’s headed directly your way.

Worse, you know he’s going to ask you for something.

From half a block away, you reflexively grimace in disgust.

You’re not an uncompassionate asshole, but you want to get rid of this guy as soon as possible, and you haven’t even met him yet.

Low Status Is Repulsive

You’re not a filthy street vagrant, but when you project low status you get the same reaction as the homeless guy, wandering the street in rags.

You’ve probably had people treat you like they just wanted to get as far away from you as possible, as quickly as they can, and you couldn’t figure out why. 

Unless you have halitosis or body odor that burns the nostrils of anyone that gets close to you, you’re probably making mistakes of low status that push

Back to the status conversation, being “too nice” puts you in the same position as the beggar on the street.

Rather than supplicating too much and agreeing with everything the other person says, create an air of higher status by pushing back, and going against the grain sometimes in conversations.

There’s ways to do this without being abrasive and obnoxious.

Simply be more of a challenge than the boring “Nice Guy” who is scared to disagree.

It’s better to tease playfully, with a wink and a mischievous smile, than go along with everything like a bobble head doll on a dashboard.

Higher status people (like very attractive women) are so used to being placated and supplicated to, that the rare person who knows how to playfully challenge and tease them grabs their attention.

Status is a game. 

Knowing how to tease and banter effectively is one of the most effective strategies.

4. It’s OK to talk about yourself

Another big fallacy of mainstream social skills advice is that you shouldn’t talk about yourself.

The old school theory behind this is that you should be asking questions, to get the other person to open up.

While it’s true that this does work, it’s only after you’ve established yourself as a person they would want to talk to.

As I’ve already covered, asking too many questions, too soon in an interaction, comes off as “creepy” or “nosy”, more than flattering, as it’s intended.

Contrary to what the traditional social skills gurus advise, it’s often better to tell quirky and interesting stories that convey your personality early in an interaction, at least until the point that the other person becomes invested in you, and what you have to say.

Legendary pickup artist, Mystery, called this the “hook point”, the moment when an interaction turns from you being interested in someone, to where they also become interested in you.

Making amusing statements and observations about the other person gets to the “hook point” faster and more easily than assaulting your new interest with a gauntlet of interview questions.

This is juicier bait to hook someone into a conversation, a friendship, or something more, than a boring round of “Where are you from?/ what do you do?”.

Where the virgin “social skills” practitioner would lamely ask: “...so, where are you from?”

The Chad Counter-intuitive social skills hacker would make an observation: “...You have an East Coast accent, but I also hear a hint of Southern drawl… like you grew up in the Bronx but spent the summers on a farm in Georgia…”, with a sly smirk and playful eye contact.

It should be obvious that, while the first question is an inoffensive example of polite conversation, the second statement conveys a lot more confidence and personality about the person who is saying it.

Conclusion

Take everything you know about mainstream social skills advice, and throw it in the trash.

It hasn’t worked, to the point that you read this entire post, desperately trying to clear the cloudy haze of confusion and frustration caused by years, or decades, of getting it wrong.

Pathetic to Powerful

My journey from social reject, to a guy with an exciting life full of fun hobbies, action packed weekends, and a sense of purpose and pride, was long, isolating, and frankly, depressing.

When I finally figured it out, I felt like I’d discovered some hard won insider secrets.

I realized I wasn’t some victim of bad luck, destined to be a lonely outcast forever.

The strategies meeting friends, creating relationships, and finally feeling connected in a social group were easy to implement.. once I knew the simple skills to go from Pathetic to Powerful.

Get the guide to Simple Social Strategies that Actually Work