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So here's a social thing
Feb. 5th, 2018 09:59 amThis weekend I went to a gathering in memory of a long-time friend. It was quite an awkward setting, as there was no agenda, no planned time. Just people gathering in a banquet hall, with food, talking as they would. There was a memorial book to sign and family members there... if you could recognize them. That wasn't super-hard for the friend's brother and father, but others not so much.
Further complicating things, most of the people there were not family, but friends. Often friends who didn't actually overlap. So you had these isolated bubbles of people who might know each other from other connections or maybe a past event, but lacked the general mutuality. I'm very used to a tight-knit and overlapping social group where I try to introduce two people at a party at my house and I find out "oh, we've known each other for years through (pick several) SCA, MIT, folk dancing, pagan gatherings, SF conventions, knitting circles, book clubs..."
In this sort of situation I find myself even more socially paralyzed than normal. I may possibly recognize someone but I'm afraid of looking foolish by saying something that would indicate I'd misidentified them. People who are talking to each other. As I noted elsewhere I have a hard time penetrating that wall already.
Fortunately I have friends who somehow magic this stuff. They find the right people to talk to (some of it is facial recognition, some is... ?) and they manage to talk to them in the right ways. I've watched people do this - it's a very cool skill and I wish I had it.
I get by on a lot of social interactions by rote and memorization. I know that in this situation I should do _that_, and in this other situations that's wrong so do this other thing. Or say this third thing. I work constantly on how to do this in ways that are authentic and honest. If someone has a good formulation for these skills I'm open to hearing them.
Mostly, though, it's like trying to describe shades of red to someone with protanopia. People use words that clearly indicate they see differences between things that look the same to me and without being able to see that basic difference I don't even know where to begin.
Further complicating things, most of the people there were not family, but friends. Often friends who didn't actually overlap. So you had these isolated bubbles of people who might know each other from other connections or maybe a past event, but lacked the general mutuality. I'm very used to a tight-knit and overlapping social group where I try to introduce two people at a party at my house and I find out "oh, we've known each other for years through (pick several) SCA, MIT, folk dancing, pagan gatherings, SF conventions, knitting circles, book clubs..."
In this sort of situation I find myself even more socially paralyzed than normal. I may possibly recognize someone but I'm afraid of looking foolish by saying something that would indicate I'd misidentified them. People who are talking to each other. As I noted elsewhere I have a hard time penetrating that wall already.
Fortunately I have friends who somehow magic this stuff. They find the right people to talk to (some of it is facial recognition, some is... ?) and they manage to talk to them in the right ways. I've watched people do this - it's a very cool skill and I wish I had it.
I get by on a lot of social interactions by rote and memorization. I know that in this situation I should do _that_, and in this other situations that's wrong so do this other thing. Or say this third thing. I work constantly on how to do this in ways that are authentic and honest. If someone has a good formulation for these skills I'm open to hearing them.
Mostly, though, it's like trying to describe shades of red to someone with protanopia. People use words that clearly indicate they see differences between things that look the same to me and without being able to see that basic difference I don't even know where to begin.
