You know, I ''still'' can't get the hand of joking. Not telling jokes or using witticisms, but, you know, the taunting, the stealth insults, the "in good fun" stuff. Maybe I'm working under Law Of Conservation Of Detail, but I tend to process them as unwarranted, intentional insults, made by people who won't openly engage you, and that come entirely out of the blue and can't be refuted in less than a small paragraph. Which is obviously not a witty response and marks you as unfunny and "someone who takes themselves too seriously". This really exasperates and confuses me.
I don't understand sarcasm. I mean, I know what it is and everything, and I can participate in a sarcastic exchange if I'm expecting it, but if I'm not paying attention, a remark meant to be sarcastic gets automatically processed as serious, and I respond defensively. Various people over the years have noticed this and used it to their own amusement. (Which I don't really mind. I was ignored enough as a kid that even just being teased is a sign of social inclusion for me and makes me feel warm and fuzzy.)
Followup to Recovering Insufferable Genius
So, we've been talking a mighty amount on avoiding and understanding the common pitfalls and mistakes that plague most human minds for various biological, evolutionary and social reasons. This knowledge is supposed to be used for the sake of learning how to think proprely and clearly about the world, and for the sake of making the right choices, and making them quickly. Both blades of the weapon can have a dramatic effect on how we interact with people. Behaviors that would appear absurd and annoying to us would suddenly gain a history, reasons for their existence until now and even for their continued existence. The incomprehensible people around us suddenly become fairly simple and predictable, to the point that you might, every now and then, understand them better than they do themselves. They also become all that much more interesting. You find yourself observing them, gently pushing their buttons as you eagerly wait for what they are going to do next. Of course, this applies just as much to you yourself. You see your own past in a very different light, and Akrasia remains difficult to escape. But at least now you know what you're doing wrong.
Anyway, you've discovered the pleasures of socializing, and you've even acquired an "edge" over those who relied on intuition ever since they were young. What I want us to discuss here is how to reach not just some "proficiency" in social navigation, but actual social excellence. We've collected research on how to be happy, on how to confront organizational problems, etc. I think it would be nice if we also collected data on how to be polite. How to make one's company agreeable and interesting. How to make oneself elegant and glamorous. How to get people to do what you want, and then thank you for it.
Some slight bits of this are approached by PUA methods, but those are very specific in goal and scope, and require a set of skills that can be far from adequate in other contexts (that, and flirting with any and everybody all the time is just creepy and makes you look like a supervillain).
Of course, at its core, social grace is nothing but "intelligent application of the Golden Rule". So, with insight and purpose, everything should be possible... But that's a pretty huge ideaspace, and in day-to-day interaction you often don't have that much time to figure our what to do. Of course, there's rote behavior, protocol, that allows you to free brainspace for what's actually important, but too much of that and it can become blatant.
So... anyone know any actual research on the subject? We can also use some armchair philosophy, it's not like we eschew creative individual thinking here, but some backed-by-evidence stuff is very nice to have.