Hi Jonah!

Here is what weirds me out here a bit. I always had poor social skills. I also always disliked people. I tend to assume if you would like people (of course I like some people but the point is is what the default baseline is: and that is annoyance), you would need not skils as such because if you like whoever you talk to and it is clearly visible, what other problems could you have? People like to be liked.

It is probably not this simple, yet, I wonder how much truth is in this.

I never understood the stereotype that "nerds have poor social skills". My experience was we nerds were fucking angry at other people for them being popular, pretty and whatnot and us not so it was not just a skill thing. It is not that we did not know how to please people, but more like we had no intention to at all. And it is fairly obvious really, this is why every second nerd I knew wore Cannibal Corpse type death metal t-shirts, to signal anger, or "users are idiots" types of t-shirts from thinkgeek.com and so on.

How much of it is skills really and how much is really disliking? For example I don't think I had any social skils problems with people I liked but on the other hand, maybe they just tolerated it because they liked me too. Because if they did not like me and did not humor me probably I started disliking them. Heh.

Is it possible that skills are meant to bridge over disliking? How can a conversation where you like the other go wrong?