Review: The Social Skills Guidebook

On making friends

I read the website Succeed Socially when I was a young adult, and I attribute to it many of the social skills I (allegedly) possess.¹ I was pleased to discover that the author, Chris MacLeod, has written a book, The Social Skills Guidebook, which summarizes and updates his advice. Having read The Social Skills Guidebook, I recommend it highly to all people who feel lost in social situations, regularly find themselves going “…oh, that’s what so-and-so meant?”, or have difficulty making friends.

The Social Skills Guidebook mostly does not cover advanced skills like flirting, networking, or maintaining emotionally intimate relationships. It focuses on the basics: finding friends; maintaining conversations; overcoming anxiety; avoiding accidental offense. Unlike every other social skills book ever written, it describes what is actually true, rather than what the author thinks is morally good, what the author thinks is high-status, what would make the reader convenient for people like the author, or what makes the author feel like a cool cynical edgelord who isn’t beholden to PC orthodoxy. Its descriptions are clear and unambiguous enough for an autistic reader, without oversimplifying social dynamics to the point of uselessness.

In this post I will summarize a few of the insights given in The Social Skills Guidebook. But I really do recommend buying and reading the actual book, which has far more detail than I can put into a single review.

Attitudes About Socializing

You don’t have to have an active social life. Many people live long, happy lives where they never get invited to parties, only really talk to a few close friends or their spouse outside of work, or even spend all their free time alone doing solitary hobbies. You probably underestimate how common this is, because extroverts are all over the place, and people who don’t talk to other people much are invisible. You should check that your experience is, in fact, “happier alone” and not "super anxious about socializing", "convinced no one will like you”, or "bitter about high school.” But if it is, it’s fine! Be free!

Being friendless doesn’t mean you’re fundamentally annoying or unlikeable. It’s very likely that you just haven’t found your people. Even if you are making social mistakes, many of them are fixable. Most people go through periods of friendlessness now and then: for example, after a move. Most people went through a period where they were awkward and didn’t know how socializing worked, even if many of them got through it younger than you did. The biggest factor making you a lost cause is that you believe you are. If you think you can improve, you will probably be able to.

If you want better social skills, you will have to practice. Reading books about social skills alone in your room will not improve your social skills. It’s not pathetic, uncool, or desperate to deliberately practice social skills or to put effort into finding friends. And it’s okay to make social mistakes in the course of practicing. If you don’t, you’ll never get better.

You don’t have to be noticeably good at social skills to have friends. Many shy, awkward, rude, boring, unfunny people have friends. If you have below-average social skills, you’re not going to be the guy that is friends with everyone at every party and if there’s somehow an exception he can fix it in ten minutes, fifteen minutes tops. But you can have people to hang out with on Friday nights, a shoulder to cry on when something goes wrong, maybe a romantic partner. Since most people with below-average social skills don’t want to be the most popular person in their social groups, their likely level of success is actually fine.

Once you’ve gotten over the biggest hurdles—having passable personal hygiene, not accidentally insulting people, ever initiating conversations and hangouts—your social strengths can compensate for your social weaknesses. A lot of people will be friends with you if you sometimes go on too much about your favorite topic, if you’re genuinely interested in what other people have to say. A lot of people will shrug off how quiet you are, if when you say something you’re often really funny.

It’s okay to deliberately choose to have “worse” social skills. The average person might like you more if you put more effort into fashion, learn more about popular topics, make fewer edgy jokes, and tell little white lies when they’re socially expected. You will probably have more friends if you go out more often. But many people value their sloppy dressing, lack of interest in reality shows, sense of humor, honesty, and reclusiveness. This is a tradeoff to make thoughtfully, not something with a right answer.

Socially anxious people tend to assume that when social things go wrong, it's their fault, and when social things go well, it's a weird fluke. Everyone else has a sort of benign delusion that when social things go well, it's their fault, and when social things go badly, the other person was busy or something. Adopting this delusion is good for you.

It is often true that when social things go badly, it’s not your fault. If someone is responding to everything you say with monosyllables, sometimes it’s not that you’re boring—it’s that they’re as anxious as you are. If someone doesn’t want to hang out with you, sometimes it’s not that you’re unlikeable—it’s that they have a lot of things going on. If someone responds badly to something you said, sometimes it’s not that you said something rude or insulting—it’s that you stepped on a trigger of theirs and lashed out.

You can never be 100% sure that you aren’t annoying or bothering people. It’s okay to run a risk of bothering people. A few people being a little bit annoyed sometimes is a reasonable price to pay for you not to be lonely. Don’t deliberately do things that you know upset people, but don’t worry about reading into the subtext in every interaction.

Other people cannot tell that you don’t have friends. Even if they did, they probably wouldn’t care or would be sympathetic. Other people are usually much kinder than your projection of your own self-hatred is. Similarly, most people aren’t judging you for being nervous in social situations; either they don’t notice, or they’re worried and they want to make you feel comfortable.

Many people think that they hate everyone and there isn’t anyone that is worth spending time with. It’s true that a lot of gender-non-conforming, neurodivergent, or just weird people have trouble making friends with normies. But often people who don’t have friends have gathered their idea of what people are like by watching reality TV or reading stupid Tweets. Since this is a horribly filtered sample, people are probably nicer than you think they are.

The most important thing is to find people who are like you. They do exist, and it is possible to find them. But it can also help to reexamine your dismissal of normies—especially since casual friendships with normies can help you meet people you really connect with. For example, any of these things could be going on with someone you dismiss as “shallow”:

• They like intellectual hobbies and getting drunk and doing dumb shit at parties.

• They have a lot of deep thoughts that they don’t bring up because they’re worried everyone will be bored by them.

• Their hobbies (like sports, weightlifting, fashion, or romance novels) have a lot of layers that you aren’t aware of, because you assumed that there was nothing there.

• They aren’t very intellectually inclined, but they’re kind or generous or have other good traits.

• They have an accent or fashion sense you associate with being “shallow” and you’re the one judging people based on outward appearances.

• They have a rich inner life that you happen to not be aware of because you are not telepathic.

It’s often wise to give people a chance. Many people are more interesting than you think they are.

On Being Nice

You may have been called “nice” in a bad sense. This can be confusing. Isn’t being nice a good thing?

Not always! “Nice” is a very vague word which means a lot of different things, but several of them are bad.

First, “nice” can mean something like “this person hasn’t done anything wrong, but I can’t think of anything more positive to say about them than ‘they haven’t done anything wrong.’” Usually, a person who calls you “nice” in this sense means “you seem like a fine person but you don’t have the traits I want in a friend.” However, if this sense of “nice” is used to describe you a lot, you’re probably too bland and need to show more of your personality in interactions.

Second, “nice” can mean that you come off as innocent, naive, or a bit of a goody-two-shoes. Many people do small transgressive things like swearing, telling dirty or offensive jokes, drinking, smoking, having tattoos, having casual sex, or breaking minor rules. Most people want to spend time with people who are about as “bad” as they are: people who are much less “bad” can make them feel judged. You shouldn’t go against your moral values or do things that make you feel uncomfortable. But if you notice that you’re consistently less “bad” than the people you want to be friends with, you can figure out how to show that you’re okay with their level of “bad”ness. For example, even if you want to stay a virgin for now, you might want to read a few books about sex so you can participate in conversations about it in an informed way. If you don’t like getting drunk and therefore don’t drink at all, maybe you can nurse a single beer all night.

Third, “nice” can mean that you are a people pleaser. Many people try to be liked by doing lots of favors that no one asked for, refusing to say “no”, or agreeing with everything someone else says. This does not work. Most people value other traits in a friend more than constantly agreeing with them or doing them lots of favors, like having similar interests and values. You come off as insecure and sycophantic—not a desirable trait in a friend. It often makes people feel manipulated: like you’re setting up an exchange that they don’t want to participate in, but can’t actually say no to because you’re being nice and it would be ungrateful.

Making Friends

There are four steps to making friends:

1. Find potential friends.

2. Make plans to hang out.

3. Take the friendships to a deeper level.

4. Repeat until you have a sufficient number of friends.

Finding Friends

Your life may already include a number of potential friends, such as coworkers, classmates, relatives, friendly acquaintances, people you’ve lost touch with, and people who expressed interest in friendship with you but whom you never took up on it. If not, you will have to Go Out And Talk To Strangers. (I’m very sorry.)

A lot of places where you meet people aren't great for, uh, meeting people. Ideally, a place where you meet people:

• Filters for people you’d like to be friends with (e.g. an art class if you like art).

• Gives people a reason to talk to each other.

• Includes both regulars that you can get to know in a casual way and a steady supply of new people.

However, with a little creativity, you can cause a lot of places to have those traits. For example, maybe you can come early to art class and talk to the other people who are early.

Next, you’ll have to get to know your potential friends. Most statements, especially early in a conversation, include a number of “jumping-off points.” For example, if someone says “this weekend, I read a book about Algernon Swinburne”, there are three jumping-off points, which I have bolded. You can respond with:

• “Oh, cool, this weekend I went to a concert.” (weekend)

• “That’s interesting! I’m reading a biography of Stan Lee.” (book)

• “What did you like about the book?” (book)

• “Who is Algernon Swinburne?” (Algernon Swinburne)

• “Oh! I love Swinburne! My favorite poem of his is The Garden of Prosperine” (Algernon Swinburne)

When making small talk, try to make statements with a lot of jumping-off points in them. When you notice a jumping-off point that might lead to something you’re interested in, ask about it. In that way, you can direct the conversation to topics of mutual interest.

When asking questions, it is best to use open questions, which take at least a sentence to answer, and not closed questions, which can be answered with a single word (especially “yes” and “no”). “No” does not have a jumping-off point in it, so closed questions tend to produce the following interaction:

You: Do you like the teacher?
Them: Yes.
You and them: [stare at each other like dead fish]

Fortunately, many closed questions can be easily transformed into open questions. For example:

• “Do you like X?” becomes “what do you think of X?”

• “Did you have fun doing X?” becomes “what was the highlight of X?”

• “What’s your major?” becomes (advanced move) “what’s your major? huh, why did you pick that?”

Making Plans

Making plans is a POWERFUL skill, one of the most powerful social skills, because it put you in control of your own social destiny. When making plans with new friends, always include a solid suggestion of an activity: “let’s hang out sometime” tends to peter out when you don’t know someone well. A good script is “what are you up to [date]? do you want to [activity] at [time]?" or "do you want to [activity] on [general time you are available] sometime soon?" Always make sure not to pressure people. Ideally, you want to have the attitude "it's cool if you come but if not that's cool too.”

Don’t feel like your activity has to be creative: most people do the same handful of things with their friends. The easiest thing to do is to invite people to activities you wanted to do anyway: a concert, a hike, a movie, going to the gym, playing video games. You can also always invite people out to grab a bite to eat. Be sure to choose an activity that is convenient for the person you’re with and within their likely budget. If you’re worried that you won’t click, invite them to an activity-focused hangout, so you’ll have something to do when conversation stalls.

People turn you down for a lot of reasons other than not liking you. For example, they might already have plans, want a quiet night in, not like the activity, think the activity is too far away or too expensive, or even be insecure themselves. You may invite people to hang out up to three times, four if the invitations are spaced a couple of months apart. If they continue to say “no” and haven’t made plans to hang out with you, then they probably don’t want to be friends with you.

If you're lonely, do your best to accept every invitation that comes your way, even if it's inconvenient or the person is not your favorite in the world. If you don't come along to other people's plans, they'll assume you don't want to spend time with them. The person you spend time with might turn out to be surprisingly cool, or they might introduce you to someone you click with better.

Once you have friends, you can ask in the group chat on Thursdays “hey, does anyone have plans for the weekend?” or message your friends with “up to anything cool this weekend?” It is completely fine, normal, and socially acceptable to ping people for plans.

Deepening Friendships

Deepening friendships occurs naturally as you spend more time together. Continue to make plans to hang out together. If you’ve normally hung out in groups, make plans to hang out one-on-one.

In between hangouts, let your new friend know you’re thinking of them. Text or DM them an occasional life update or a link that reminded you of them. Many people are just not Texting People, so don’t feel rejected if your friend doesn’t text much. Try to text them about as often as they text you.

As your friendship deepens, you and your friend will open up and disclose more and more private things. If a person discloses something private about themself, the social expectation is that you will, when it naturally comes up in conversation, disclose something equally private. For example, if they talk about being stressed their last year of college, you might disclose that you were stressed in your first real-world job. If you don't open up, the person will feel somewhat rejected—which is all right if you actually want the relationship to be surface-level, but bad if you want to be friends. Conversely, if you open up about all your deepest issues right away, people will assume you are needy, draining, and bad at boundaries.

A lot of people feel like if they mention their flaws to other people then those people will judge them and not want to be their friends. That’s not how it works. Admitting to having flaws makes you seem like a normal human, while acting like you have no flaws makes you seem unrelatable or just really cagey. If you act calm and self-assured about your flaws, most people will not treat them as horrible shameful embarrassing things that they hate you for—and you definitely wouldn’t want a person who would treat you like that as your friend in the first place.

It is normal to feel anxious and insecure early in a friendship, and it doesn’t mean that you won’t become friends.

Most of the time, when people don’t want a deeper friendship with you, it’s not because of anything you’ve done wrong: maybe they already have enough friends, maybe they’re busy, maybe they already have a friend that fills the same role in their life you would, or maybe you’re just not compatible. You can continue to hang out occasionally, and maybe they’ll introduce you to someone you mesh with better.

The Social Skills Guidebook: Manage Shyness, Improve Your Conversations, and Make Friends, Without Giving Up Who You Are, by Chris MacLeod. Published 2016. 364 pages. $10.

1. All continued faux pas and accidental insults are my own.