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Comment by reedf1 | Hacker News Reader

hey not to give unsolicited advice but to share my experience - it took me a long time to realize that I'm not anti-social, but just anti-party and anti-work social. I flourish in most other spaces - especially hobby spaces.

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I've been scraping my way through life the last few years and I recently started doing improv again.

God, it's such a breath of fresh air. I can be silly and goofy and have fun again.

I know it's not for everyone but the point is it may help to find your scene. If you actually enjoy being there, people will enjoy being with you.

yeah the thing is I'm good talking to dudes, like cars this guy shows me his Porsche/I sit in it, has laser jammers built in, crazy. Like yeah when you're both into something you just connect

my problem with women is I only interact with them when I'm physically interested in them otherwise I leave them alone so yeah I'm on edge like "I gotta land her" kind of thing, which I'm not saying is good, as proof of this I haven't been in a relationship with a girl for 12 years, not that I haven't had the opportunity but I'm also picky which, I need to be impressive myself to match it but yeah

Sounds like you understand the problem. My read is that you have a likeable frenetic personality; it won't be for everyone but some people will be really attracted to it, best not to question it and just be yourself.

Talking to random people about anything, and talking to girls, and talking to girls romantically are all separate skills from talking to someone about an interest. I am going to assume you're a smart, educated guy with niche interests. So even if someone comes up and talks about something you don't know much about, maybe Biology for example (no clue if this is true), you are probably able to fill in the blanks, find a common interest, connect it with something you've re ad before or whatever. The real difficulty is when you then are talking to people without technical interests or such, do you fake talking about sports? Or whatever.

With girls, be up front, direct, don't shy away. Honestly a lot of the old PUA strategies work really well if you look at it like a skill you're building.

haha I'm not into sports so I definitely don't fake that, just tell people, which is not great because if you look at a lot of online dating profiles a lot of women are into the local sports eg. Broncos or whatever. Same with religion but it's alright, the girl thing isn't a huge problem to me, it only hits me sometimes the FOMO when I'm in public settings. Used to club/bar hop a lot problem is I had a drinking problem (wouldn't stop) so yeah, would be that belligerent person not a great look. I quit drinking so now I rarely see women except at work, I do photography though so I do see some women at the park but that's one of those places not sure if you should engage or let them be like a gym, there to workout kind of thing. I have other problems to deal with though like getting out of being poor for personal peace of mind.

> Talking to random people about anything, and talking to girls, and talking to girls romantically are all separate skills from talking to someone about an interest

This is entirely contradicted by my experiences. Broad generalizations and generalizations about broads are usually wrong.

Very Groucho Marx.

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