Rules of good social skills (2025)

These are excellent notes for neurotypical people, particularly those who are extrovert or can mask / fake it without undue cost :)

Addendum rather than correction - neurodivergent and or introvert behaviour may differ - I'm AuDHD and e.g. "body language breaking rapport" doesn't mean I'm no longer interested and neither does "shifting eyes" -- that's my default behaviour which takes extreme amount of unsustainable energy to break for short targeted periods of time -- if my body language are engaged and I'm looking in your eyes, I'm probably not hearing what you're saying as all my CPU cycles are peak multithreading to control my body :).

I think the list is like PMP - read, then evaluate customize and implement portions as feasible for your specific situation.

I can't get the article at the moment, but will comment that not everyone has equal experience or comfort with face-to-face communication, what Stephen Porges calls the "social engagement mechanism". Some people can feel intimidated by the gaze of others.

The foundation of American improv theater came out of socializing games developed by Neva Boyd at Hull House in Chicago and her student Viola Spolin, published in Spolin's book, Improvisation for the Theater. These games rely on attuning to the faces of others and what they say and do. One's spontaneous, untutored reactions are the source of creativity and fun.

I will testify here that the social engagement practices in improv games have done more for me in being able to spontaneously respond and connect with others than decades of (otherwise valuable) therapy and growth practices.

Hi, I'm the author. I'm still using my same webhost from 2001 and this is really the impetus to get new hosting! This is the third time liamrosen.com has made the Hacker News front page (for very different things) and each time my hosting has gone down.

And now the Internet Archive is down, too. (edit: IA is back up!)

Well, here are the rules in tweet form: https://x.com/Liface/status/1947973950065066037

A lot of these ring true for me. Would be good to see a similar list for dealing with people who are that particular breed of casually disrespectful, and are angling for their own gain as is so typical in the workplace. It’s beneficial to strategically break some of these rules when dealing with those people.

Most people just want to get along, so it’s still a valuable list as is.

Gem of a blog for me personally. This is the rare signal amongst the noise for me on HN. Went through a bunch of his other articles and realized his brain and way of thinking works in a similar way as mine but a bit different and further "ahead" in ways I'd like to be, which is supremely useful and entertaining and satisfying.

Rules about social interaction are often too general to be really useful to me, but I found this one insightful:

> If making references that are outside someone’s context, do so only if they signal themselves as a curious person, and make them come from a place of genuine interest in informing, rather than bragging.

This is something I struggle with when talking to new people. How much to lean towards introducing them to things they don't know but may find interesting versus not wanting them to feel like an outsider or dumb by bringing up stuff they don't know.

Paying attention to how they signal their curiosity and sense of safety is a good way to gauge that.

I liked the book "Difficult Conversations" from some smart harvard folks.

expanded my conversational awareness.

(That said, it is hard to do in a heated conversation, so you actually have to practice and have the main ideas of the book committed to memory.)

They mention 'breaking rapport' a few times. I'd really appreciate if someone could explain to an ASD person what that looks like. Genuine question

Thanks to whoever provided the archive link. I guess the server wasn't quite socially extroverted enough for all of HN's connections.

Put them together in a book and sell millions

Many tech folks I work with fall into the trap in #31 and try to lecture people too often. From what I've been told, the "professor" style is a typical ASD trait. Very interesting.

#3 is my hack, i’ve lived all over the us and can always come up with something to relate to people from different regions

For neurodivergent types like me: it helps to frame this more like a game with "points." All of the tips in this list are great, but it can be hard if you treat it more like "rules of order" more than "rules of the game." You can effectively systematize your approach to socialization (the only hard rule is to not be robotic about it—it's okay to laugh and play with people; that's a relatively uncommon experience).

I also make a point to make it 100% about them. Don't worry about being perceived the wrong way, saying the wrong thing, etc. That's part of being human. If you fuck up, you fuck up. Realizing that more or less removed any anxiety I had around talking to people (especially when I'd rather be behind a keyboard).

Edit: people are like spiders; they're more afraid of you than you are of them.

"don't break rapport" is repeated many times and never explained. Might as well say don't squish the vibe.

given that there's no way to establish or break rapport on the internet, does that mean we're all rendered as ASD people here?

https://web.archive.org/web/20260515105039/https://liamrosen... if useful

Very neurotypical coded article. Many of these points are rather harsh and invalid.