Thoughts on Socializing as a Skill

[unspeakablehorror]

As someone who's had to do a lot of work developing my social abilities, I have some thoughts about the situation where other people are trying to develop these abilities.  Which is that as much as a lot of social norms may seem arbitrary and pointless, they are neither, but that also doesn't  change the fact that they aren't always *good*.  What they are is *complex*.  How well any given person will be able to handle that complexity depends a lot on their own situation, but for anyone else who has trouble with this, I think it's helpful to think of it like a skill, just like reading or writing or mathematics.  And it's a skill that can be learned, has to be learned to be done properly, in fact, just like any of those other skills. Some people have had more opportunity to learn, and may take to it better than others, but no one is born knowing magically perfect skills at socializing.  And no one ever really becomes perfect at it, either.  I think the most any of us can ever do is just make an effort and do the best we can.