A lil context.
I am an introverted aspie with an extroverted charmer of a friend. He does things in social settings that never ceases to amaze me.
So i ask him about it often, but he always answers with, “You just gotta learn the social game.” I’m confused.
Is such a thing actually real?
In: Other
It’s not literally a game. However there are a lot of unspoken rules to social scenarios that often aren’t explicitly taught and many people don’t always realize exist, they’ve just picked them up naturally as kids and teenagers because that’s what neurotypical brains are really good at doing: learning how to properly socialize with other neurotypical brains and what is appropriate when and how to respond to specific situations.
However “game” isn’t the worst analogy in the world because much like games the rules often are arbitrary, depend entirely on the culture that developed them trough years of existing as a society, and often have no express obvious purpose other than to facilitate social communication, avoid friction, and mutually establish context that give the actual conversation meaning beyond what the words themselves have. It’s not literally a game, but knowing them makes your odds of successfully navigating any social scenario much smoother. If you don’t naturally pick up on these rules as you grow up (like is not uncommon if you’re an aspie) then they can get extremely confusing and tiring to keep track of and decipher manually.
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