Why are you so prickly?
Your life would be 10x easier, happier, better vibed, if you had manners, and you would find it trivial and *fun* to learn if you stopped trying to find excuses for why you can’t or don’t need to learn them.
manners, its subset, politeness, and their superset, communications skills, aren’t a conspiracy invented by trads for public schooling.
They’re an instant nonverbal way to establish that you:
a) have basic control over your impulses
b) think the other person worthy of respect, personhood & therefore boundaries
And when you break that social contract by mistake and say or do something inappropriate, even if you don’t fully agree that it is at first till it’s better explained to you, it nevertheless also presents an opportunity to:
a) apologize/enquire and mean it, signaling self-awareness
b) nonverbally re-iterate that you care about the safety of the other person’s boundaries
c) move on quickly & matter of factly, and do that part of convo better or avoid it the next time (demonstrating effort and concern)
d) Escalate to conflict without escalating to personal attacks, demonstrating maturity in a real and low-stakes way (and you don’t really have to escalate in the vast majority of cases)
There was a time when manners were a performative signal for elites. that doesn’t make it bad– because its a great thing now that everyone can have it. If you think baggage still exists, the solution is still that you should distill the best of it and co-opt it for everyone.
You don’t need to go to any special place or adopt some woo technique to learn/transcend them. Even if you’re on the autistic spectrum, and you’re on here, on the internet, discussing things, then you have the faculty to learn them just as you learned the rules of engagement of this place.
Lots of people here and even IRL trying to learn small talk and philosophizing on/shitting on the wisdom of normies, for example. you dont need to learn small talk. what you need to learn from (good) normies is manners, because (good) small talk is an extension of it.
Until you get that right you will continue to be frustrated about why normies never learn from you the unique, productive things you do with knowledge and other types of conversation and cooperation and conflict management that they don’t know how to.
And most importantly, you will continue to attract, engage with and valorize chronically disagreeable people, till your life is full of prickles to the point all you secretly crave is goo and you’re ashamed of how much softness is inside you.
to start with: in every encounter, try to improve your understanding of what topics, insecurities and preferences are likely to be within people’s boundaries, and then don’t violate it unless explicitly permitted. expect the same of them. this is not about being a doormat.
Your escalating options when feeling provoked:
a) ignore till the next instance
b) redirect/reframe (“yes, and..”)
c) attempt to change topic
d) disengage with a rote statement (“sorry, I don’t think we’re understanding each other” “agree to disagree”) & actually walk away
e) face the conflict head on, by targeting the issue as it affects you, and not the person, and not the issue as a whole philosophically (you are drawing a boundary, not changing the world)
No one actually expects you to be amazing at handling prickly conversations. you’re A+ to most people if you are sensitive to what they consider personal, enquire/apologize about mistakes & know how to back off/disengage. “Creepiness” is not being able to do those things.
And one of the most common forms of assholery is insisting/signaling that you have a reason for purposely violating those basic expectations when most people cannot see a valid point in your reasons and the only people who can are other assholes.
The absolute (and optional!) peak of manners is surprisingly easy to reach in most cultures, which is why so many manipulative folk can do it too (for a while): voluntary helpfulness and curiosity, minus things you’ve learned should not be helped with by you or asked about.