killerBunny wrote:
Be yourself. You aren’t fooling anyone. Everyone will think you are strange. If they aren’t ok with that , then don’t set i ourself up for more pain.
Pick up artists are dipshit as*holes tHat spend more time talking game than making connections.
Don’t have expectations
Things will be harder for you
You are essentially asking about gaming society. You could take daily acting classes to be someone else. That’s a lot of energy for someone that won’t accept you
"Being yourself" is very often the problem, especially if you have some major character flaw or unattractive qualities that are decreasing the quality of your results in life. Sometimes, the answer is "identify those aspects of yourself which are causing you to not get what you want and modify them." That requires more detailed information and action steps than "be yourself" alone provides. If "be yourself" were sufficient advice, then nobody would ever as the question "why is this not working for me and why do other people seem to just get it when I don't?" The fact this this forum topic exists is proof that, for at least one person, "being yourself" is not enough right now.
If you are autistic, then pretty much everyone already thinks you are strange by default because, statistically, you are. That is neither a good nor bad thing. It is just a reality that is not going away so we might as well own it and try to figure out a way to turn it into an advantage or at least make it less of a weakness.
You need to talk to make connections. That does not mean pickup lines. It means you need to learn and hone conversation skills (something which I and many others did not do naturally for whatever reason). In this realm, intentional study and practice of routines, openers, and conversational patterns can go a long way in the beginning toward getting you to a place where you are practiced enough to wing it without rehearsing things beforehand.
Not having expectation at all is also unhealthy. Everyone should have and enforce some reasonable expectations, standards, and boundaries such as "I will not accept a person who cheats on me," "I will not accept a person a person who completely lets themselves go and stops taking care of their health immediately after I have declared commitment for them," "I will not accept a person who derides my religion when my religion is very important to me," "I will not accept a person who mocks and demeans me in front of other people," etc.
The goal of learning social skills or PUA skills (which could be called a very specific sub-category of social skills) is not to become "someone else" in the sense that you are putting on an act forever but to become someone else in the sense that you internalize all of the positive things you have learned to the point that they become instinctive and you maximize your positive qualities to such a degree that you can barely even recognize yourself in the mirror. Essentially, the goal is self-improvement and becoming the most maximized version of yourself that you can be by uncovering and increasing your positive qualities which were stagnant and buried beneath all the other refuse and detritus that you just accepted as "part of who you are." You never stop being yourself. You just become a much better version of yourself.
It's a similar mentality behind joining the military. "Be all you can be," "accelerate your life," etc.