useful website on social skills

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Damn, this site is excellent. Unlike other sites which state the obvious and don't go more into depth, this site actually does that. The website also takes AS into account, which is a bonus since it tells the reader that the tips will be broken down further for us.

Thanks for posting the link to this site man. I swear I was flipping through pages in Google for the longest time and couldn't find quality material like this.

This guy has some good advice, but something about him rubs me the wrong way.

His attitude can at times seem very condescending. While he's absolutely right about needing to let go of preconceived notions about yourself and other people, being friendly and accessible, and most of all, just getting yourself out there, he also seems to have changed a lot of his appearance and personality for the sake of "fitting in". He strikes me as a college kid who couldn't stand not fitting in and went on a radical series of changes, to the point where he gave up his identity to be "normal". In the few articles I've read so far I've found out:

- He grew out his hair and got contacts. That's fine if he wanted to do this, but I like the way I look...even if it is a little nerdy.
- He suggests you "drink more" and act irresponsibly if you aren't having fun. I drink but this is not good advice to give anyone.
- He strongly suggests that introverted people have superiority complexes that they need to get over.
- In order to seem less weird, you shouldn't get overly involved in an activity you really enjoy because other people will see it as "out there". His very disturbing quote on weirdness:

So how do you get over your weirdness? I don't know if you can completely. I do know you can take a lot of the edge off by throwing yourself into the 'normal' world and accumulating some 'normal' thoughts and experiences in your head. A big part of being weird and nerdy is that your life bypassed a lot of the stuff regular people have done. So if you go and do it now you can become more like them.

Finally, one thing that helped me was being friends with people who I knew wouldn't tolerate any weirdness from me. Not to say they would be dicks about it, just that it's not something they'd prefer in their mates. With some friends you can act strange and they'll put up with it, or even be amused by your antics at times, other people aren't so into that kind of thing and will act accordingly. Knowing that forces you to behave yourself.

Maybe I'm just being defensive, but I was really hoping that a help site from a guy who's been there could be a little less condescending. To me he just sounds like he became one of the people that I can't stand to be around.

I like how he mention's drinking and doing drugs, also on the dancing page, I can't really dance unless I’m smashed, ok I still can't dance then, but I don't care and I do, when I'm sober, I generally don't lol. To be honest though, it is kind of true. I have lots of friends in their 30's who grew up through there late teens, 20's in the early 90's when the dance scene really kicked off here in England, they where out all the time, doing E's and so forth, they have lot's of great memories, and lack of memories lol. I've met loads of great friends in this scene, the great drunken meeting random people is always a laugh, and that let's get smashed and at the end of the night, random people giving you massage’s, the joys a drugs

I think it's an important subject he hits apon there, it's a nice website, agreed sometimes condesending, but useful al the samel