Against making friends and influencing people
A lot of impressionable talented people are told to learn social skills like reading the room. The problem with all this is that we live in an adaptive system. Too many tips and you start to look smooth, and not in a good way. While you’re honing your social craft, others are honing their social craft defense mechanisms. While you need to read books like How to Win Friends & Influence People, everyone else just needs to observe you enough times to get a read on you.
Some people learn to guard their reputation with everything they have because they believe everyone trusts inductively, but not all people trust like that. Exit scams are a thing. Some black swans (of the Nassim Taleb variety) are people. They’ll be friendly in every interaction with you but will happily throw you to the wolves at the earliest convenience. Our own gut will tell us when this is a possibility. If you feel defensive in the face of criticism, it’s possible you’re under someone’s spell.
It’s tiring to focus so much on appearance. The more you focus on appearance, the deeper you hide your problems, and the less people believe you if you try to get help. And so you could feel like others are gaslighting you, but maybe you’ve so thoroughly disguised yourself that it’s hard for anyone to truly get you. And why would you want them to anyways? If you’re too predictable, you’re liable to being manipulated, and you don’t want that.
Many people assume that what worked in the past will continue to work. It might work, but the world isn’t a static system, and it won’t be made better by becoming rigid. Timeless wisdom isn’t just what your parent’s generation believes, but the surviving wisdom from a thousand years ago.