What does "social skills" mean to you?

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I think this is one side of the coin, and it will help people on the spectrum with social difficulties to help motivate them to make the effort in trying to learn perhaps coping social reading skills. I also agree on the logical part, making people stubborn to want to learn. I was hoping my analogy would help.

I realize the purpose of small talk and all, I guess I just prefer to do it differently because of my processing method. The way I like to do it is through non-verbal mimicry, because words are meaningful to me and I take every word seriously. So, I can't handle when people use words with a removed, emotional meaning. To me, emotions are meant to be conveyed non-verbally, because if people attempt to do both, it becomes sensory bombardment and I find emotions too complex to be put in words. That's why I become "hyper-logical" in verbal conversations, because I use words to convey facts only.

Small talk does not make me feel comfortable; in fact, it makes me feel very anxious. The only way that I can feel comfortable with someone is by engaging in simple mimicry, either with non-verbals or simple verbal phrases that I do not need to formulate my own responses to and that are impersonal. Alternatively, this can be achieved through an exchange of facts that are tangible and concrete, like "what's your age" or "what are your hobbies". I find emotion-level questions threatening because I don't verbalize my emotions, so when someone asks me a question upon meeting me, I automatically retreat because it's just too much. I also find directness from the other party comforting, with the reverse often very discomforting.

P.S. I actually thought of a way to answer "how are you" in a way that I'm comfortable with. 1-10 scales have always made feelings concrete and much easier to understand for me, so next time someone asks me that, I think I will say "on a scale of 1-10, maybe around X". If people really want to know, that is. Labels like "fine" are vague and don't work well for me, because I overthink them.

Nearly like me i'm totally opposed to it as i have a big disdain for all is about the NT or society

When someone waves hello at you, does it feel intolerable to wave hello back? Small talk is just the same. If someone asks how are you, just say, fine, how are you. If the nonsense small talk keeps going, all you have to do is change the subject to something that's interesting.

The reason for small talk is that is warms people up so that they feel comfortable to start interacting with each other. It gives them time to settle in and not immediately have to think of meaningful things to say and do. It's kind and considerate to go along with it for a few moments. But you don't have to go along with it for a very long time and make yourself feel bored and uncomfortable. Just change the subject after a few warming up small talk words. YOU are present in the conversation as well, and you don't have to let the NT dominate the conversation. YOU are just as valid. Try to make it an equal give and take between your interests and comforts and theirs.

Too many different things as there's so many different social situations with different skills required for each. There are some people who tell me my social skills are good, some who say it's reasonable apart from occasional cases of awkwardness, and some who say it's no good. This is because there's so many variables involved - the context in which they see me, how long they've known me, their first impression of me, how comfortable I am with them (if I'm not I'm going to be withdrawn from them giving a bad impression) etc.

Politeness skills is just a small part of social skills. Things like knowing your place in the pecking order, using that place cleverly to get the most of your situation, knowing what works with a person and what doesn't work with that specific person, what makes them tick, how to get your way with a specific human, how to play power games, when and how to lie to get on your target potential friend's good side, etc. etc. are much more crucial for social success than politeness. In fact, the more successful you are socially, the less you need to be polite. It's so sad to see that most aspies equate social skills with being "nice" and "polite". No one ever succeeded socially as a nice, polite robot. Jesus, who had so many followers, not to mention friends, was neither nice nor polite. Doesn't matter what your religious beliefs, it's well-known that he didn't waste time in smalltalk and niceties.

People don't always choose you as a friend for your niceness and/or politeness. Think of the people you know who have a lot of friends - are they the nicest people you've met? Likely not. Social skills is about being socially clever, not compliantly "nice". Very often people want friends who are socially clever, rather than pleasant.

It seems to me that people who have 'charm' seem to get ahead in life and can get away with just about anything.