Unwritten rules of socializing...would you read a book on it

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If you walked into your local bookstore and noticed a book solely about the nuances/unwritten rules of social interaction (not obvious stuff like most books on socializing) would you buy it?

How could there be a book on unwritten rules of socialising? Would it be an audiobook?

I'm sorry, yes, I'd consider buying that book if it was at a reasonable price and seemed like it would be helpful.

I've bought books about body language before in an effort to demystify the stuff before (it didn't help too much unfortunately).

Yes, I would if it seemed like it had some good ideas.

However, even a really good social rule only works, say, two-thirds of the time and doesn't work one-third of the time (I have to keep reminding myself that we humans---Aspie, normal, different in different ways---all of us, are so complicated that nothing works all the time! And that is okay. You take a medium step feel-and-texture, see how it goes, and take it from there.)

clever :p

and no i dont think i would buy the book at the moment, maybe if i was in a bit of a funk about not understanding most people. to be honest though i doubt i'd be able to remember what it said in the book enough to use it :/

I did buy a book with almost exactly that title and I read it. I must not be ready yet to assimilate it because I have no recollection of what I read, which is highly unusual for me.

Are you asking if anyone has read or purchased Temple Grandin's and Sean Barron's The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships?

If so, then why not just ask that?
If not, then what are you asking?

I believe there's at least one of these books sitting in my room. I'll read it eventually...

I voted yes, but a video would work better, with all kinds of arrows pointing
at all the body language and what it means, when people are socializing as
friends and as dates and in various social interactions.

It would also help to show and point out all the bad signals.
My doctor just started giving me this kind of feedback when I said a few times
I need it, so I become more aware of looking obviously more nervous than
I feel and what wrong nonverbal cues I'm sending.

Also, my voice is not totally monotone but not frequency-modulated enough.
So there should be highlighted um...inflections(?) and what feeling they mean.
Maybe the video should show both typical and exaggerated just to know the typical,
by exaggerated I mean like a lispy and dramatic person... who really stands
out and is almost always assumed to be over the top of the kinsey scale.
Just to be sure we can see and hear it.

No, because all such books seem to be written for NTs trying to get promotions or mates.

They assume a basic level of functioning that I do not have, and a purpose that does not match mine.

I have read such articles, at least, and that is my impression. Now, if you tagged that book "By an Aspie author!" I probably would buy it.

Isnt that an oxymoron?

Having experienced both what it means to be an Aspie and to be a Neurotypical, I may one day actually WRITE a book on the topic. I'm both fascinated by the lack of instinct in the Aspie world and the irrational behavior or many Neurotypicals because of their instinct and it would be interesting to have one book that explains the behavior of both worlds to those who belong to the other world.

Now, this fascinates me! If you want to share a little bit about having experience with both, I'd be very interested.

Check out the following two threads :
- A possible cure for Asperger's?!?
- Why Aspies and Neurotypicals do the things they do

If you have any further questions, it would be best to ask them in either of these threads not to let this topic spread all across the forum. I don't think the moderators would like that

I think that's more of a left-brain, step-by-step logic. But for social activity, it is often an interesting mix of left-brain logical and right-brain pattern recognition, but heavier on the right-brain side.

And allow me to lay a little zen on you: 'Allow medium mistakes to remain medium mistakes.' That is, you do not need to go overboard correcting a mistake or over-apologizing for it, in fact, that can be awkward.

In social interactions, sometimes a mistake is actually a good thing in that both you and the other person get information, and also the mistake adds texture in a way I don't fully understand.

Slight problem with book- rules do not preexist social interaction they are recreated through social interaction. Will give critical paths to appropriate responses, not rules themselves, unless you actually break behavior, consciousness down into set of formula. If you can do that would not bother writing book about how to interact because conditions for social interaction might so radically changed once your formula applied- human race will have significantly evolved.

Book like Eats Shoots And Leaves, for social interaction would be interesting, but human behavior is more variable than language and doesn't necessarily follow rules when there is nothing to enforce them nor any collective goal to hold them together.

We're not all out to give an NT a hard time, you are asking Aspies a genuinely interesting question. More NT's should do this and it would save them a lot of time and energy if they could sythesize our multiple perspectives and find value in what we say. Thank you for asking.

I have read several books about it, too, Claradoon, but it doesn't seem to register.

I think the authors of those books have no idea of the profound inability people that don't see those clues have that don't see those clues. And, in truth, how could they know?

I had a computer instructor that asked us what color the cherry blossoms were outside the window, and we told him. He explained how the colors we were describing to him meant absolutely nothing to him, as he was profoundly colorblind. He intellectually knew there were colors in the world, and colorblindness is a known condition we intellectually knew that he could not see the colors (well, that I) could. But describing how the cherry blossoms were a light pink tapering out to some deep pink on the edges of the blossom was to him, just like someone trying to describe to me what all the colors of gray are when someone's facial expression lifts an eyebrow while crooking their mouth just so means to the facial expression blind.

Sometimes I think I should have a 'run on sentence alert'.

Merle