I've been trying to get my head around social interactions for the last three years quite intently. School was never easy, relationships furtive and few and work a whole different issue.

On the upside you can teach yourself from scratch and become an actor in your own space.

1. ASD is not the only problem: It is just a set of suboptimal traits that may give a minor disadvantage in earlier life. This can then lead to difficulty in social interactions because NT's tend to spend more time talking, texting, interacting, hugging etc etc. It is that the lack of practise and positive feedback compounds problems that may have started small. The lack of good social feedback in earlier life can aggregate to larger problems and insecurities further down the line. This is for anyone whether Aspie or not.

2. Being nice isn't nice: Due to anxieties above we can see niceness as being a fair way of approaching a situation. More of the time is can be a passive set of behaviours; if you've ever wondered why you may be at the bottom, or out of social circles think about what your behaviour allows others to do to you.

3. Think of results: For instance, an employer posts an advert for a job as a clerk/janitor/sales assistant. They want someone who fits the bill, is pleasant to work with and little hassle. They want their boxes ticked. In work tick the required boxes, the same goes for conversation.

Conversational tick boxes include:

Formalities of 'Hey how are you',
Remembering something about the last time you met the person,
Asking about how the other persons friends/family/pets are doing,
Making observation based conversational leads,
Asking open questions,
Listening,
Use of humour if appropriate,
Not getting caught in an argument over 'trifles',
If the other person seems to mentally wander off stop talking immediately and ask something about what they were previously talking about,
Understanding that factual validity of conversation counts for little in most contexts and that flow and emotion are a better way of getting the results you want

4. If above skills are not available, get them: Think of it as one big science experiment, try talking to people in different ways and make notes of what works and what does not. Revise and internalise the contexts of what you said and why it worked. If you make 200 conversations over say 3 months you will have 200 opportunities to learn what works. People to talk to can be found anywhere, pretend to be a tourist asking for directions, say you are conducting an experiment, anything as long as it seems like a plausible reason (helps the other person feel at ease). Ever noticed how easily people become friends just by spending time together for a reason?

Recognise that these are things you can teach yourself to slightly alter your traits to be more socially acceptable. Moving round a circle of unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence

5. Seemingly logical arguments can sometimes cover actual emotions. Analyse what makes you want to say or do something rather than just not giving a damn. If you want to put someone else down for dressing or acting a certain way, what does it say about yourself first? Can include feelings of inadequacy, jealousy, anxiety.

6. Getting it wrong is the best way of learning: Go out and make some big f-ups, remember them and laugh about the time you took someone on a date and forgot to shower/ scared the other person/ got lost/ the conversation died. Call it an exercise just like in a school text book, you'd never learn anything without doing the exercises in a book nor would you in social settings.

7. It will never be perfect. No life is perfect, fix only the very worst traits and nothing else, life is too short. Build your positive traits to be the absolute best you can be. Your positive traits build confidence which will bring almost everything else up by default.

8. Learning to interact is stressful, very stressful. Have some old habits and routines kept there for when you need a break. Take a 3 minute 'rest break' during social situations to get your head around what's happening.

9. People like you more than you think. We see everything through an emotional lens and this can be a polarized lens for ASD people. Act like your situation is positive and more times than not you will reach a positive outcome. (this is also why factual content of conversations means little)

10. The internet is a good place to hang out, but the real world is better. Adopt a second personality if required to test your theories on how people interact and use it to test test test until you can bring those good habits back to your real self.

I suppose this is a bit slanted, but I'd like to know how you all feel about the above?

To me the above looks like a good exposition of how to win friends, whether
or not you influence people.  Giving them an impression of casually enjoyed
good education also helps boost the self-concept you will project.  This seems
best done by some of the subtle conversational traits, e.g. making sure
to not split infinitives more than once in a while and the like, rather than by
displaying ostentatious grandiloquence as in the preceding 3 words.
So how is this working out, say, in the three examples at the beginning and
similar?
Gave up years ago,
kullervo  
  

How useful is conversation practice without feedback?

Disclosure: Removed four posts from this thread.

The issue is that people should not be automatically expected to interact socially to the same extent as everyone else. The OP here is just supporting Neurotypical chauvinism. The whole point of the ND movement is that people are accepted for who they are, not that their acceptance should be dependent on them pretending to be comeone else.

^ This.  

Where's the "like" button?

Pretending to be NT is exhausting and causes anxiety/depression in some.  I can only speak for myself of course, but I am a happier person when I can just be myself.  When I have to "play" NT, I am a mess. What kind of friend would wish that on me? None that I'd be interested in winning over.