Re:Basic Social Skills Guide
by devjab on Monday August 11, 2025 @08:06AM
(#44863268)
I can obviously only speak from my own experience and my own network, but "self-help" books are generally not very popular around here. Especially not the ones that present themselves as being very light on the philosophical side of things. It's not that you can't sell various form of "coaching" books, but I imagine the market is rather tiny compared to other places. Especially because I imagine people wouldn't be overly interested in the "international" version.
If I were to guess why that is it's because our society is a little different. In Denmark (and other western European countries) part of our general education is what we call "almen dannelse". I haven't been capable of finding an English term for it, but it amounts to social and cultural literacy. I guess you could call it something like renaissance man/woman or polymath, but that wouldn't quite be right, maybe a lighter version of that? Anyway, it leaves most people capable of talking about a broad range of things, it also usually involves a lot of practice that isn't competetive.
On top of this we have another thing called "forenings danmark" which is basically where you participate in things that interest you in the form of tiny NGO's (club?) that are partly funded by the government. Even if you suck at the "almen dannelse" part of it, you're very likely to have been part of a "club" of some sort. I know that America has sports clubs, scouts and so on, but I imagine they work a little different than they do here. Partly because everything here is run by the members of the clubs themselves but also because it's not just the "activity" but also a lot of social events related to it. Basically you can say that there is a very high level of participation, and all of it is social. When I was a child I played water polo in the local sports NGO and I went to "computer club" which was run by some voulanteers at the local youth club. When I was young I'd argue that almost every 8-15 year old boy was part of some form of sports team, usually football (soccer). These days there are a lot more options, especially on the "nerdy" side, with roleplaying clubs that run specialised children events every thursday etc.
It's also much more socially acceptable to suck at small talk here in Scandinavia. To put it plain, we want value in our conversations and nobody really cares to shoot-the-shit. Not that the ability to small talk doesn't make your social life easier, but we don't have a whole lot of the "how are you doing" without expecting an actual answer going on. Because why would we? Chances are that if you're asked how you're doing and you answer "fine", then that won't even be accepted because people asked because they knew you weren't doing fine.
That being said, I think social ability is still a struggle for a lot of people here as it is anywhere. I do think that it is usually more so because of anxity or similar, rather than people never having had any practice. There are a lot of initatives (again usually tiny NGO type things) where neurodiverse people can meet up and be social together.
If I were to guess why that is it's because our society is a little different. In Denmark (and other western European countries) part of our general education is what we call "almen dannelse". I haven't been capable of finding an English term for it, but it amounts to social and cultural literacy. I guess you could call it something like renaissance man/woman or polymath, but that wouldn't quite be right, maybe a lighter version of that? Anyway, it leaves most people capable of talking about a broad range of things, it also usually involves a lot of practice that isn't competetive.
On top of this we have another thing called "forenings danmark" which is basically where you participate in things that interest you in the form of tiny NGO's (club?) that are partly funded by the government. Even if you suck at the "almen dannelse" part of it, you're very likely to have been part of a "club" of some sort. I know that America has sports clubs, scouts and so on, but I imagine they work a little different than they do here. Partly because everything here is run by the members of the clubs themselves but also because it's not just the "activity" but also a lot of social events related to it. Basically you can say that there is a very high level of participation, and all of it is social. When I was a child I played water polo in the local sports NGO and I went to "computer club" which was run by some voulanteers at the local youth club. When I was young I'd argue that almost every 8-15 year old boy was part of some form of sports team, usually football (soccer). These days there are a lot more options, especially on the "nerdy" side, with roleplaying clubs that run specialised children events every thursday etc.
It's also much more socially acceptable to suck at small talk here in Scandinavia. To put it plain, we want value in our conversations and nobody really cares to shoot-the-shit. Not that the ability to small talk doesn't make your social life easier, but we don't have a whole lot of the "how are you doing" without expecting an actual answer going on. Because why would we? Chances are that if you're asked how you're doing and you answer "fine", then that won't even be accepted because people asked because they knew you weren't doing fine.
That being said, I think social ability is still a struggle for a lot of people here as it is anywhere. I do think that it is usually more so because of anxity or similar, rather than people never having had any practice. There are a lot of initatives (again usually tiny NGO type things) where neurodiverse people can meet up and be social together.