Completely unaware of purposeful social networking?

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I didn't know intuitivly and I really dislike it. I understood it at 14 years old, looking at my peers and their interactions.

TheMisfit, I once started writing a novel about a friendship like yours. Your analysis sounds very logical, and reminded me of the unfinished novel. I believe beautiful friendships can start like that, and transform the friends into their best selves. Wishing you all the best. And it's good that you appreciate the fact that he showed you his cards at some point.

Ditto, Wanda. However, my siblings are artists in this networking and befriending for benefits art. They've made a career of it and are hugely admired in their circles for it, with people overlooking all their horrendous inhumanity in favor of this one envied, worshipped trait they both have. And we have the same parents.

I think it happens on the sub-conscious level a lot. The ploy to use people as stepping stones fails if it's obvious that you're doing it. The most successful people I've seen use this tactic are those who are naturally social & frineds with everyone anyway.

If I were to try it, I'd probably be seen as a snake in the grass.

We were taken photos of at a dept. breakfast from work. The moment the photographer said "cheese", this older colleague just grabbed both arms of the loveliest, most intelligent and promising rising star employee at the breakfast table, and now forever you'll see that photo pinned in our dept., which looks like they're intimate friends. Actually, they hardly ever spoke a word to each other, and the grabbed one was taken so by surprise (and so heavy in her pregnancy) that she didn't have time to move off before the camera shot. It was the nastiest thing I ever saw in connections fakeness - yet the photo is there and this woman is capitalizing on it a lot. And that's how she made a career all along.

My ex mother in law once happened to be at a theater where Elizabeth Taylor was, and when Taylor walked down the aisle to go home after the show, my ex mil was waiting and lurking, she ran up to where Taylor was walking, and started walking at the same level and pace, and she had alerted and paid the photographer. That was decades ago, yet she still has the photo of her "walking side by side with her friend Liz Taylor", a huge framed poster in the living room, and for decades she's been venerated by all for being such good friends with who was back then the most famous actress in the world. She only told ME the truth behind the photo, because she knew I wouldn't be impressed by those things anyway.

So I don't agree. Even if you look like a snake in the grass, it's a lot better than doing nothing.

My mother talked about that. I honestly don't give a s**t. I'd rather not conform and NOT fake normalcy and say whatever I want to - disregarding BS social taboos - than suck up and pretend to agree when people say garbage that's accepted because the majority accepts it (See pedophilia as an example). I'd rather get a reputation for being honest to a fault than dress/walk/act in a 'socially acceptable' way. Garbage and fail. /bias

Of course, I don't plan on doing ANYTHIING dealing with Law Enforcement or Government given their role in carrying on and preserving the existing social order.

EDIT: Other than my mother talking about that, one of my professors talked about how in a lot of cases it's 'who you know' more than 'what you know' (at least in the west). Oh, and those people on facebook who friend others to build their resume. And s**t like LinkedIn, etc.

I think it might be connected to not just the economy though, like when things get rough people do start to "flock" and maybe that's why the cliques and the nepotism. Not that it makes it any more acceptable, but I do think there is a kind of tribalism type behaviour going on under the surface, if that makes any sense.

But the reality is that they do get ahead by doing those things. The aisle at the theater is a very narrow space, so my mil had that as an excuse to walk elbow to elbow with Taylor. Taylor never talked to her, never even noticed her, never looked her way, yet this woman made herself a celeb reputation in her circles for that photo. To be said in her defense is that all her life she had been told that she had "eyes like Liz Taylor", and that photo is an actual test (and proof) of that. She had always been curious to know if it was true, that's one of the reasons she wanted that photo to be taken so much, so she could compare.

Hovis wrote: