This tweet, and the nested tweet within, bring up good points about networking and what the Point Of It All is.

I say this as someone who has been described being "good at networking" and I've also made an informal study of what networking is.

Also I've seen the results of people who are "good at networking" but also end up being users and using that network to insulate themselves.

Do y'all remember Sunil Patel? Really good networker. He talked to the right people, and we'd say he sucked up to them but really he was good at talking to them in a way that felt genuine, and he was also open to introducing folks to each other.

He'd have these shindigs that brought folks together or offer to make introductions, which indebted people lower on the social rung from him to him. He helped other people make friends with people he thought might be of use.

He ignored people he perceived as having lower social status until such a time that he saw their star rise, then he'd be nice to them.

I was in this category of people. It's not an insult to me; I do it to some extent because I only have so much social energy to spread around.

But let's look at the word "network" for a sec: to work the net, which implies an enmeshing of yourself, your participation in a larger group of people, for whatever purpose.

It also means that you are not merely a singular point who happens to know other points. Good networking means that you also help build the connections between other points, other people.

Folks can say "it's about being friends" and "being a good person" which is not untrue! But also not very clear. A good person who keeps their head down and focuses on their work can be useless at networking. They're a good worker! Nothing is wrong with this!!

A NETWORKER on the other hand is great at making friends, by which we mean, great at building a relationship based on shared connections, recognising the inherent value of the other person, and unashamed/unafraid to hype up the other person because of this recognition.

By a relationship I mean that effort in continuing to reach out, building that tenuous connection from "hi stranger we appear to be into X thing" into a larger "hello you are a social good in my life" which can be as shallow as the occasional hi-bye or as deep as daily chats.

The networking comes from being able to remember the various awesome things about the people you know and being able to see the connection between yourselves in order to create opportunities, for collaboration, for cross-promotion, for general enjoyment on a personal level.

So when we say someone is good at networking we generally mean they are very enmeshed in their field. They KNOW people, they RECOGNISE their peers. It is this recognition that people respond to.

If you are socially awkward for whatever reason, it's mostly because you are out of your element and you don't theoretically know what it means to talk to a stranger. Especially if you're in an environment where there appear to be a lot of invisible rules of how to speak.

That's why it's nice to have scripts of things to say about yourself and questions to ask of the other person, and you should have a nap beforehand so you will have the energy to process what the other person is saying and respond to them as part of active listening.

Yes I nap before parties.

I'm also one of those awful people who responds to someone's anecdote with an anecdote of my own because that's sort of how I relate to other people. I gather some people do not like this. And that is okay!!!! Part of the goal is to find people who mesh well with you.

You are, after all, helping to build a net, and you are not the whole net, you are a smol part of it.

That's networking.

(Anyway to pivot back to Sunil for a bit, and other abusers who have done this, he would also harass people in ways that were very subtle, and folks would ignore it, or get sad and confused, because he was Such A Great Guy who has Done Me A Social Good.)

(The metaphor of the net is also very useful because then you can imagine abusers like spiders waiting to eat you. But this is a digression.)

If you are a smol, trying to learn how to network, here is my trick which I learned from another friend: what kind of people would you like to surround yourself with? What kind of opportunities would you like to have? How would you create them for others in your sphere?

What is interesting about this stranger? What would you like to know more about them? What are you willing to share of yourself with them?

That's just making friends.

When you look at the people in your industry that you know, imagine this: if you had to introduce people to each other, what would you say that would establish the connection between them?

I have been introduced like this: "This is Jaymee, she's awesome."

Enthusiastic. Functionally fucking useless to me, because I stood there in this circle of strangers, knowing NOTHING about them, with no way of following up.

Also functionally fucking useless to the other people in the circle because they knew nothing about me, just this ambivalent "awesome". Everyone in the circle was awesome! They were professionals in their respective subfields!

Another friend explained a trick of making introductions to me thus:
Establish who's on the lower rung of the social ladder. You have to say at least three things ABOUT this person that you think will make them interesting to the person on the higher rung.

If you can't do that, then you've basically failed at making a smooth introduction because now everyone has to awkwardly establish the connection further which they may not want to do!! You've expended energy, yours and everyone else's.

Networking is being able to pinpoint "why is this person interesting to me? why would this person be of interest to other people I know? how can a collaboration come about knowing each other? what can I learn from them, and how can I reciprocate?"

Which is also a bedrock of being a good friend. Just, you know, in the professional field, because your good friend can be your confidant and deal with your messiness, but a good professional contact will not make you deal with their messiness.

I ran out of things to say right now but I might think of other things later.

Oh right one more thing! So YES being professional in your dealings, delivering, being good to work with, all make you valuable and useful in your field and network (noun network). But networking as a verb? It takes the same amount of energy as making friends generally.

So if you are a nervous type, you're probably better off just making friends generally with people in your field, liking them as they are, hyping them up when you can, being responsive to when they talk to you, all that good shit that unfortunately takes energy and work.

Being human is so much fucking work. Sadly it is what makes us human. /o\\

Oh wait a friend's DM also brought up another thing: boundaries. Good networkers have good boundaries! They are good at recognising who they can or cannot connect with, and don't keep throwing themselves on walls.

You're an Asker who can't deal with Guessers? Don't hang with Guessers!! You will only feel resentful. You're a Guesser who can compromise a little with Askers? Cool, but that doesn't mean you need to enmesh yourself with ALL the Askers in your sphere.

You have some sort of neurodivergence that prevents you from recognizing things like the relative status between people? That's okay!!! You may never be a "good networker" but you can still be a good person and that is, in and of itself, a very valuable thing.

The problem with the way we usually conceptualise networking is, it's strategic, it involves these Mental Calculations of Social Niceties. Which is useful for some of us! Like myself. Useless for others.

So it really really really is okay to just default to a basic... idk... just be fucking nice to everybody.

I just like talking about the calculative stuff because it's what helps my brain with the scripts and all.

Alexandra understood that late night cookies at 2am would be a Social Good in a lobby con. I happened to 1) be awake then and 2) know the other awake people who 3) would appreciate late night cookies. OUR POWERS COMBINED and that is how we make friends. https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1250265058690633728

I tried as much as possible to generalise so that it's useful across different fields. I've tried to do this stuff in both my academic and creative circles, trying to bridge the two. It didn't always work out but it's also about practice! https://twitter.com/charisloke/status/1250304801612500997