I am capable of pretending to be somewhat normal but it requires a lot of energy and I refuse to waste it on a simple transaction

did you atleast remember to clap after the encounter?

do you really think the cashier cares? you're not the weirdest person they've encountered today

Yes he is, she spent her coffee break telling about him to her coworkers and laughing at him

I just showed his post to my gf and both of us started laughing at him.

the more you do it the easier it becomes. until you can do it on autopilot like everyone else

you are also clearly over-worrying about details that noone else worries about, thus increasing the amount of energy required

even when you fail, you may bring laughter and joy. the advantage of being non-threatening is that noone will be very bothered by your attempts to interact

it's not that I care what she thinks of me, it's that I hate forced meaningless conversation and avoid it at all costs.

 

for example trader Joe's is a great store and I love buying their food, but the cashiers are trained to be friendly and try to spark up conversations about what you're wearing or what you're buying so I dread the checkout line.

avoid looking at people's faces if you don't want them to interact with you

 

really? what do they say?

 

here it's mostly all "hellos" and "goodbyes", sometimes they mention the weather (but only if it's particularly bad) and once a lady asked me about a product I was buying (because she wanted to know if it's any good)

I am a Finnish assburger, and this is the most assburger country in the world. (Japan puts up a lot of competition, but they still have this social conformity thing.) I've also lived a couple of years in England, for contrast, and can confirm that I got a reverse culture shock from all that Finnish assburgerism. So, you'd think this would be an assburger-friendly country. And it isn't. We were just born on the wrong planet.