The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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I get a bit anxious in big groups where I don't know many of the people. The anxiety gets worse if the people are considered high status or "popular" in the high school/college sense (e.g., more attractive, partiers, frat guys, that kind of vibe). Examples of big group environments are popular bars and house parties (again, it gets worse with high status or so-called popular people).
Modesty aside, I'm fairly witty, sharp, and interesting when I'm around people I'm comfortable with, but I clam up when put in the aforementioned environments.
Things I've done to make it better:
Act like the person I'm talking to is already my friend
Find a way that I'm higher status than them
Convince myself that I don't care about the outcome of this interaction
Put myself in these situations more
Things I'm working on to make it better:
Improving my ability to talk to everyone, regardless of the topic. I mostly enjoy deep, intellectual convos and don't keep up with pop culture, sports, etc. I find surface-level convos boring and tend to detach myself if we move down that path. Maybe there's a minimum amount of "normie" (I hate that word, but you get the idea) topics I should keep up with?
Putting myself in these situations more
Any other suggestions are welcome!
Well, for the most part I would say that making small talk with strangers is practice for conversations that you go into with a goal e.g. evaluating someone as a potential friend or romantic partner. Knowing how to share just enough personal information to build a rapport without weirding someone out or shifting the frame to keep people engaged are skills that need to be developed like any other. Most people do this subconsciously, but for others it requires focused attention. The people you are now good friends with and can have deep conversations with were once strangers after all, and you need a way to get from one to the other.
As far as specifics go, I'm not sure what you are trying to get out of your time at house parties or bars, but that is a question you should be asking yourself. You seem to be thinking a lot about your relative social status in a way that is somewhat foreign to me, but if you are trying to achieve high status and then leverage it to obtain something else, then you might be better served by seeking that other thing directly. Also, you don't need to study things that don't interest you just to have conversation starters, but they key is to keep up with something, whether it's the news or how to tie fishing lures, and then be able to identify connections between that thing and your interlocutor's personal experience.
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