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I see autistic masking discourse going around again. Neurotypical social norms *are* understandable. Acting neurotypical is doable if high effort (my mom is like this). You can get a long way by being a kind of weird that doesn't rub people the wrong way, which is much easier. But it hinges on this:

Neurotypical social norms are not actually mostly arbitrary bullshit! The specific mechanics can be silly for the same reason the vagus nerve is silly, evolution over time, but they're mostly active "I am mindful that you are another person with feelings and I am not treading on them" signalling.

I once found an old book of etiquette and I was like, wait this actually sounds like a guide book for non-typcials... the whole thing was just telling you what to do with your hands and little scripts for different situations.

Totally! And I guess that was why the book was wild, because it actually tried to explain the function of those norms, instead of "thats just the way it is". Which for me if I understand the 'why' its easier (or sometimes necessary?) to get the what and how.

Oh that's really really good! Bc yeah that was always what was so frustrating growing up. Either being told to do X without knowing the why, or being told I didn't care about K because I wasn't performing Z right, and having to eventually connect the dots myself. Do you remember the book title?