Bad social skills

What it feels like
Whenever you try to have a conversation (i.e. not a simple question-answer-thank you-bye dialogue) with anyone who's not a close friend or family member, it quickly turns into an awkward silence. This happens even when you would very much like to have a conversation with this person. It may be especially noticeable if you've recently changed your social environment (e.g. new school), in which case you probably have no friends at the new place even though you would very much like some.

How to fix it
Alison @sinesalvatorem has a lot of social skills advice in her "moderate social competence with alison" tag.

This is what worked for me, copypasted from an old tumblr post:"3 years ago, I noticed that my social skills were bad. I didn’t speak to people who weren’t close friends or family if I could avoid it, because when I did the conversation would always feel painfully awkward and forced. This of course meant I didn’t make new friends.""I’d recently started a new school, and having no friends there felt lonely enough that five months into the school year I decided to do something about it. Every day I’d do a social interaction that was slightly outside my comfort zone - in the beginning, this meant exchanging a few lines of smalltalk with whichever classmate I was sitting next to. This was *really* uncomfortable for a while, but after a few months talking to acquaintances stopped being painful and started being pleasant. When I reached that point, making friends was as easy as spending a bunch of time with the person I wanted to befriend, and going from schoolmates to close friends became a simple and natural progression which takes a few months at most.""I have some great friends now. I still spend more time alone than the average person, but that’s because I honestly desire less social interaction than the average person, not because I have no other option. And I am so fucking grateful to 2012!me for putting in the work."Here is A (Long) Guide to Conversations, a blog post with several techniques on having better conversations with people.