I'm 16 years old and I'm not a bad person, autistic or shy, but I just have a bad personality, people don't like me, that's it, there's not much to it. I know that my lack of looks doesn't help me either -- if I was good looking, it would probably not be a concern-- but it's certainly not the main main reason, since I don't do bad with women in places like nightclubs, where people don't really know me, plus I currently have a gf. In my opinion, I'm about a 4/10, so I'm not hideous, I'm just not physically attractive and kinda ugly, you wouldn't feel repulsion from looking at me, but at the same time, I'm pretty ugly. The one thing all of the women I made out with or I had sex with had in common is that they didn't really know me from high school and didn't get to know me or know me from other people, I just met them at the club or places like that. Also, I'd say that my confidence is pretty high and I have a great "game", It's just not consistent, I have lapses of attention-whoring or saying idiotic things and being obnoxious like I sometimes start rambling about politics although it's kinda ironic when I say it, I sometimes say idiotic things and often overshare things as well, things that I shouldn't really say.

But here's the thing, how the fuck can I "work on my personality", it's even more frustrating because it comes from the same people that say "just be yourself bro!". Because if I am myself, I would push people further away from me. Before moving to Spain, which is where I live rn, I had almost no friends because I was even more of "myself" in my social setting. Now I do have dozens of friends, but I'm still low in the social hierarchy.

So how can I improve my personality without psychopathically frauding who I really am and suppressing my thoughts?

The other day, I had a dream of a gigantic opaque glass of water overflowing and it was seen from the point of view of a small person who was looking at the glass from the bottom. Despite not seeing the water in the glass, you could tell from the outside that the glass was full because it was overflowing. I somehow managed to relate that to this in a way. I have mastered the art of compensating and ‘frauding’, in almost every way. Physically – wearing foundation, platform shoes to look taller (I'm only 5'10 so I use these to increase my height to 6'0), indulging in vanity in order to compensate for a presumptive lack of looks, retouching my social media posts; Intellectually, having a list of words I want to incorporate into my vocabulary to appear smarter to people, and excessively participating in school classes to basically show-off my pseudo intelligence. There are countless examples, but in the end, I developed an inferiority complex which led to me constantly wearing a mask; a façade, one that hides my true self. However, it is impossible to contain that façade unless you’re psychopathic, so there are glimpses of my true self that show up here and there. Those small glimpses albeit small in their nature, can make people think that I’m not who I appear to be. How does this relate to the glass in any way? Well, the façade would be the opaque cover of the glass that doesn’t show you whether there’s water in it or not, the water would be my true self accumulated without showing itself, and the overflowing is me having those moments where I show who I really am, the more water I pour in the glass, the more I “fraud” and the more psychopathic I have to be to maintain that fake persona. In order to be consistent, I should either become that fake persona or just fraud less, the issue is that by frauding less I'm segregating myself even more, as being myself is ranting about politics, having weird interests, etc. So yeah, being myself is what made me had no friends some years ago, now I do have friends because I'm not being myself, but at the same time that doesn't help too lol. Maybe I should find an aristotelic golden mean or idk.

There's a short-story by Edgar Allan Poe called The Tell-Tale Heart. It's a first-person narrative told by an unnamed narrator. The old man, with whom the narrator lives, had a clouded, pale, blue "vulture-like" eye, which distressed the narrator so much that the narrator plotted to murder the old man, eventually, the narrator murdered him. The narrator dismembered the body and concealed the pieces under the floorboards, ensuring the concealment of all signs of the crime. It was perfectly hidden; the police suspected nothing, and the case was closed. However, the narrator began to feel extremely uncomfortable and nervous, he started feeling a really strong ringing in his ears. If he were to be psychopathic, he wouldn’t have said anything, but his heart and emotions betrayed him. As the ringing grew louder and the narrator went crazier, the narrator broke down and confessed to the police. The narrator told them to tear up the floorboards to reveal the remains of the old man's body.

One of the themes of this short story is that it is almost impossible to fully “fraud” something and be consistent about it, eventually, you will have to be yourself and confess. In my case, every time I ‘fraud’ I end up confessing in a way. For example, when I started wearing platform shoes, I thought it was a great idea, I would be taller, it’s free inches of height. When I started doing it, no one really said anything about me having any psychological height complex, but I myself suspected that people thought that, so I ended up saying it myself and joking about it. Now people do think that, but it was because I confessed. The same thing happened with me wearing foundation, among other things. At the time of date, there are still things that I did that I haven’t said anything about it, but I’ll probably confess one day. Only a truly psychopathic person could maintain a fake persona in a consistent way, and I am not psychopathic.

I just feel that I have a lot inside of me that is not accepted by society -- not complaining about it-- so I try to suppress my whole personality and create a fake persona, but since im not a psycho/machiavellian, I end up showing glimpses of who I truly am.

>inb4 go to therapy!

I already do

TL;DR: I'm facing a cul-de-sac where I don't really have much options, should I stick with a fake persona (pros and cons in my post) or be myself? (idem) None of these options seem to work for me and both lead to a similar shitty scenario. Some may say "just work on your personality bro!", and how can I even do that? I have a shitty personality, I doubt I can change that, I am a good person but people and society simply don't like me, and that's perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned, but there's not a lack of willingness to improve by my part -- trust me, if you read the entire thread you'd know that if there's one thing I don't lack is that lmaoo