I learned two things from two people last night (as in one from each person).

But before I continue, plug: http://tinychat.com/welcometogoodburger This is the name I intend to keep on my tinychats, at least until I get bored of said name.

The first:
I always thought that there were certain friends of mine that I influenced, and they slowly became more like me as time went on. I wasn't sure what to think about people looking at me and trying to become more like me, because, well, I'm not so perfect. I used to think that certain people liked what they saw in my personality, and they wanted to take pieces of it and make these pieces part of their own respective personalities.
Now I know that what I thought was mainly wrong. I wasn't influencing others to become more like my own character, I was merely making them comfortable expressing those pieces of their own personality that were like mine. They weren't taking from my basket of personality traits; they were only looking at some of the things in my basket of personality traits and saw that some of the traits in their own baskets were the same as some of those in mine, and thus they felt comfortable sharing the ones we had in common.
I know that there's sort of a refreshing feeling you get when you find that some unsuperficial trait that you have, some piece of your individuality, is the same as someone else's. It gives you a confident feeling about the random musings you have come up with. It's kind of like doing your math homework and then comparing your answers with one of your classmates. Chances are, if you and your friend both got the same answer, you must be on the right track.
This knowing that you must be on the right track can also apply to the feelings and thoughts you have everyday in a social context. I was elated to discover that my friend Dave was into writing music for RPG-style video games. It's somewhat of an interest I've had, but I thought it was weird until I met someone else with the same interest, especially when he actually writes the music and does an amazing job of doing so (many of his songs are on iTunes for your listening pleasure). I've had a lot of strange opinions that I've come up with, but many of them have been validated by other people I've connected to, and nothing beats the feeling of finding someone else with your same quirky interests and thoughts. Because that's when you go "FINALLY! MAYBE my thoughts and ideas aren't total shit after all!"
So now I realize that I wasn't influencing people to become more LIKE me, but they were just no longer holding back their personality traits that are like mine because they had a series of revelations in which they went "OMG Paul and I have something in common, and now that I know that there is someone else with this same personality trait as mine, I am going to make it known that we have this same trait AND I am not going to hold back this personality trait anymore!"
Specifically, I'm talking about Dave. I always sort of thought that Dave, coming from somewhat of a religious family, never swore. But when he's around me, he does sometimes. I didn't know if he was observing my propensity for swearing and wanting to become acquire such a propensity, or if he just had the propensity to swear hidden deep inside of him and I didn't know it. It turns out, that the latter option was the correct one. And I should know that Dave, as a thoughtful guy, should have the capacity to invent his own personality based on his own perceptions of his mental tendencies with flying colors. It's not like I could have doubted that though. I should have realized that he was just being himself in the first place, and that he was only letting himself to be free to express his inner more obscure personality traits after seeing that I had the same ones.

2. It's important to take charge of your own personal situation within broader social situations. In other words, if you're thrown into a large group of people, figure out what you believe would represent your own interests and the people around you like the most, and then go fucking do it! At least that's what I should be telling myself. This is because I'm more into having a small number of close friends rather than a large bunch of acquaintances. I'm not into big parties--I'm into learning about people, one by one. Everyone is a mystery, though sometimes the mystery is more easily solved with certain people. Hell, some people don't have a mystery to solve (cough superficial cough). But people with mysteries interest me greatly, and I want to get to know them.