One time I went to a professional mixer type dinner that took place in a dim sum restaurant. I sat next to other people in my field who I didn’t know personally, one was low key guy who I’d heard of and the other was super show-offy and was actually offended when I admitted I didn’t know who he was.

I hate dim sum and I knew that I was going to have to be polite and choke it down with a lot of water. It was really difficult, but I managed to get down the several courses. When people asked what I thought, I nodded and politely bullshitted, “it’s pretty good”.

After the dinner ended, I ran into a friend who loves dim sum and he said, “God that food was awful, no one could stand it”!

When I got home I googled the blowhard and it turns out he was a nobody and the low key guy was actually pretty famous!

I don’t know what the lesson here is… maybe it’s that you can’t take a lot of social interactions too seriously.