creating a social persona

In a friends-locked post, someone asked for advice on creating a social persona to mediate between her self and the world. I wrote

I built one through a lot of reading. The most immediately-useful construction materials came from Miss Manners. Miss Manners has a lot of privileges that she is not aware of, but people who are willing to explain things before I get them wrong as opposed to just punishing me afterwards (and expecting me to figure it out from there) are really hard to find.

Do you have any suggestions?