4 ms·

> In normal social interactions, when a person doesn’t talk much, more weight is often given to their words when they do. I haven't found this to be true at al

> In normal social interactions, when a person doesn’t talk much, more weight is often given to their words when they do. I haven't found this to be true at all. Talking too little means your words don't get much weight in my experience. This is not true for Silent Bob and the example band director because they have roles that command some amount of attention to begin with -- you're paying some attention to them when they're not talking. In normal social interactions, in my experience, if you're very quiet then people just don't pay a lot of attention to you, and when you speak up it's not actually that jarring or novel. You haven't earned extra attention by not participating as a peer, you've earned less. And if what you have to say is not something they already agree with they can easily go back to not spending their attention on you as soon as you stop talking.

cryptica 7y ago
It depends who the audience is. I definitely listen more attentively to less talkative people. I think the quality of social media would improve if they built that into their algorithms. Also I think it may explain why people like me don't spend much time on social media. Too much BS. It's like watching too much TV; it dulls the mind. When people spend most of their time expressing their ideas instead of forming and researching their ideas, their ideas are just not as good.
- darkerside 7y ago
  Is there possibly a selection bias at play here? Where you remember when a quiet person said something really meaningful, but the many times it didn't resonate, you immediately forgot about it? I'd be interested in studies on this material because I'm sure it's hard to quantify on a personal level.
dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
> You haven't earned extra attention by not participating as a peer, you've earned less. That's an interesting interpretation. I guess it depends on the social milieu. In mine, people are attentive to what Silent Bobs say. Very often it's an interesting piece of information because it tends to be different from the usual chatter.
Juliate 7y ago
My experience is that the too-talkative person is either discrediting more and more oneself ("leaving no doubt" about it) or it bores people away completely from the subject/platform/conversation at hand. It's like, at some point, you leave your noisy/opinionated uncle speak in his corner at the family gathering. You don't mind him anymore. Facebook went that route to me: what started to show up more and more from family and friends bored me away more and more, to the point I left. I prefer to pay the price to have no noisy-news and lose some "relatives" to only get the meaningful stuff when it matters. Left 2 years ago. No regret. Twitter went the same route, about the time when the platform gained more public interest around 2015. Removed from my phone. Barely checking it now. I tried Instagram alternatively. It's a pure marketing platform. Vaguely interesting as a pinterest-like journal. It gets me back to blogs. Things that take more time (to setup/write, but also to find and read), bear more fruit.
- dawg- 7y ago
  I have discovered that Facebook can be manageable only if you are extremely diligent about unfollowing people whose posts you don't care about. You can unfollow while still remaining "friends". I have been really good about it and there are now at most 15-20 people whose posts actually end up in my news feed. Sometimes nothing new will show up in my news feed for several days, which is really nice. I think joining good, high quality groups of a not-too-big size is also a way to make Facebook a valuable experience. I was 100% off of facebook for a long time and even though I denied it for a long time, my social life suffered for it. I now see it as a necessary evil that can be not so bad with some effort.

cryptica 7y ago

It depends who the audience is. I definitely listen more attentively to less talkative people. I think the quality of social media would improve if they built that into their algorithms. Also I think it may explain why people like me don't spend much time on social media. Too much BS. It's like watching too much TV; it dulls the mind. When people spend most of their time expressing their ideas instead of forming and researching their ideas, their ideas are just not as good.

darkerside 7y ago
Is there possibly a selection bias at play here? Where you remember when a quiet person said something really meaningful, but the many times it didn't resonate, you immediately forgot about it? I'd be interested in studies on this material because I'm sure it's hard to quantify on a personal level.

dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago

> You haven't earned extra attention by not participating as a peer, you've earned less. That's an interesting interpretation. I guess it depends on the social milieu. In mine, people are attentive to what Silent Bobs say. Very often it's an interesting piece of information because it tends to be different from the usual chatter.

Juliate 7y ago

My experience is that the too-talkative person is either discrediting more and more oneself ("leaving no doubt" about it) or it bores people away completely from the subject/platform/conversation at hand. It's like, at some point, you leave your noisy/opinionated uncle speak in his corner at the family gathering. You don't mind him anymore. Facebook went that route to me: what started to show up more and more from family and friends bored me away more and more, to the point I left. I prefer to pay the price to have no noisy-news and lose some "relatives" to only get the meaningful stuff when it matters. Left 2 years ago. No regret. Twitter went the same route, about the time when the platform gained more public interest around 2015. Removed from my phone. Barely checking it now. I tried Instagram alternatively. It's a pure marketing platform. Vaguely interesting as a pinterest-like journal. It gets me back to blogs. Things that take more time (to setup/write, but also to find and read), bear more fruit.

dawg- 7y ago
I have discovered that Facebook can be manageable only if you are extremely diligent about unfollowing people whose posts you don't care about. You can unfollow while still remaining "friends". I have been really good about it and there are now at most 15-20 people whose posts actually end up in my news feed. Sometimes nothing new will show up in my news feed for several days, which is really nice. I think joining good, high quality groups of a not-too-big size is also a way to make Facebook a valuable experience. I was 100% off of facebook for a long time and even though I denied it for a long time, my social life suffered for it. I now see it as a necessary evil that can be not so bad with some effort.