Thanks again for the replies, actually interacting with them is something I've never even considered - my mental model of them is as a group of "others", only i

Thanks again for the replies, actually interacting with them is something I've never even considered - my mental model of them is as a group of "others", only interested in interacting with each other, and I'm a mere eavesdropper. Most of the time it sounds like two or three conversations going on at once, and I'm only able to pick out the occasional word from each of them, which is what I meant by nonsense - it could just be that I'm only getting a small portion of several perfectly sensible conversations. I'll give this a go.