5 ms·

It's interesting that the great limiter of conversation may be the fear of being objectively labeled "uninteresting" by your counterpart in the conversation. T

It's interesting that the great limiter of conversation may be the fear of being objectively labeled "uninteresting" by your counterpart in the conversation. There was an aid in a lab at my school who would routinely berate students when he was programming or playing a video game on his laptop: Student: "Is that C#?" Aid: "What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you ask questions you already know the answer to?" The aid was rejecting a universal ice-breaker because, in his mind, it was beneath him. I would imagine he didn't have very diverse conversations.

beat 12y ago
Worse than being labeled "uninteresting" is being labeled an outcast. That's why people closet their real interests when talking to strangers.
- mhurron 12y ago
  I've long since become accustomed to the fact that people around me don't share the same interests, and I don't share theirs. There's basically no reason to try to have a conversation with people.
  - orng 12y ago
    If you only interact with people who mirror yourself you will live your life in a bubble of sorts. I say embrace the differences. Argue your world view and listen to theirs. In the end you will be wiser than you were before.
    - Kalium 12y ago
      I used to think this way. Becoming "wiser" meant realizing that most people are in fact incredibly boring and thoroughly uninteresting to me. In most ways, this has not been an improvement.
      - Kalium 12y ago
        I should expand a bit. I know the idea is that by engaging with more people, one acquires empathy for more people and becomes a broader, more mature person. In my case, the result was the opposite. I acquired misanthropy by discovering that most people aren't worth the time and energy to talk to.
        nosuchthing 12y ago
        At the very least, it's good practice to make the effort to refine the skill of small talk with strangers, ice breakers, and acknowledging our shared existence on this hunk of rock flying through space. We're all in this together, and we all have our daily grinds and griefs. Feel free to scoff, and scoff aloud at least because maybe someone else will hear you and let you know they're in the same boat.
        Kalium 12y ago
        Useful skills? Absolutely. I just prefer not to invest energy in using them more than I must. My thought process runs like this: > I've acknowledged our shared existence. Over. Done with. No mas. Can I go back to my book now? It's way more interesting than all this dreary existence-acknowledging crap. I don't want someone to hear me and tell me I'm not alone. I already know that. I want to go back to my book or whatever.
        abrahamepton 12y ago
        It's a bit pie-in-the-sky to say, "everyone has a fascinating story of some kind and you just have to get it out of them." I think that's largely true, but I understand why you might disagree. That said, I think you need to revise what you consider "worth it" to mean - it's not necessarily the case that you'll learn some useful new skill or hear a great story or derive some other immediately-tangible benefit from talking to people. Not every interaction is equally valuable, your time is precious and you are an autonomous human being perfectly within your rights to reject a given social interaction, or interactions. But human interaction is not reducible to an ROI calculation. It's far too complex and multivariate to be computable by your or anyone else's brain - the best you can do is a rough approximation. I guess this is scattershot, but the phrase: "Just because I find many people uninteresting does not make me a broken person lacking in basic skills" stuck with me because it alone does, in fact, provide us ample evidence that there is a problem. I would never describe you as "broken" - I'm an introvert, I get it - but if you find "many" people uninteresting, that is a priori evidence that it is you who is uninteresting.

beat 12y ago

Worse than being labeled "uninteresting" is being labeled an outcast. That's why people closet their real interests when talking to strangers.

mhurron 12y ago
I've long since become accustomed to the fact that people around me don't share the same interests, and I don't share theirs. There's basically no reason to try to have a conversation with people.
- orng 12y ago
  If you only interact with people who mirror yourself you will live your life in a bubble of sorts. I say embrace the differences. Argue your world view and listen to theirs. In the end you will be wiser than you were before.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    I used to think this way. Becoming "wiser" meant realizing that most people are in fact incredibly boring and thoroughly uninteresting to me. In most ways, this has not been an improvement.
    - Kalium 12y ago
      I should expand a bit. I know the idea is that by engaging with more people, one acquires empathy for more people and becomes a broader, more mature person. In my case, the result was the opposite. I acquired misanthropy by discovering that most people aren't worth the time and energy to talk to.
      - nosuchthing 12y ago
        At the very least, it's good practice to make the effort to refine the skill of small talk with strangers, ice breakers, and acknowledging our shared existence on this hunk of rock flying through space. We're all in this together, and we all have our daily grinds and griefs. Feel free to scoff, and scoff aloud at least because maybe someone else will hear you and let you know they're in the same boat.
        Kalium 12y ago
        Useful skills? Absolutely. I just prefer not to invest energy in using them more than I must. My thought process runs like this: > I've acknowledged our shared existence. Over. Done with. No mas. Can I go back to my book now? It's way more interesting than all this dreary existence-acknowledging crap. I don't want someone to hear me and tell me I'm not alone. I already know that. I want to go back to my book or whatever.
      - abrahamepton 12y ago
        It's a bit pie-in-the-sky to say, "everyone has a fascinating story of some kind and you just have to get it out of them." I think that's largely true, but I understand why you might disagree. That said, I think you need to revise what you consider "worth it" to mean - it's not necessarily the case that you'll learn some useful new skill or hear a great story or derive some other immediately-tangible benefit from talking to people. Not every interaction is equally valuable, your time is precious and you are an autonomous human being perfectly within your rights to reject a given social interaction, or interactions. But human interaction is not reducible to an ROI calculation. It's far too complex and multivariate to be computable by your or anyone else's brain - the best you can do is a rough approximation. I guess this is scattershot, but the phrase: "Just because I find many people uninteresting does not make me a broken person lacking in basic skills" stuck with me because it alone does, in fact, provide us ample evidence that there is a problem. I would never describe you as "broken" - I'm an introvert, I get it - but if you find "many" people uninteresting, that is a priori evidence that it is you who is uninteresting.