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How to Be Someone People Love to Talk To (2015)

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Re: How to Be Someone People Love to Talk To (2015)

#151

Post by [deleted] »

randcraw wrote: post #143
onmobiletemp wrote: post #87

I started paying attention to people and discovered a lot of this on my own over the course of three years. At some point i realized that whenever i talked to someone their eyes would glaze over and their face would go stony. Then theyd talk to someone else and their eyes would become focused and their face alive and animated. Laughter. I figured out this was because they didnt care about what i was saying or about m…

Actually, not only do I agree with your main point, but I think I know why it's a problem. (BTW, it's a problem for me too.) Most people today have the attention span of gnats. They crave talk in small, light, humor-based doses, like TV sitcom dialogue. (And yes, I don't understand what most people want to hear either. Mostly I think they want others to compliment them, ask them to expound on themselves, and laugh at…

[deleted]

Re: How to Be Someone People Love to Talk To (2015)

#152

Post by bane »

xor1 wrote: post #56

I think the article severely downplays the importance of attractiveness. If the other party finds you attractive, the bar is lowered to the point of you simply being normal/average in terms of intelligence, wit, and whatever else you want to include in your definition of what makes a person "interesting". You basically need to be a vapid idiot to give anyone a bad impression as an attractive person. It's a huge facto…

Yeah, a related and very funny satire of this truth was the old SNL skit on sexual harassment. http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/sexual-harassme...

Re: How to Be Someone People Love to Talk To (2015)

#153

Post by bane »

rrherr wrote: post #4
tyingq wrote: post #2

The best bit of advice in the article: The right question is “How do I get them talking about themselves?“ I've noticed that even if the only thing you do is ask someone their opinion, and listen attentively, there is some sort of distortion field effect. They will often later recall you as knowledgeable, insightful, etc...even though you never did anything but ask questions.

Yes! My favorite tactic to get people talking about themselves comes from Paul Ford: Just ask the other person what they do, and right after they tell you, say: “Wow. That sounds hard.” Because nearly everyone in the world believes their job to be difficult. I once went to a party and met a very beautiful woman whose job was to help celebrities wear Harry Winston jewelry. I could tell that she was disappointed to be…

I often follow up with "I don't know anything about that, can you tell me more?"

Re: How to Be Someone People Love to Talk To (2015)

#154

Post by StavrosK »

mdekkers wrote: post #82
dkarapetyan wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you for real? Develop substance my friend. The rest is all cosmetic and won't take you far.

He is for real, no doubt. Also he is correct. I have seen this depressingly often. Anecdote from the trenches: A dev team of about 15. They are working an an algorithm that did some language-type matching. One guy was regarded as the expert on the subject, came up with the algorithm, wrote a paper on it that was the basis of his Masters thesis, and essentially the whole company bowed down in front of him. When I join…

I think you're staring the point right in the eyes, but are missing it:

> was a smooth political operator

This is it right there. It doesn't matter so much how attractive he was. If he can do politics, it's game over for everyone who can't.

Re: How to Be Someone People Love to Talk To (2015)

#155

Post by joncrocks »

bane wrote: post #152
xor1 wrote: post #56

I think the article severely downplays the importance of attractiveness. If the other party finds you attractive, the bar is lowered to the point of you simply being normal/average in terms of intelligence, wit, and whatever else you want to include in your definition of what makes a person "interesting". You basically need to be a vapid idiot to give anyone a bad impression as an attractive person. It's a huge facto…

Yeah, a related and very funny satire of this truth was the old SNL skit on sexual harassment. http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/sexual-harassme...

For anyone outside the US that can't access the video, there's a transcript here:

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/04/04qfunhouse.phtml

  Be Handsome..
  Be Attractive..
  and Don't Be Unattractive.

Re: How to Be Someone People Love to Talk To (2015)

#156

Post by morbidhawk »

onmobiletemp wrote: post #87

I started paying attention to people and discovered a lot of this on my own over the course of three years. At some point i realized that whenever i talked to someone their eyes would glaze over and their face would go stony. Then theyd talk to someone else and their eyes would become focused and their face alive and animated. Laughter. I figured out this was because they didnt care about what i was saying or about m…

> Its verry dificult because you cant verify what people are thinking, you cant debug it and you cant start over -- you have to guess a lot

I think there is a way to verify what people are thinking and that would be by asking them questions. As you point out later it has to be genuine and not a clinical encounter, and I'd also add not a self-serving one. If you genuinely want to understand what they are saying you would then be very present in the conversation rather than just trying to hear what you think you want or don't want to hear (ie: "I've got to found out if he/she's going to abandon me or break my heart" is a self-serving interest and will eventually have the opposite effect), but trying to understand what they are saying because you are curious about them and hold them in high esteem will go a far way and asking questions that help you try to understand their point of view.

Too many people are trying to either narrate the relationship or are trying to serve their own self-interests and apply way too much meaning to each interaction and if instead they saw an encounter as an opportunity to learn rather than to try to have it mean something personally I think they'd find a whole lot more success.

I'm not extremely experienced in social interaction but I've had to learn to be to be able to communicate better with my wife and this is what I've learned, my self-centered motives have prevented me from learning so much more from others and using curiosity and questions has been super helpful in helping me to overcome social anxiety and relationship conflict fears.

tldr; let go of your ego (don't take things personally) and try to learn what other people are saying by asking them genuine questions (rather than trying to do all the talking, you learn more this way).

Re: How to Be Someone People Love to Talk To (2015)

#157

Post by personlurking »

nunez wrote: post #147
personlurking wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this to be a good approach too, unless they're in the midst of a PhD program, then they have zero interest in talking about their day cause their dissertation is all-consuming.

Actually most people working on their dissertation love talking about it since that dissertation is practically their entire life. I try to get them to speak in their language and try to understand their world better: how they approached their research, what mistakes they encountered, how they learned from them.

I moved to a city a few years back where it was like every single person I met was a PhD student and none wanted to talk about what they did (some I wouldn't be able to understand anyways, such as astrophysicists, but others I could, if they'd have wanted to talk about it). They'd all mention the general topic, but that's about it. It was quite weird because I happen to share your view and wanted to know more.

Re: How to Be Someone People Love to Talk To (2015)

#158

Post by CuriouslyC »

copperx wrote: post #60
CuriouslyC wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can definitely learn charisma. I wouldn't call myself a smooth talker (I'm way too frank), but I've got a presence that people respond to. More importantly, 20 years ago I was basically a shut in with crippling social anxiety. I've found that the big key is getting your mind in order. You can work forever on what to say, but if your head isn't right it won't work. On the other hand, someone who is totally centere…

Do you mind expounding on "getting your mind in order"?

That is going to be a different for everyone. For me, it involved systematically examining my beliefs and feelings, and discarding the ones that didn't serve me. Additionally, I've found that there is a certain flow to life; you can struggle against it, get carried away by it, or harness it. Accepting the way things are and learning to surf the currents rather than raging against them helped a lot.

If you want a shortcut, in terms of interpersonal skills the two highest impact changes for me have been:

1. Derive your personal value entirely from within 2. Develop compassion for other people

If you nail these two changes, you will be attractive. You might not be "persuasive" like a salesman, but that is a specialized skill-set that needs to be developed on its own.

Re: How to Be Someone People Love to Talk To (2015)

#159

Post by pc86 »

coldtea wrote: post #141
xor1 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard, but that's not what this discussion is about.

Fun fact: there's tons of office romances, and people fuck like rabbits while working in the same company all the time. Even in puritanical US (or especially there). Heck, millions of people met at work and finally got married. And, no, flirting is not the same as harassment.

My brain wasn't sure how to compute seeing the phrase "fuck like rabbits" right next to use of the work "heck" instead of "hell."

Re: How to Be Someone People Love to Talk To (2015)

#160

Post by M_Grey »

xor1 wrote: post #56

I think the article severely downplays the importance of attractiveness. If the other party finds you attractive, the bar is lowered to the point of you simply being normal/average in terms of intelligence, wit, and whatever else you want to include in your definition of what makes a person "interesting". You basically need to be a vapid idiot to give anyone a bad impression as an attractive person. It's a huge facto…

I think you're confusing two very different kinds of personal appeal, and this can be seen most in the way that attractive people are often allowed to talk, but aren't required to listen.

On a separate note, I'd warn people (as someone to whom people have always freely talked) it can be a bad thing! You might not see this, and I understand that a lot of people here struggle socially, but it can be terrible to be a "go-to" person. If it's your friends and family, it's a good thing most of the time, but how about in a large or casual group?

The old, the infirm, the lonely... they're the first to realize that I'll be polite, listen, and engage. Sometimes they latch on, and it can be exceedingly difficult to shake them off without hurting them. Then, the crazy people and the broken people sense compassion and an ear, and they come running.

To paraphrase a comedian's description of cleavage, being someone that people love to talk to does not discriminate. Sure, you attract the people you want to attract, but you attract EVERYONE ELSE too. It can be exhausting...

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