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"I didn't read but I will make assumptions and pass judgment" Please reconsider your behaviour on the internet; this is one reason why there's so much misinformation around.
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The vital art of talking to strangers
41–50 of 290 posts
Re: The vital art of talking to strangers
#42The most important thing about learning to talk to strangers is practice. Taxi driving gave me lots of new people to talk to every day. Sometimes they weren't new. I didn't remember them, but they remembered me on account of my previous efforts to get information out of them.
[edit: if I was starting this today I'd be a ride share driver. But I've learned enough, and don't feel the need to drive people around again.]
> Here are other ways Nightingall suggests breaking a script.
I figured out where my passengers were going, "Are you going anywhere in particular, or do I get to choose?" No one hires a taxi to take them to a random location.
One lady, who was with her family, said "we can go anywhere you want." Two seconds later she said, "too late, we're going to the movies." 'DRATS! That was my chance!' Thenceforth I resolved to be prepared for when people took me up on my proposal of picking their destination.
One woman said we could go anywhere I wanted, as long as she got to the bus station by 10pm. We had plenty of time, so we went to the 5 & Diner for dessert. When I dropped her off at the station, my passenger said it was the best birthday she'd had in quite some time. (I never heard from her again.)
> If you say something generic, they will say something generic. If you say something specific, they are likely to as well.
I assumed everyone was a native Arizonan. If someone was a transplant I'd ask "Oh, did you move here from [specific city in the upper Midwest]?"
Strictly speaking, there are more people in Arizona from California than [specific city]. But California is 800 miles from Mexico to Oregon, and if they were from California they'd say, "Duh", whereas if they're from [specific city], they're usually either impressed, or they wonder how I knew.
One fellow did not have that upper-midwest vibe, but I'd had experiences where I switched it up but would've been right. He said "no, bunch of damn communists from [upper midwest city], I'm from Oklahoma."
"How'd you find your way to the desert?" IIRC that passenger was in the Army (Green Berets), and they needed an airport with a thick enough runway to support their operation (he didn't say 'in Central America', but I realized he was talking about the Iran/Contra operation). Scottsdale was their airport. He said something about Lt. Col. North getting crucified by Congress, iirc. [0]
"Do you have any food in your apartment, to go with your vodka?" She did not, I stopped the meter and took a detour to McDonald's. That passenger is doing quite well now, and no longer suffers from prison-induced PTSD.
Not all passengers got my usual script. I just got a call from a woman who I first picked up at her parents' house. The Phoenix Police officer said, "have fun with this one." She was in fight-or-flight mode, getting kicked out by her parents (who had custody of her daughter). As soon as we pulled away she broke down. She was a very expensive passenger. I hadn't heard from her for maybe 5 years (when she'd just been approved for SS disability). She found my number last week, it was nice to hear from her.
[0] "North formulated the second part of the plan, which was to divert proceeds from the arms sales to support the Contra rebel groups in Nicaragua, sales which had been specifically prohibited under the Boland Amendment." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_North
Re: The vital art of talking to strangers
#43Re: The vital art of talking to strangers
#44Re: The vital art of talking to strangers
#45Perhaps the problem with social media is that it’s not social. It’s actually oratorical media. In a physically social setting, people do the thing the article quotes: they recognize that interaction with diametrically opposing viewpoints is possible if they exercise tact to eschew controversy until having built common ground. That isn’t possible at scale because there is no common ground at scale. And online, everyth…
It's also a smaller distance to close to find common ground in meatspace than online. In physical spaces, you gain a ton of information about social connections and interests just by who's where. If I'm at an academic conference (the regular in-person kind), odds are very high that the other attendees have similar esoteric research interests to mine. And if I see a friend talking to someone who's a stranger to me, it's likely that "stranger" is only two degrees of separation from me.
>That isn’t possible at scale because there is no common ground at scale. And online, everything is at scale. You are definitely talking to everyone.
The term for this is context collapse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse
Re: The vital art of talking to strangers
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds like fun. Although I hope you are ready to meet lots of Christians and a few alcoholics every year. Just remember that the 90% doesn't like talking about their jobs. Hope you know the latest sportsball news... That being said, there's usually other commonalities to discuss.
> Although I hope you are ready to meet lots of Christians and a few alcoholics every year. Always good to lump the Christians in with the alcoholics.
They're just jealous that christians have more fun.
Re: The vital art of talking to strangers
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds like fun. Although I hope you are ready to meet lots of Christians and a few alcoholics every year. Just remember that the 90% doesn't like talking about their jobs. Hope you know the latest sportsball news... That being said, there's usually other commonalities to discuss.
> Although I hope you are ready to meet lots of Christians and a few alcoholics every year. Always good to lump the Christians in with the alcoholics.
I do believe the modern (us) conservative evangelical "back to basics" movement started in the 30s/40s as a response to rampant alcoholism from the great depression. Church of christ and similar denominations. They take a (claimed) "hyper" literal approach over a few key issues, like alcohol, sex, drugs, taxes, tithing, homosexuality.. Recent history was the 90s abstinence movement.. And in the last 7 or so years these have been the churches taking the brunt of the exodus and have been largely deflated, with churches across the nation dying due to lack of new young people.
I would wager good money that most modern conservative US Christian families have a male alcoholic relative not too far removed.
The alcoholics and Christians go together.
Re: The vital art of talking to strangers
#48I have a hypothesis that almost all of the US's current cultural problems would be solved if once a month we all cooked and shared a meal with another randomly chosen family.
We used to call this going to church. When literally everyone of all political stripes attended the same churches, going to a church potluck was basically being paired randomly.
However large political factions have made church membership out to be undesirable.
We are reaping the rewards.
I realized yesterday reading about cornel west, that even though I disagree with his politics, I see from his Christianity we have the same concerns, and values. I can't honestly say that about other people
Re: The vital art of talking to strangers
#49[flagged]
Try disabling javascript in your browser. At least in the U.S.A., that lets me read most paywalled articles linked from HN. (Yes, cool multi-media content is lost. Parent's complaint was "can't read the article".)
Re: The vital art of talking to strangers
#50I have a hypothesis that almost all of the US's current cultural problems would be solved if once a month we all cooked and shared a meal with another randomly chosen family.
We used to call this going to church. When literally everyone of all political stripes attended the same churches, going to a church potluck was basically being paired randomly. However large political factions have made church membership out to be undesirable. We are reaping the rewards. I realized yesterday reading about cornel west, that even though I disagree with his politics, I see from his Christianity we have…
This is a rosy view of religion, although I accept that is your experience and perspective, and thank you for sharing it.
To me, church attendance is about making the in/out group very clear. You may feel close to different political views based on your single church or flavor of Christianity, but that's still a pretty limited group.
I think church membership has become undesirable because 1) fewer people believe in the supernatural and 2) the stated positions of many major religions on issues of abortion and inclusion.