WFH for half a year, I think I need to go out more and network more.
How to talk to anyone and why you should
431–440 of 584 posts
Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I highly recommend talking to strangers! People are lovely. Go out and try it. Which country are you in? I'm from a latin country and the norm is that you end up chatting about life the universe and everything with any random people you share a space with for more than one minute. But in the USA that doesn't really fly. Talking is transactional, either a business deal is going on or shut up. I've been in the USA fo…
I think it depends on the part of the US. In my experience, being from the south, I am used to people engaging in small talk with strangers. However, working in the northeast I find people to be very transactional until you wear them down over an extended period of time haha.
This was also my observation after growing up in New England and then moving to Denver, Colorado. People were much more open to conversation than I was previously used to which felt like a breath of fresh air. I realized people in New England seemingly default to a “defensive” interaction mode when conversed with without a pre-shared common ground, such as a task or moment. Its quite apparent when visiting family back east.
Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should
#433This advice has the potential soothe political rift. I rarely see anymore two people on opposite sides having a calm discussion of facts such as Krystal and Saagar often do. We need more of that. Dehumanizing the other side has costs.
Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should
#434Smoking used to be a very effective social interaction catalyzer back in my young days.
It still is.
I gave up for 15 years, and just the last two years i have been smoking. In these last two years, I've met a lot of people in my company out in the smoker's den, and quite a few of them are really interesting people.
Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should
#435One of the best pieces of advice I can give, something that has helped me start talking more with strangers, is this: When I’m speaking to someone in a service role, like a waiter, a cashier, or a salesperson, I remind myself that I’m just one of hundreds of people they interact with that day. To them, I’m simply another brief interaction. So if I say something awkward or if the conversation doesn’t flow perfectly, i…
One tip for the introverts out there:
When the service worker and you do the back and forth of "How are you doing today" - "Fine, you?" - "Fine"
Yeah don't do that, try out this phrase "It's my Monday" [0] instead of "Fine, you?"
You'll typically have them telling you what day of their work week they are in which is not usually the actual day of the week! Because managers schedule people in service positions in wacky ways.
That little bit of human connection around labor and work, man it does wonders. They know you know what it's like, that you see them as a person, and you care a little bit. Really gets the conversation going if there isn't too much of a line.
[0] Use any day of the week, but do use a weekday. Monday or Friday works best though.
Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should
#436After a bad breakup in 2015, I followed some advice from the socialskills subreddit to “talk to everyone” so that you get better at talking to women you might want to date. The advice was not to only talk to attractive people but everyone. The old man reading a Russian newspaper, the kid on bike doing tricks, people in the elevator. I do that now and it brings me a lot of joy. Recently while leaving a botanical garde…
This advice is not for everyone. Obviously this works only if you are an extrovert. Introverts would find this kind of interaction a wasteful use of limited social energy available to them.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted but yes, this is true.
I don't want or need to talk to everyone, and I generally don't appreciate people I don't know or won't know in five minutes to engage me in idle chatter. Just leave me be.
I'm not a grouch, I'm not a grump, I'll be friendly but why do you have to harass me?
I'm perfectly comfortable in my own skin, doing my own thing, by myself. I don't have social anxiety, I'm not a misanthrope. Just let me be.
Introverts aren't broken. You don't have to impose yourself on everyone else.
Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of seemingly casual interactions in the US turn out to be someone trying to sell something. When that happens a 3rd time, you start to ignore random chatter from someone that seems too friendly. The salesperson tactics abuse common social conversation rules, and one ends up feeling like they are being forced to be mean and rude to an idiot. So, to avoid that, we push away chatty strangers in the United States.
we push away chatty strangers in the United States Where? I've lived on the coasts, I live in the Midwest, that has not been my experience aside from anti-social persons.
It depends strongly on the city, and became more pronounced since covid.
Seattle is the worst. They call it the "seattle freeze." The San Francisco Bay Area became almost as bad in covid.
The south is still friendly. Austin is incredibly friendly with strangers. Miami has strong stranger vibe. NYC is still alive, too.
Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should
#438I would imagine a common goal could alleviate the resistancy? Talking while jogging or doing shoot-out at a basketball court sounds like a good way to fill in that small gap in between actions.
Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should
#439I've talked to random people. Most of them are unbearably boring, and they need to resort to alcohol and professional sports just to have anything to talk about in the first place. Bring up ECDSA and suddenly you may as well have just beamed down from a spaceship.
Lol is this why you have thought about mentioning it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47214367
Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should
#440After a bad breakup in 2015, I followed some advice from the socialskills subreddit to “talk to everyone” so that you get better at talking to women you might want to date. The advice was not to only talk to attractive people but everyone. The old man reading a Russian newspaper, the kid on bike doing tricks, people in the elevator. I do that now and it brings me a lot of joy. Recently while leaving a botanical garde…
The "Helping You Not Become Your Parents" commercials (from some insurance company I think) make me sad. They're basically making fun of people for trying to connect. I'm in a spot where I don't really bump into strangers much but, as a recovering introvert I've tried to talk to people like this and it feels AMAZING. Like... irrational levels of amazing vibes. It's so frustrating seeing my own kids be horrified by it…
Talking to strangers is actually kind of nice as an introvert, there is very low pressure as you have no obligation to the person and you can end the conversation at any time.
I find it much nicer than talking to friends of friends or the absolute worst for me... the boyfriends of my girlfriends friends. You are getting shoved together into a forced interaction that you know will be asked about in the near future.