Talking to strangers at the gym • Hacker News Board

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#251

Post by smelendez » Mon, May 04, 2026, 3:47 PM UTC

drivers99 wrote: post #226

planet36 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And "Remember their name".

I remember the book saying something like "a person's name is the most beautiful sound in the world to them." The book may say to say their name back to them (I don't remember right now), but that's not what I took away from it. It reminded me of when people would make fun of my name (first and/or last) or bring up someone famous who has the same first ("Donald Duck") or last name ("are you related Joan Rivers?"), or…

Yeah, you also have to remember that someone has heard every possible joke about their name and their appearance a million times.

I do think Dale Carnegie overemphasizes the importance of saying people's names, and in fact saying people's names in conversation often sounds forced and manipulative, but maybe that's just a cultural shift over the past century.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#252

Post by coffeebeqn » Mon, May 04, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC

reenorap wrote: post #127

I find that most people don't reach out to previous friends if they haven't been contacted in a while. For whatever reason, I don't have that internal programming. Whenever I remember, I will ping my friends or old coworkers going back 20+ years and go out for lunch, and it's always a great time. It's best to not have too much pride over it, life is too short in my opinion.

And I almost never get a no when I make the effort. One of the people I spend the most time with as an adult is one of my childhood friends who we just randomly went for beers once after not seeing in 15 years and now meet up every month or two since we still had the same chemistry as we did as kids

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#253

Post by matwood » Mon, May 04, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC

Izikiel43 wrote: post #162

Aurornis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard this repeated across books and podcasts for years but I’ve only seen it fail in person. Maybe it might not fail if the “favor” isn’t really a favor at all but instead something almost completely effortless like asking for the time or directions to the bathroom. However when someone is at the gym and another stranger asks them to stop and do a favor that takes time out of their gym visit it’s just annoyin…

Often I get asked to spot someone while their lift and I don’t mind, maybe you had bad luck.

I was about to say this. Anyone who has spent any time at the gym will have zero problem spotting someone.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#254

Post by ekropotin » Mon, May 04, 2026, 3:50 PM UTC

alexmuresan wrote: post #98

mtlynch wrote: post #80

One of the things I like about this is that OP is giving people genuine compliments without any particular agenda. It reminds me of one of my favorite parts of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, where he tells a story about complimenting someone, and a student asks what he was hoping to gain from offering the compliment. Carnegie is incensed: > I was waiting in line to register a letter in the…

I avoided this book for a long time. for some reason I got it in my head that it's a sort of red pilled book that teaches you how to manipulate people. I know it's very shallow on my side, but I somehow crystallized this opinion based on a few acquaintances that claimed to read it and instead that they include the name of a person they just met in every sentence because it made that person like them more. Your commen…

That’s the only book you need to read, really. All modern books on this topic are derivatives of it.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#255

Post by jasondigitized » Mon, May 04, 2026, 3:51 PM UTC

outime wrote: post #21

If you want to build a relationship with someone, try asking them for a small favor rather than offering one first* (or, for example, making random small talk about the weather). Most people love to help and feel useful. If you're new to the gym or want to learn a new exercise, you can simply ask for help. It's something we'naturally do if we weren't so afraid of approaching strangers. *just paraphrasing a famous quo…

This is a Benjamin Franklin hack right?

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#256

Post by nico » Mon, May 04, 2026, 3:51 PM UTC

mtlynch wrote: post #80

One of the things I like about this is that OP is giving people genuine compliments without any particular agenda. It reminds me of one of my favorite parts of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, where he tells a story about complimenting someone, and a student asks what he was hoping to gain from offering the compliment. Carnegie is incensed: > I was waiting in line to register a letter in the…

That book is very good. However, for some (including me at some point), it can be a bit advanced

I highly recommend the book The Charisma Myth, it covers a lot of the same topics, including very good exercises, to help understand and develop human interactions in general

Personally, it helped me be able to get into, the situations that the first book assumes the reader is already in, or comfortable with (like talking to strangers)

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#257

Post by whall6 » Mon, May 04, 2026, 3:52 PM UTC

rimmontrieu wrote: post #250

Being an introvert myself and perfectly fine when being alone, this is so hard to read. Possibly it's just me but making new friends is quite overrated, and the whole thing OP does feels forced and artificial at many levels. Genuine connection should be built on mutual deep interests, and small talks at random places rarely reveal them. I'd be disappointed if someone starts a conversation with me artificially because…

Key word: rarely

It’s a numbers game with very low stakes to the downside and very high to the upside

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#258

Post by ajkjk » Mon, May 04, 2026, 3:52 PM UTC

plewd wrote: post #93

nasir wrote: post #27

Around 15 years ago I took on the challenge to start a conversation with random people to break through this barrier and train this muscle. What I started with was to chit chat with those I had already established an interaction. For example at the Starbucks I would say something to barista. Those interactions were short but broke the ice. Later I went for random people in the street and that was quite awkward. There…

> There was simply not much I could work with (what I thought at the time). This has been my big blocker keeping me from talking to most people. I feel quite adept socially once I get going, but I can usually only get to that point through mutual interests or a solid conversation topic to kick off from. I seem to usually psyche myself out because most starters feels too fake or unsubstantive. Compliments make sense,…

another thing to keep in mind is that

> try to talk to someone > run out of things to talk about > feel awkward or dumb

is not really a bad outcome, physically speaking.

IMO ost people's anxiety about things X is not "fear of X" but rather "fear of fear" or "fear of embarrassment": they'll avoid something because it could go wrong and then... what? what if it goes wrong? nothing physically bad happens except that you're uncomfortable for a moment. But it's your subsequent reaction to the discomfort that is the actual source of the issue, not the discomfort itself. Which is why a lot of progress on anxiety can be made by focusing on the response: find ways of practicing being in the situation and being uncomfortable to a survivable degree such that you can learn to not be averse to the situation and can thus start adapting to it.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#259

Post by pjerem » Mon, May 04, 2026, 3:52 PM UTC

sebastiennight wrote: post #246

TheAtomic wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father gave me this book when I was 12 or 13. It unlocked everything, sort of permission for my teen self to put himself out there. Years later, I've made friends all over the world, some have been in my life for more than 3 decades now, and I continue to make new ones basically by initiating a lot of conversations. I look for something to naturally lean into to start with. For example, I saw a guy in the coffee p…

Would you say the reading level of the book is easy enough for a young kid? Did you struggle at all in reading it?

It's pretty easy to read (but disclaimer : I read the french translation) but it's still nothing more than a list of useful advices on the topic. So the prerequisite is that you have to be interested by the idea of the book in the first place. But if you are, it's nothing more than a big blog post (a good one).

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#260

Post by bananzamba » Mon, May 04, 2026, 3:52 PM UTC

I've started the same, but instead of the gym I go to random meetup events. Which feels easier since most of them are exactly for talking to strangers. Also went bars sometimes with people from the group. I have to get more confident about exchanging contact information though, only did that twice.