161–170 of 584 posts
I usually avoid strangers, because those who talk to you are usually weirdos. Thing is, if normal people don't talk to strangers anymore, then only the weirdos are left, reinforcing the idea that only weirdos talk to strangers...
+1 In any major city it's probably 90% chance they're either a crook trying to scam you out of something or mentally not quite right. The remaining 10% will be tourists or people from outside of the major city.
I talk to everyone. My friends and family joke that it’s impossible for me to go anywhere without getting into conversation with someone. I can’t imagine not doing it. Earlier this year I walked down the main shopping street it the part of the large city where I live, with a colleague from out of town. A few shopkeepers waved through their windows as I went past, the greengrocer came out of his shop to have a quick c…
> She couldn’t understand when I said that would take all the pleasure out of it, because talking to people would become transactional rather than joyous. It doesn't have to and I suspect that's why your colleague suggested it. Politicians act that way because that's what people want except they don't want someone who is acting. You have what politicians pretend to have because it makes people like them. You might be…
It doesn't take the pleasure out of it, it doesn't make it transactional. It just gives them incredible job fulfillment, at least in that part of it.
Bill Clinton was famous for this. It was incredibly frustrating to his staff because he was constantly late for his next event, because he always wanted to keep talking to the people he'd just met. They'd have to build in buffer time to plan around it, because otherwise it wound up disrupting his schedule and logistics too much.
After 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…
When I was staying with my older brothers, one of their magazines was along the lines of maybe a GQ but in the 90’s, iirc I was probably in middle school, and probably reading content a bit above my age level in terms of concept. One of their articles though was about “talking to women” but it also emphasized just talking to _anyone_. It had suggestions like “if you’re out at the bar, just ask to sit with a random gr…
People need to feel like it's safe to develop relations with you, rather than like you're trying to manipulate them into doing so, which is what happens when you learn only from very hard failures.
We are living in a dictatorship of extroverts, who go out of their way (what a suprprise) to tell us that their ways are obviously better.
We've completely normalized being a shut-in to the point where your take, that it's authoritarian to push people out into the world and engage others, is quite common. What now passes for 'extroverted' used to be known as the human condition. Even extroverts today probably have fewer friends, smaller families and spend more time isolated and on screens than 99% of humanity.
Glad to see this here. Age-wise I'm in the oldest 10% of users here, maybe 5%. I have noticed over the years the eroding of the ability of young people (20s basically) to interact in what I consider normal social situations. Talking to your fellow humans in all sorts of situations is how you can form actual knowledge within yourself derived from direct observation. Everything else is a filter and synthesis. How can y…
Why does the majority of people just assume people want to communicate... I have not read the article and never am going to. This headline premise alone of doing that will destroy any sanity I have. I do not, ever, want to talk you as a standard and you should never force that to me.
They don’t. If they did they wouldn’t have an issue striking up a conversation with strangers, but they clearly do.
> I have not read the article and never am going to.
If you don’t know what it says, it might be wise to not be negative about it.
> I do not, ever, want to talk you as a standard and you should never force that to me.
The article isn’t suggesting anyone force anything. Quite the contrary, it advocates for respecting boundaries and even suggests how to communicate your own.