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How to stop being boring

joanwestenberg.com

21–30 of 116 posts

Re: How to stop being boring

#21
post #8

>"Somewhere along the way, too many of us learned to sand off our weird edges, to preemptively remove anything that might make someone uncomfortable or make us seem difficult to be around." As an adult you learn that showing your true self can be dangerous in an environment where you don't know who can be trusted. We don't get the allowance of children to be weird or awkward. Others are gunning for us, and looking fo…

Well said, this was similar to what I was thinking while reading this. Acting in a completely unfiltered way can get you into fights, arrested, or worse.

Re: How to stop being boring

#23
post #8

>"Somewhere along the way, too many of us learned to sand off our weird edges, to preemptively remove anything that might make someone uncomfortable or make us seem difficult to be around." As an adult you learn that showing your true self can be dangerous in an environment where you don't know who can be trusted. We don't get the allowance of children to be weird or awkward. Others are gunning for us, and looking fo…

Dangerous how? You can simply...not care. Unless it's a context with a minimum required codex such as work. But in your relationships, if you want to have meaningful ones, you need to find those where you can be yourself. It's better to have 1 or 2 true friends (hell, most people don't have that many, you're lucky if you do) than knowing and being popular among dozens for a filtered/fake persona you built so others l…

Doesn't almost every situation have a minimum required codex? Sure, you should be yourself with your friends. But if they are already your friends, then you are likely already interesting enough. I thought the article was more about how to be interesting to people who don't already know you.

Re: How to stop being boring

#24

I see an analogy to the notoriously difficult-to-implement recommendation of "just be yourself. Be natural. Relax." We all (except children generally) wear masks. Sometimes the same mask we've been wearing since teenager-hood. It's unclear what's left under the mask.

I guess more masks but some masks fit better I suppose.

Re: How to stop being boring

#26
I've been having this conversation with some of the children in my life. They frequently refer to a subset of their peers as "boring" and I bristle ever time I hear it. I try to suggest that other people are not here for our entertainment and therefore deciding that they are boring is to misunderstand the relationship. As you might imagine, the suggestion is not sinking in.

Re: How to stop being boring

#27
post #16

I'd lump this in with so much other inspirational advice (e.g. "Dance like nobody is watching! Love like you've never been hurt!") that is well-intended but hugely impractical. I think there are finely-tuned social algorithms that we innately follow. For example when meeting somebody we often perform the progressive self-disclosure algorithm in an attempt to find mutual talking points, so maybe yeah you say that you'…

When you put it that way; I guess after some reflection, I realize my algorithm is optimized for efficiency and I immediately try to hone in on strong agreements or disagreements in taste/politics/etc. so that I don't waste my time getting to know a shitty person, or miss out on a potential best friend.

These means engaging in a level of provocative speech/behavior that sometimes makes people uncomfortable (not my problem of course; I have little interest in euphemism or politeness, my energy goes toward transparency and kindness)

Progressive self-disclosure can have its uses but if I can't break the ice in two minutes with a stranger, it's not a good sign for our compatibility.

Now, I did grow up in an environment where I was never really allowed to exist. I am an atheist raised by an hyper-abusive, hyper-religious, ex-boxer Catholic deacon in an extremely conservative part of the United States. The police were at my house every couple of weeks. So this may have influenced my comfort with radical transparency; I had to learn at a young age to literally fight constantly for my right to think my own way, and I'm ready to do that at any time.

But I have definitely been in some neighborhoods where the most interaction you should have with a stranger is a nod of the head, anything more is asking for trouble no matter who you are. I can vouch that there are harsh urban environments which prevent, by design, even progressive disclosure from being a safe option. This effectively kills any chance at real unity in the community, and drives up crime statistics, further justifying the continued disunification tactics.

It would be cool to catalog, categorize and analyze these kinds of social algorithms. It seems like an interesting cross-disciplinary field, involving psychology, sociology, game theory, cultural anthropology, etc.

Re: How to stop being boring

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boring, not bored.

The author seems more about authenticity than boring-ness. And using the label boring vs bored, it comes to a similar outcome. If I say, that guy is boring, he's inauthentic/poser/wanna-be, in my opinion I've failed that interaction. I am not engaging with him, I label him too mundane. Yet, every person has genuine authenticity and need for connection, if you're attentive and patient enough to see it. If you go aroun…

"he's inauthentic/poser/wanna-be"

There is an issue with these folks though. They quite often are hyper-gatekeepers because of their own insecurity about not being "legit." They tend to be over-critical and thus quite tedious (& socially precarious) to talk to.

Re: How to stop being boring

#29
Fear of being called pretentious has caused people to self-defensively amputate their organs of taste and discernment. They select from among the available consumer choices to build their identity instead.

What the author mistakes as interestingness is the courage to develop and render judgement, and a resolve to live a life built from the consequences of doing so.

Re: How to stop being boring

#30
I don't agree that personal styles of weirdness are a desirable social style. I agree that bland dinner-party persona is oversubscribed. I agree that quitting hobbies from social pressure is needless self-erasure. My take is that we need a both-and answer.

To consider an extreme obvious counter-example, think of a cross-cultural situation where social conventions vary widely and adjustment is needed, and then consider that we all hail from our own microcultures with their own customs and expectations.

The real balance to achieve is being who we are in a way that doesn't alienate others. Fully accepting both self and other.

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