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Talking to strangers at the gym

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Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#451

Post by stewx »

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…

Read the book. It's good. I have almost finished it and the biggest criticisms you could make of it, IMO, are "this is all just common sense!" or that the techniques, which are all essentially about treating people well and trying to understand their perspectives, could be abused by unscrupulous people.

The idea that the teachings could be misused frankly says more about the cynicism of the book's critics than the actual content of the book.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#452

Post by KingFelix »

dweekly wrote: post #415
nozzlegear wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. FWIW this book came out in the 1930s, long before "red pilling" was a thing. I've read it before and it's not about manipulating people unless you consider being a genuinely sincere person to be manipulative in some way. It's a good book, if a little outdated, and,…

My read on the book was "humans are really good at telling if you genuinely care about them or not and will respond well to that, so you should genuinely care about the people around you, and good things will result from that overall, especially if you're not super mercenary about it." Bill & Ted said it most pithily: be excellent to each other.

Great quote choice!

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#453

Post by watwut »

hlynurd wrote: post #290
windowshopping wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in the same boat as you before I heard enough good things about it that I checked it out. After all, if it was really bad, I would be able to tell as much and stop reading it, nothing lost. I can confirm it's really good. It's not manipulative at all. The book can large be summed up as "if you want other people to care about you and your desires, you need to care about them and theirs and SHOW them that this is…

> "if you want other people to care about you and your desires, you need to care about them and theirs and SHOW them that this is the case: here's how." Isn't this highly manipulative?

And it does not work for the given goal. People will lile telling you about them, but that wont imply they will ve interested in your stuff.

It will be one sided.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#454

Post by stuxnet79 »

parliament32 wrote: post #317
ryandrake wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also it's kind of odd how nowadays everyone goes to the gym. Growing up as a late-stage millenial, gym goers were a niche subculture. Now it marketed to everyone everywhere as this integral part of modern daily life. GenX here and I feel the same way. To me, "The Gym" has always been a place where bodybuilders and muscle heads go. In my mind, it will always be a niche hobby like autocross racing or horseback riding…

I think it's because the general public figured out they'll die in their 50s if they don't. Modern life is too easy -- a substantial portion of the population spends their white-collar lives flying a desk, "socializing" via sitting around eating and drinking, hiring people to do their landscaping and housework.. hell, you don't even need to walk to get food anymore, both restaurant meals and groceries are delivered.…

> For health it's pretty much a non-negotiable to go do some strenuous activity every other day, and going to the gym is the path of least resistance to getting that done

You are right, but the reason it's so prevalent is also because it is better for capitalism. Going to the gym isn't just a 1-off activity, it's an entire lifestyle & it doesn't necessarily come cheap. You need a membership, specialized gear, lessons, switch your consumption habits to high protein foods ... etc

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#455

Post by PUSH_AX »

tylerc230 wrote: post #404
helterskelter wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah. I'm ADHD and I used to be terrible about remembering people's names -- like, their names didn't even register and I couldn't tell you what it was 30 seconds later. It wasn't that I didn't care about the person, it was just that their name would never stick. Anyway, I finally made enough people feel bad and embarrassed myself enough that I started compensating and made a point to remember basically everybody's na…

A trick I learned is to picture their name written across their forehead (visualize each letter). It works pretty well.

Mine is to associate them with a famous person or character of the same name, and make a point of refreshing their name in my mind soon after meeting, and then more later. it’s not perfect but name retention went through the roof for me.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#456

Post by hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm »

Please don't let Reddit warp your perception of reality. It is just a corner of the web full of awkward and negative people (and bots these days). In real life, there is always people socialising at gyms, especially small ones, even received a random compliment a couple of weeks ago by someone I never met.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#458

Post by astro-lizard »

TFNA wrote: post #368
brushfoot wrote: post #47

Wonderful! There's a lot of advice online about how essentially evil it is to talk to strangers: They're busy, they have headphones in, they might think you're hitting on them (God forbid; nothing could be more evil than attraction). Ignore it. It often as not boils down to fear and neuroticism from terminally online introverts (and sometimes plain old misanthropists) raised in a hyper-individualist culture and glued…

> they might think you're hitting on them (God forbid; nothing could be more evil than attraction) You can find legions of people, particularly women, who do not want to be hit on unless they already find the other person attractive. Being hit on by an unattractive person may even quality for them as something akin to danger, already along the spectrum towards stalking or assault. Has nothing to do with being termina…

I am a woman, height is on the shorter side. I want to add my thoughts around this phenomena.

Oftentimes, a stranger coming up to you on the street spells danger, it has nothing to do with how attractive or unattractive they are.

It's hard to explain if you've never been in a woman's shoes, but you feel like prey. A chance conversation can quickly turn into a decades-long stalking event, one never knows. Unwanted attention for women can feel really dangerous, I have often been catcalled/followed when not with my husband (which is infuriating as an adult woman), and have been followed/catcalled on the street from the moment I turned 14, which you can imagine makes strangers coming up to on the street feel loaded.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#459

Post by Slow_Hand »

xp84 wrote: post #311
drivers99 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You’re for sure right about the name thing. It’s so hard to resist commenting on names for a lot of people, I think, due to the extreme asymmetry of novelty. When you meet someone named Michael Jackson, that’s such novel information to you: “there’s a guy right here in front of me who is named the same thing as a famous musician!” Meanwhile, from Michael’s perspective, they’ve been named Michael Jackson and getting c…

I had a friend named Michael Jackson who went by a different first name. I didn't even know until several years later when he showed a group of us his drivers license and accidentally outed himself.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#460

Post by Night_Thastus »

twic wrote: post #333
wordpressed wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying this is you, but i've also ran into a lot of those people, almost always men, often in their late 30s or 40s, going around talking to everyone cracking jokes and thinking they're the live of the party, while everyone else is just silently annoyed by them.

Intelligence is knowing how to talk to anyone. Wisdom is knowing not to.

Humans are social creatures. We need socialization. It also helps keep us sharp mentally.

You also never know what you might experience from talking to someone. You may make a life-long friend. Or learn about something you didn't know.

It doesn't mean blab about things you shouldn't, being insensitive, etc - but isolation is not the answer.

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