I don't go to the gym much but that is one place where I would be VERY careful trying to strike up a confirmation and heaven forbid tapping someone on the shoulder.
Talking to strangers at the gym
461–470 of 810 posts
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#462Charming! Reminded me of "Naive. Super" by Erlend Loe, which I loved.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#463Earlier quoted context omitted.
Village life isnt for everyone but what you’re describing here isn’t even remotely the same thing as the discussion we’re having about being friendly towards strangers. If you need to introduce yourself, then you clearly don’t live in a village where everyone knows your name. ;)
I was just pointing out what the pre-modern life was like.
No. You're pointing out what small-village life is like. There's plenty of villages that are still like this (I lived in one until recently). And your comment implies that cities are a relatively new phenomena despite the fact that most cities are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#464This reminds me of a college dorm friend who always seemed to be on a date with someone new.
His philosophy was simple: “It’s the law of large numbers. If you ask enough people out, and don’t fear rejection, you’re eventually going to get a yes. And along the way, you build the confidence and skill to ask better.”
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#465Wonderful! 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…
I find it so bitterly ironic that the people whose opinions we read the most of - the terminally online Redditors and tweeters - are exactly the kind of people we should not be listening to. Like you alluded to, the terminally online people who post the most tend to be those with neuroticism, isolation, severe anxiety, etc. There's a famous Reddit post about this I can't seem to find - "Everyone Online Is Insane" or…
It's true but then again, for most things, the correct answer is somewhere there, amongst the BS, so if you have a good BS detector and want some ideas, you could do worse. You can't outsource the part where you see for yourself if stuff works, and form your own opinions.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#466I 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.
Yeah this is what I like to do. I don’t like to talk to strangers (maybe I should) but I much prefer striking up conversations with old acquaintances, even if we hadn’t talked in years. It somehow felt easier and more satisfying for me to pick up an old acquaintanceship than to try to make new friends.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#467One 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…
Are the examples so outdated? I see multiples comments/reviews (here and on the Internet) about the book not being made for modern people/society, but what you pasted looks fine to me.
Sure, there may be cultures where making comments of people out of the blue might not be seen as normal, but almost everywhere I've gone in this world allows for comments like these.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#468One 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…
> One of the things I like about this is that OP is giving people genuine compliments without any particular agenda. IMHO that is as fake as a car salesman. Mature, cultured people will say thank you and think " what a nuisance ". I prefer being open about my motives. Smart people appreciate truth over compliments. And if the dumb/immature get offended, good riddance. I used to be a big fan of HtWFaIP, but eventually…
> Mature, cultured people will say thank you and think "what a nuisance".
It seems like the word you're looking for is "conceited", and it's a great candidate for traits one should attempt to extinguish in themselves.
If your true motives aren't kind and aren't requested, then those are great candidates to be kept inside, especially during random interactions in third-spaces
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#469I don't go to the gym much but that is one place where I would be VERY careful trying to strike up a confirmation and heaven forbid tapping someone on the shoulder.
This person took a different attitude toward it and it was fine. Do you know someone who was attacked for interrupting a set or something?
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#470Around 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,…
Just talk to them as if they were already your friend. Most of what you talk about with friends isn't just mutual interests and you start conversations with them all the time.