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Talking to strangers at the gym

thienantran.com

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Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#531

Post by kshacker »

Gosh, I was guilty on this account just an hour ago.

I just came back from a midday walk in my neighborhood. Headphones on, walking along, when I hear someone call out — I don't quite catch what. I turn around, and there's a neighbor with a kid (not my street, so I don't know her), but she's from my community. At first I thought she was teaching the toddler — maybe 2 years old — how to say hello. So I'm just standing there, nonplussed. She repeats the greeting. I'm still confused about whether she's talking to me or demonstrating for the kid. Finally, a little louder: "I was just saying hello" — except she used the greeting from our community. It finally clicks, I laugh, and say "oh yeah, same to you."

I probably would have handled it differently if I hadn't had headphones in, or if I'd been more present, or just more socially aware from my early days. Still thinking about it and then I saw this thread.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#533

Post by jliptzin »

I just assume any guy trying to make small talk with me at the gym is trying to hit on me, which I am correct about maybe 80% of the time. I know because I am a gay guy so I know how this kind of thing goes. Not that I have a problem with it, I am always happy to talk to any strangers if they want to, for pretty much any reason. As a straight-passing guy though, women at the gym never approach me except to ask if I am done using a machine, and I also don’t approach them because I assume they’ll just think I’m trying to hit on them. I’m just unsure how to approach people at the gym while making it immediately clear that I am just looking for a friend/workout buddy and not anything more than that

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#534

Post by kshacker »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #164
yakkomajuri wrote: post #137

I can definitely relate. What's funny is I've always been really social and open to talking to strangers, plus I come from a culture where this is accepted and encouraged (Brazil). However, I've been working remotely for 7 years now and recently became a solo founder, and I realized I'm having a fair amount of social anxiety. At the previous two companies, I was working remotely but still had people online to chat to…

Remote work is absolutely brutal to a cohesive functioning society. I know people are going to slam me for saying it but is honestly true. People forgot how to interact with each other because the forcing function that gets everybody mixed together into the same pot got taken away. And if you don’t take some fairly extreme steps to counter it, you’ll be completely alone and isolated, subject to algorithmically chosen…

I agree. I have been fully remote for a bit over 2 years, and I myself feel a change. In the early days I had a managerial role so I felt the need to visit office and deal with employees, colleagues and customers. Office is 5 miles so not too far, I just avoid going as my family health issues may require my intervention. Now that I am an IC, and the health issues are not sorted, my visits have reduced, and I think it is slowly changing me for the worse - in terms of discipline, social interactions and even productivity which you think would be higher from home. Thankfully though I am starting to recognize some of the patterns and working to fix them but you can fix productivity, you can not fix lack of socialization.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#535

Post by b65e8bee43c2ed0 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #463
b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

city life a hundred and a thousand years ago was entirely unlike city life now.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#536

Post by nozzlegear »

nozzlegear wrote: post #421
komali2 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the stories / aphorisms refer to things that just like, don't exist anymore.

Yeah, that's what I meant by it being outdated. He uses a lot of examples and aphorisms from the 1930s, which sometimes come off as a little bit quaint or folksy almost 100 years later. I'll also mention that the book was written for men "influencing" other men; any reference to women in the book is usually in the context of them being objects that should be managed using the author's techniques.

I'm not sure why this would be downvoted. I hope that people consider treating women like objects to be outdated and problematic.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#537

Post by cromka »

nozzlegear wrote: post #112
alexmuresan wrote: post #98

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. 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…

> 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,…

Agreed. Although speaking from the memory, the chapter on keeping wife happy is best not taken literally in modern day and age. It dated considerably, considering how women are way independent nowadays, even if at the time it was relevant.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#538

Post by unholiness »

tines wrote: post #510
cj wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone that asks how you are doing, answer honestly! Or with something slightly unexpected or easy for the other person to engage with or laugh at. “Hi, How are you?” “Well I woke up this morning and stepped on my dog’s tail by accident. He was not happy with me, but we’re all good now - how about you?”

The issue for me is that I seem to really "page out" parts of my life that aren't relevant to the situation I'm in. If I were to sincerely answer the "how are you" question, I would have to pause for ten or twenty seconds to think about how I am, which obviously doesn't fit the interaction. Any tips on how to avoid this? I'm a chronic over-preparer and I've tried to equip myself with answers to every conceivable ques…

I think the answer is practice, for a few reasons. One is obvious: conversation is a skill. Just like a novice chess player can spend 5 seconds figuring out which squares the knight can move to while an intermediate player spots a fork to force trading a strong bishop or exposing an overworked queen, exposure to similar situations rewires your brain to work faster in those situations.

Another reason, though, is to me one of the main benefits of social interaction in the first place: The brain rewiring also makes you think about what other people would think, want to hear, say to you, etc, even when they're not around. That sure can give you better answers in conversations, but more importantly, I think this is just genuinely a nice way for the brain to be. In the same way that dogs are happy playing fetch, humans are happy living with other people in mind. Maybe because it feels like not everything is your responsibility, or that you worry less about what you should be doing, or that you look forward to laughing about disasters later... I'm not entirely sure. Whatever it is, it's nicer than the alternative.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#540

Post by silisili »

TheAtomic wrote: post #157
alexmuresan wrote: post #98

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. 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…

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…

> The other thing I do is keep it soft focused on them, 100%, until they ask me about me.

This is the big one. People like to talk about themselves, and often use others' stories to segue it into something about themselves.

I realized at some point if you can avoid doing that, and instead commit yourself to investing in a person's story - ask questions, make comments, etc, they'll think the world of you and often won't even realize why.

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