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Talking to strangers at the gym

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Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#571

Post by SchemaLoad »

anbotero wrote: post #467
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…

Are the examples so outdated?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.

I haven't read it, but I find it hard to believe that good social advice would go out of date. Our brains haven't changed on a fundamental level since then.

If anything, modern social interaction has diverged from what is good for us and what we really want.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#572

Post by rootusrootus »

munificent wrote: post #476
butlike wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's great about neurotic online personalities is that they're all contained within the little box on your lap or in your pocket. You turn it off and they all go away...

> You turn it off and they all go away... They disappear to you , but not to all of the other people who you share a society with who are still staring at their little boxes. And, for better or worse, you still have to live in a world with and share elections with those people too. I agree, completely, that it's good to get offline. But the pervasive societal effects of extremely online psychology can't be solved sim…

One great failure of the Internet was taking the lonely crazies and putting them in the position of building their own community online. Unable to moderate their thoughts by interacting with normal people, now feeding off one another's neuroticism, and spreading it.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#573

Post by trashface »

grunder_advice wrote: post #108

I feel, like a lot of 21st century life is trying to do things artificially. Going to the gym, talking to strangers at the gym, ... these are both artifical replacements for human activity that is missing. You go to the gym because your daily routine isn't active enough. You try to form friendships with strangers because your daily routine lacks real and fulfilling interactions with other people. Also it's kind of od…

For me going to the gym (actually YMCA) is just a way to express agency in a society that increasingly is trying to rob me of that. I may be gatekept out of various other things, because I'm not attractive enough, not high income enough, not smart enough, not young enough, etc etc. But as now, nobody can stop me from going to work out.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#575

Post by nunez »

Good on you for doing that. I did the same thing when I was in college, but in my case, I did it to get better at approaching women.

I made it a goal to talk to at least one woman per day on the train in NYC (hard mode) and say Hi to at least three.

I don't remember how long I kept this up for; I want to say I did this for three months, but it might have been shorter.

Like you, some people wanted nothing to do with me while others were down to chat.

While this made it easier for me to make the first move, it helped me massively at starting and keeping up conversations with anyone about nearly anything. This is probably a large reason why I'm in tech sales these days.

That being said, this didn't change my default personality. I'm still very introverted, very comfortable with hanging out by myself, have trouble not taking rejection personally (though I'm much better at this than I was back then), and, most importantly, absolutely hate talking to people at the gym, almost all of the time!

(My workouts are 90-120 minutes long on most days, which is a huge chunk of time that I'd rather spend coding, working or catching up on HN/Reddit. I immediately think of how much time I'm sacrificing whenever I'm approached at the gym and stonewall. I'm also like this on airplanes. The joys of constantly feeling behind and stressed for time!)

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#576

Post by calf »

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.

Then that's a fallacious argument on several levels, e.g. because as the reader I am also a human who can tell, and so on.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#577

Post by JSR_FDED »

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…

Say "I'm about to have coffee, so that's good :-) "

Alternately, instead of trying to prepare for every possible answer, you can constrain the possible replies significantly by being the one who asks the question in the first place. "How's your day going?" is only ever going to get some variation of "good" or "bad". You only need to respond with "great to hear that", or "sorrt to hear that, hope it improves soon". That's it.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#578

Post by xyzelement »

cromka wrote: post #537
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,…

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.

I am curious what it was that made you say this.

In general I am of the opinion that a happy woman is a happy woman and that this doesn't look fundamentally different in 2026 than it did in 1926.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#579

Post by cpfohl »

matwood wrote: post #363
cpfohl wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how true that is...I'm not clear if the modern workplace has ever been the primary source of relationships. Places of worship, community spaces like libraries/clubs - sure...but I had to develop these skills years before I moved to remote work.

According to Google some 20% of marriages began at work, and some 50% of people say they have a close friend at work. IDK about it being a primary source, but it's definitely an important one. And it makes sense when people are around each other all day.

[dead]

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#580

Post by salad-tycoon »

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,…

I read it as a socially awkward but very bookish very young teen. My one quote summary is “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” I never became Mr. Popular but found it very helpful in trying to understand somethings that were unobtainable for me at the time.

I need to read it again, I think about it a few handful of times a year, many years later.

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