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How to talk to anyone and why you should

theguardian.com

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Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should

#81

Post by paulpauper »

Agingcoder wrote: post #45
AntiDyatlov wrote: post #33

Man, talking to strangers in random places just feels socially uncalibrated to me, like I'm being retarded. The first time I across that idea was in the form of "cold approach", the idea of trying to score a date from a woman you see while out and about. I wonder if anyone who did this had to start from a baseline of feeling this is straight up weird (I'm pretty sure it is weird in my culture).

This is very different Most random encounters have a pretext, from smoking a cigarette to talking to the shopkeeper, or being in a queue for a long time. Talking to a woman ( esp given that many of them are harassed from what I understand from my female friends ) without any reason to is much harder

Cold approaches worked better before social media and smartphones . now your awkward encounters can live forever online and cause humiliation for years to come , or some stranger looking for clout may step in. This is has become so common now , because everyone wants to be a hero.

Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should

#82

Post by tl2do »

majormajor wrote: post #64
tl2do wrote: post #38

I agree that expanding communication with strangers is important. But starting with "Do you mind if I sit here? Or did you want to be alone with your thoughts?" and then continuing a conversation for 10+ minutes is a real struggle for me. Sometimes I even wonder—how exactly does this kind of individual conversation actually help me? Maybe this is just me.

Yeah it'll be hard. But with a lot of practice it'll get easier. I think part of the practice is recognizing "they don't want me to continue this conversation" and bailing, vs trying to force every interaction to be a deeper conversation. I never practiced "idle conversation with a complete stranger" like that because I was lazy. But I did practice making normal, non-sexual, conversation with women on dating sites an…

Is it a matter of skill, or a matter of courage?

Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should

#83

Post by saaaaaam »

hluska wrote: post #46
parineum wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She couldn’t understand when I said that would take all the pleasure out of it, because talking to people would become transactional rather than joyous. It doesn't have to and I suspect that's why your colleague suggested it. Politicians act that way because that's what people want except they don't want someone who is acting. You have what politicians pretend to have because it makes people like them. You might be…

Hey bud, with all due respect, you’re arguing against who someone believes they are.

Hold on… what do I believe I am?!

Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should

#84

Post by vedaba »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #11

After a bad breakup in 2015, I followed some advice from the socialskills subreddit to “talk to everyone” so that you get better at talking to women you might want to date. The advice was not to only talk to attractive people but everyone. The old man reading a Russian newspaper, the kid on bike doing tricks, people in the elevator. I do that now and it brings me a lot of joy. Recently while leaving a botanical garde…

Until you run into an A-hole whose response ruins the rest of your day when you were just trying to be sociable. I could even see getting physically assaulted for trying to talk to the wrong stranger. I like where your heart is at, unfortunately many people out there are not deserving of it.

Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should

#85

Post by saaaaaam »

rootusrootus wrote: post #44
saaaaaam wrote: post #24

I talk to everyone. My friends and family joke that it’s impossible for me to go anywhere without getting into conversation with someone. I can’t imagine not doing it. Earlier this year I walked down the main shopping street it the part of the large city where I live, with a colleague from out of town. A few shopkeepers waved through their windows as I went past, the greengrocer came out of his shop to have a quick c…

> talking to people would become transactional rather than joyous Only if you let it! I am guessing you would do well, because people can absolutely tell when you are being a smarmy politician and when you're actually a legitimately friendly, decent person.

I’ve got a terrible poker face. People would instantly rumble me. So as soon as I had to talk to someone with politician face it would all go wrong.

Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should

#86

Post by h4kunamata »

In a world full of shallow people and AI here and there, people cannot hold deep talks anymore. You can still talk with anyone but going out specifically to talk with anyone??? Yeah, that ain't happening.

It gives me anxiety lmao you will have better time with hobbies.

Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should

#87

Post by paulpauper »

beached_whale wrote: post #21
r17n wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this. I know I struggle with "I don't want to bother this person". How do you deal with that?

I think that it comes down to that people often like to talk about their interests but worry that the recipient may not be. So we end up with two people who want to talk but worried about the others feelings.

Then just disengage the conversation when this happens

Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should

#89

Post by deanmoriarty »

baxtr wrote: post #32
r17n wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this. I know I struggle with "I don't want to bother this person". How do you deal with that?

Do you get bothered when someone talks to you in a nice fashion?

I genuinely get bothered when someone talks to me. I am typically rushing through my day to do stuff, whether it is hiking, grocery shopping, working out, or going to the restroom at work, and getting interrupted feels to me like getting an unwanted push notification on your phone.

When someone occasionally engages, I extremely quickly dismiss them in the most polite, but firm, way possible. I also intentionally keep a demeanor that generally signals I’m not open to random conversations (I avoid eye contact etc.), but that often doesn’t work. At the gym it is particularly problematic, I’m focusing on gathering strength for my next set and sometimes people bother you even if I am wearing headphones.

I truly do not have a problem with who I am, I’m comfortable in my shoes.

As such, never in a million years I would approach a stranger to strike up a conversation, it would seem an incredibly rude thing to do towards them, on top of clearly not having any desire to engage from my side.

I’ll talk for hours straight to my wife, close family and the very few friends I have though!

Re: How to talk to anyone and why you should

#90

Post by B-Con »

danielodievich wrote: post #10

My recently deceased mother had a talent for talking to anyone at any time in any language. She's always been incredibly social and could establish connections with strangers very rapidly. One time she brought in a school teacher/sheep farmer from Dagestan selling yarn from his sheep's wool, she met him at the market and bought all yarn and asked if he had somewhere to stay before going back, and he didn't. He stayed…

> I've had to spend week and a half battling Gmail daily email account limits sending batches of 500 emails just to notify people in her address book, receiving hundreds of responses. Her memorial was attended by hundreds of people.

I love this story, because I had the same experience. When my dad passed, I had the same 500 email limitation, and had to send out multiple waves of emails through Gmail. He was loved by so many people!

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