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Posted by Looky1173 5 days ago

How to talk to anyone, and why you should(www.theguardian.com)
198 points | 84 commentspage 2
kenty 2 hours ago|
It's indeed pretty interesting how our society has normalized being. what I would say is antisocial by the norms of previous generations in the form of the gen z stare. Funnilly I remember a situation where I got a job offer from somebody from an older generation and I just stood still and stared for 1 minute. Not because I wanted to be disrespectful but because I was processing the information and I was simply so baffled that I forgot the social dance of showing the thinking on my face and doing thinking sounds (if you know you know). This led to the other person holding a lecture on how you should respond that you do not have a response yet but I thinking. I ended up accepting.
divan 1 hour ago||
Does it work in Scandinavian countries?
Telaneo 28 minutes ago|
I can't imagine it would, at least not without some (a lot of) social lube. Even bars might prove hard, since a lot of people there will be the regulars and other fixed groups who probably aren't interested in making friends. If you could join the smokers for a fag that might work out, but that doesn't happen any more since you can't smoke outside public establishments (which is fair, but it does remove a potential social arena).

It's reasonably possible at events. Cars and Coffee works great, since everybody wants to talk about their car. I doubt it will work at the dentist, since nobody really wants to be there in the first place. Maybe if they're wearing a shirt or something you can compliment or ask about and then can use that as a springboard?

If you're the dictionary definition of an extrovert you can probably still make it work, but you'll really stand out, and you'll be rejected a lot.

tl2do 2 hours ago||
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.
majormajor 1 hour ago||
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 and dates so that I could go from "isolated in school, then after going online, low response rate and never more than 1 or 2 dates" to someone in a long-term relationship. And recognizing that sort of "ok there's just not any interest here, move along" signal was definitely relevant there too.

Skills take investment.

My parents didn't give me nearly as many opportunities to practice these skills as they had when they grew up, and pop culture actively encouraged me not to talk to strangers as a kid, so I had to work harder at them as an adult. But it was worth it.

tl2do 1 hour ago||
Is it a matter of skill, or a matter of courage?
reddalo 1 hour ago||
>how exactly does this kind of individual conversation actually help me?

It doesn't. It just helps the speaker.

tl2do 1 hour ago||
That makes me think—why do I enjoy conversations with friends then? What's really the difference between a friend and a stranger? Friends annoy me too, maybe even more often than strangers do.
oDot 2 hours ago||
I find the decay of human connections an interesting problem to solve. I used to have an app that encouraged meeting in person by utilizing friends inviting other friends[0]. This solved many app-problems like correct matching and safety.

Didn't catch on, though. Setting up events turned out to be too prohibitive. If this interests anyone feel free to contact me at contact [at] eventful [dot] is

[0] https://blog.eventful.is/p/the-perfect-dating-app

thrownawaysz 1 hour ago||
or how to get labeled as a creep by every women

joke or not (actually not) but read some women spaces and it's obviously a lot of people, especially women, just want to be let alone. Don't start talking with random people unless they start talking to you and it's consensual, simple as that.

latexr 58 minutes ago||
> or how to get labeled as a creep by every women

If you’re a man and go into it with the mindset of only talking to women, especially attractive ones, then of course that would get you labeled as a creep because it is creep behaviour. That’s not striking up a conversation with strangers, it’s hitting on women. You have to approach anyone equally. Address the attractive woman the same way you approach the old man on the bus stop.

tbossanova 1 hour ago|||
Yeah but if everyone follows that then nobody ever talks to anyone “random” ever. The key is to just not be creepy. Some little low stakes thing that can just end easily if they don’t want to chat. “Such a long wait for this bus. Should have brought a book.” If you get a brief response, fine, end of conversation. Otherwise, then you can chat.
jaapz 1 hour ago|||
> Don't start talking with random people unless they start talking to you

Nobody would talk with anybody if both sides thought like that

medi8r 1 hour ago|||
Common sense applies. If someone is on a run, dont bother them. If you are in a queue I think make a comment is OK if theh respond keep talking.
hresvelgr 1 hour ago||
It's only creepy if you are a creep.
fuzzfactor 2 minutes ago||
That's exactly right, you've got to be an unmistakable gentleman, which is just the opposite.

As everybody knows that's still often not enough, but why shoot yourself in the foot when you're trying to put your best foot forward?

I'll never forget the day some sophisticated gentlemen came to my school and introduced one of their big hit songs that night.

How there's 5 little words so many single women love to hear, "Hey Girl, What's Your Name?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09w6_q0Chxk

If you look at the lyrics it is a bit straightforward for the 21st century, I think the best approach now is to compress it to only 4 words, "Hi, What's Your Name?".

Even that can be a bit much in the wrong situation, so it can be good to seek out the opposite type of situation :)

You might keep that on your mind but from there let things try to imply the rest of the lyrics, especially the part that goes "Can I Be Your Friend?"

5o1ecist 2 hours ago||
Interesting. Not the content itself, but the intention behind it: Improvement of social cohesion.

Hmmmm.

People are compartmentalized into groups hating on each other. They're afraid of committing wrong-think and getting labelled, branded, attacked. They prioritize people who aren't there (online people, like you and myself) over those who are.

It's especially interesting from my perspective, because in Vienna we still have some sort of KaffeeHaus-Kultur. CoffeeHouse culture. You can sit there for hours, reading your book, with a coffee and it does not matter, unless the space is really needed.

It's very common to just chat with whoever runs the place at that moment, too. A sense of familiarity is part of the job. For regulars, like myself, the coffee house turns into a second living room:

We people there started talking to each other.

When I was a teenager, many years ago, I had a coffeehouse for table-soccer. It wasn't a club, or association. It was a coffeehouse with table soccer, with gatherings of players.

...

I guess my tangent meant to point at the need for both general, or specialized, "social hubs", where regularly appearing people silently agree to, eventually, getting talked to.

Not like a club. Clubs are too much commitment, causing resistance.

mannycalavera42 1 hour ago||
a table-soccer coffeehouse, now I know what I want to do in life :)
XorNot 2 hours ago||
You can't simplify it to "people want to hate each other".

The topical issues of today causing strife are not reconcilable when the division is "these are the people we're going to hate".

tumdum_ 2 hours ago||
We are living in a dictatorship of extroverts, who go out of their way (what a suprprise) to tell us that their ways are obviously better.
atultw 1 hour ago|
It's really tiresome. I am happy to have to a conversation if approached, but don't tell me I "should" do the same to others
skirmish 1 hour ago||
I had a recent encounter with a guy in a coffee shop who approached me and wanted to discuss recent sportsball games in great detail. I had no idea what he was talking about, I don't even know the local teams, after living here 30 years. He had no other topics.
gib444 1 hour ago||
I had a friend like that. Soccer soccer soccer. His soccer knowledge was impeccable. But he allowed almost no space in his life for anything else. A kind of addiction. He had no other interests, didn't read about anything else.

There's only so mach a person can take being on the other side of someone like that. We drifted apart...

general_reveal 3 hours ago||
I find the community on Clubhouse understand this better than anyone (well, this is true for Reddit and HN too). Clubhouse especially though because people are bat shit crazy on there and somehow conversations happen. It’s a hidden gem that I think the HN community would enjoy.
aghuang 2 hours ago||
I haven't heard of Clubhouse being mentioned in a long time. Last time I checked, it didn't gain traction after 2021 and never heard of the app being mentioned since then.

Are there people still using the app? If so how are they making money?

chatmasta 2 hours ago||
Clubhouse is still around?!
dewey 2 hours ago|||
That the copyright notice on their site still says "2025" probably says a lot. I was kinda expecting to find an AI pivot when I opened that landing page.
general_reveal 2 hours ago||
For what it’s worth, they are living a AI pivot. TOS just changed so they keep transcripts of all voice and actually pop it into an LLM to subjectively determine your karma points. They are absolutely selling audio data for fine tuning purposes imho, and they are absolutely training on all audio. It’s a AI shovel selling company for sure.
general_reveal 2 hours ago||||
Yes, it’s niche like Slashdot it seems. Good fun, might be worth making an HN room.
mannycalavera42 1 hour ago|||
you cannot sign up without sharing your contact list (lol)
general_reveal 1 hour ago||
It’s a dark pattern. You have to check the box and then click “Don’t allow”. You do not need to share contact or real name or anything.

It’s a good app, I’m not saying the people that run it are good lol.

AntiDyatlov 2 hours ago||
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).

Agingcoder 1 hour ago|
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

paulpauper 1 hour ago||
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.
globular-toast 2 hours ago|
I've had some great conversations with random strangers on public transport and in shops etc. Oddly I'm a complete introvert with quite bad social anxiety and avoid social events like work parties etc. But I like talking to strangers I'll never see again. I think it's partly because I'm not trying to make an impression and I'm not there just to socialise. So it's a bit crap for me that people are withdrawing and not engaging in random chit chat as much. It's so easy to be lonely these days.
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