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Posted by Looky1173 19 hours ago

How to talk to anyone and why you should(www.theguardian.com)
549 points | 505 commentspage 4
cal_dent 1 day ago|
Also, one thing not mentioned in the article is that, structurally, some of this is a consequence of a growing sense that we live in a low trust society. I don't necessarily think that is true in the small/local sense for many people, but a lot of the media we consume and talk about highlights that so much of society is untrustworthy and that forces many people to close themselves up as a completely rational way of protecting themselves.

I hope more and more people do not continue to believe that, there is so much good out there in the world and we all have to engage it or we're just letting the low trust side win and life becomes a lot less because of that. Everyone already into chatting for chatting sake now and then, please continue to do so. You're doing a world a huge service. The rest not, come join us, the water feels great!

spaqin 22 hours ago||
Low trust is easier to sell for, to try to fill in the hole you might have without enough meaningful social interactions; it's easier to market when you don't have anyone in your close circle to talk you out of spending money unnecessarily. It's easier to manipulate when you don't have enough contacts with others to band together against a common enemy.

The dangers of daily life, while real in some way, have been over-represented in the media, and now we're given the tools to completely avoid them. Whether on purpose or not (bad news sell much better than good news, after all), these are the consequences we're just seeing.

johnnyanmac 1 day ago||
>some of this is a consequence of a growing sense that we live in a low trust society.

Exactly. YMMV but that is 100% true in many urban areas. Too many people leads to less meaningful connections. I imagine much of this community lies in those urban hotspots.

>I hope more and more people do not continue to believe that

it's going to continue. Low trust societies are a structural issue, and I see little initiative to fix it. People constantly need to move around due to rising costs of living, there's no commmunity hubs, third places, frequently meeting clubs, etc. to build such community. Work hours are creeping up while compensation and stability is going down. Where would you find the time to meet up?

It's all an economic issue at the end of the day. There's a part of the equation where we don't "need" to work with as many people anymore to get by. But for he most part, it's very similar to the walk-ability issue in the US. There won't be some mass change all at once, but people take cues and change heir habits around heir environment.

For my environment, I'm a night owl and everything in my town is closed by 8pm or so. I don't like the loud environments of bars. So there's nowhere for me to really go.

cal_dent 20 hours ago||
I hope you're wrong and I think you're being a little defeatist in the assessment of "Little initiative to fix it". But to each is own. From the communities have stayed in, in different places around the world, I find that is not the case and there is still a high trust society in place locally. It's everywhere else outside that that people tend to view as low trust. I always end up thinking to myself that but there's no true way to actually know that everywhere else is low trust when you're not actually there, they're just fighting shadows.

A very particular case is London, which if you live on the internet you would think is some sort of hellscape where everyone is going to stab you or steal your phone on a bike if you dont run between safe spot to safe spot with eyes on your bike. But I've lived there for many years, still have friends there and visit regularly and that is so far from daily life that it is bizarrely amusing that people think that

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

It doesn't. It just helps the speaker.

tl2do 1 day 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.
cykros 11 hours ago||
I've talked to random people.

Most of them are unbearably boring, and they need to resort to alcohol and professional sports just to have anything to talk about in the first place.

Bring up ECDSA and suddenly you may as well have just beamed down from a spaceship.

DarkNova6 11 hours ago||
Yeah... it's difficult enough to find engaging conversations with people I do know. If you want to talk for the sake of talking, there won't be a shortage of possibilities. And if you are sociable enough, people will do so.

But outside of these parameters? It's very slim picking.

vibedev 10 hours ago|||
Lol is this why you have thought about mentioning it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47214367
jadenzaleski 11 hours ago|||
This is the funniest thing I have heard all day today thank you for this.
maplant 10 hours ago|||
Talk about Poe's law.

I know what ECDSA is and if you brought it up in a random conversation unprompted I'd try to find your spaceship so I could escape the conversation on it.

vibedev 10 hours ago||
Would making it less random works? Like declaring your preferred topic or at least screen your audience based on their drinking habits.
est 19 hours ago||
I used to avoid talking to people because it always turns out to be an argument

Later I realized this is wrong on my part, talking is all about talking, let the vibe continue and don't let it die.

basilikum 8 hours ago|
The only way to win an argument is to avoid it.

Also let the other person do most of the talking.

jccalhoun 9 hours ago||
I'm kind of a misnthrope. I don't know my neighbors and I don't want to. I bought my current house in part because it has a fence around it. I wear earbuds in the store so random people don't try to talk to me (I'm also tall so I get people asking me to get things down for them somewhat often). I teach college so I guess I get enough interaction with strangers from having new students every semester.
basilikum 8 hours ago|
Yet you felt the need to write exactly that to no one but total strangers on the internet without getting anything immediately out of it other than other people reading it.
boilerupnc 13 hours ago||
My personal philosophy has always been that “everyone has at least ONE good story to share.” Everyone. Best way to discover these gems is to talk with anyone as when the mood suits you. I’m a richer person for the stories that I’ve been honored to hear.
Hamster7330 1 day ago|||
I was at a conference recently and I went to a meetup session that the organizers put through and I was so anxious that I took a lapel pin and left immediately :( I knew about my social anxiety but never saw it first hand as such. I am so bad in networking with people.
Vibeguy900 6 hours ago||
I have always found it helpful to try and put yourself in the other person's shoes to look at the situation. makes it easier to connect IMO
hoppp 1 day ago||
I have autism so talking with people can get difficult as we have different communication styles and message decoding systems.

Even when people seem nice I generally keep a distance as I have to analyse them slowly instead of relying on social cues. I do pick up cues but processing them is not subconscious. My subconscious is not as generative and acts more like a buffer for conversation, so all the talking I do subconsciously has to be placed there beforehand instead of generating it with subconscious heuristics.

matparker24 8 hours ago|
I don't know if anyone follows Jefferson Fisher on ig but his content on how to communicate has always resonated with me as someone who struggles with meeting new people. It's been especially helpful since I've recently moved to a new city.
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