I’m pretty much like that. My memory works from the generic towards the details, and has trouble recalling them without a way of getting there.
I have a great amount of interesting stories to tell, but when people prompt me for examples I often blank and give general answers like these. That’s often taken as that I don’t have anything interesting to share (or don’t want to), but if you ask me follow up questions I’ll recall more and more and make connections to other topics.
A friend of mine is the opposite, they can say “I’ll have to tell you about my weekend…” and then talk 5 minutes nonstop, whereas with me it’s more like a constant stream of exchanging thoughts back and forth.
In my experience, people of both conversation styles usually tend to stay among their own and don’t mingle a lot, because it can be hard to combine them. But it’s like most differences, it can be made work by exposure and mutual respect.
Hey, literally everyone in these comments, stop it, it’s just a joke.
That’s literally what comments are for though
See, that’s not how to hold a conversation.
The essence to holding a conversation is to show interest in the topic. There are two ways this is done:
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If you have familiarity (whether vague or intimate) with the topic, engage in it and share your own views and experiences.
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If you have no fucking idea on the topic, then ask the other person to teach you about it.
Bonus: If you are a guy and you are looking to get lucky, whatever topic the young lady/gentlemen/non-binary broaches should become the ABSOLUTE MOST interesting thing in the world to you.
Bonus: If you are a guy and you are looking to get lucky, whatever topic the young lady/gentlemen/non-binary broaches should become the ABSOLUTE MOST interesting thing in the world to you.
Her: “So I’m really into Hitler!”
You: “…uhhhhh…”
Me: Interesting, what’s your opinion on him as an artist? Also were you aware that he only had a one ball sack?
There are two factors for making connections through conversation. You’ve pretty much nailed the “showing interest” part.
But don’t forget, in addition to needing to show that you are interested, you need to show that you are interesting, too.
A good conversation will have some back and forth between both sides, on both factors. So merely showing interest may sometimes be counterproductive if you can’t tie that intense interest into something to reveal about an interesting side of yourself.
For example:
Statement: “I went to France last summer.”
Good response: “Ooh, that’s really cool, what were your favorite things you did?”
Better response: “Ooh, that’s really cool, I’ve always wanted to go. What recommendations do you have for places and things that I absolutely must experience?”
Similarly, tying things back to your own experiences may be helpful at generating some of that back and forth, even on topics that you don’t have any direct knowledge or experience with. For example:
Statement: “I was hesitant about the escargot/snails at first, and there just wasn’t a ton of substance to them, but it was delicious under all that butter anyway.”
Good response: “Wow that sounds like a fun experience, would you do it again?”
Better response: “Wow that sounds fun, so was it like linguine and clams where it’s as much about the flavors that get infused into the butter as it is about the clam itself?”
I know too many people who get stuck in a pure listening mode with strangers and forget to actually show their own personalities and why they’re worth getting to know, too.
I agree with you on that, however, some folks have had issues in volunteering information about themselves. I don’t blame them or look down on them for it as some folks are just shy or introverted. Or they might be more comfortable talking with people they know more intimately.
The basic concept of showing interest in what someone is saying is a good way to at least get through a conversation without making it complete agony.
Don’t forget, there’s two people in this operation. Your speaking partner should also be doing the exact same thing back (showing interest) and picking up on what you are laying down. As such, they should be also asking some questions back to keep the discussion going.
Example:
You: I once took a cooking class that focused on insect based diets!
Me (who has little to contribute on the subject but is still interested in talking with you at this cocktail party): Really? What was your favorite?
You: A burger where the patty was made out of cricket meal! It was almost indistinguishable from a real beef burger.
Me: That’s wild! Were crickets the only thing that they used?
You (picking up that perhaps I have not that much info on insect based diets): Oh no, there were all sorts of other ingredients we used, I just happen to be a fan of burgers. How about you? On burgers?
Me (who can certainly contribute on the subject of burgers): Big fan, actually where I’m from, Halifax, has one of the best burger weeks I’ve ever experienced!
And so we’ve opened up the conversation topics from insect food to burgers, burger week/themed food events, and Halifax/places we are from.
Pretty true just sometimes hard to tow the line of not showing off.
That said I’ve had conversations with people where I said like 10 words that were just interesting questions and the other 99.9% was them talking and vice versa. Sometimes the best and most interesting conversations are just asking great questions, provided the other person really wants to talk about it.
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So what if it is? Is his whole personality to be a judgemental prick? If you are in a conversation you find boring and this is the best you can do to try to move on, you probably are, no matter how right you are.
“What else?” is such a hostile way to engage in small talk. Yeah okay so somebody responded with a bit of a vague answer, but “tell me about yourself” is hardly a specific question.
This is just normal small talk openers; they don’t really get you anywhere, but they open a dialogue and you can both work to keep the conversation in the air from there.
For the asker in this situation, I would have tried following up by asking “oh cool, where did you go?”, which might have advanced the conversation and potentially led to a more specific conversation about one particular place or experience.
If I was answering this question, I’d struggle. I’d probably try to avoid answering with my job, so I’d probably pause (which is totally allowed in conversation), and honestly I think I’d ask what they wanted to know - because I find the question too vague. If I absolutely HAD to answer, though, it depends on a couple of bits of context. Firstly, who is asking? What’s my relationship to them? Secondly, where are we?
If they’re somebody I’ve just met at a pub, I’d give a wider answer that opens up responses, like “well, I’m big into music - I play a lot of guitar and bass, and I’m actually on the lookout for some new artists to check out – are you listening to anything this week?”
I know it’s a vague answer and might even come off deflective, but it’s a hard question to answer and really I want to move off of speaking in vagueries as soon as possible when I’m talking to people because I find it boring.
I’m curious about and interested in people, and don’t find it hard to be invested in things people tell me, but when you stick on the very very surface level and non-specific details like “I like music” or “I like food” or “I like travelling”, it’s sort of difficult to find anything to latch on to without digging deeper to specifics.
Not that I’m gifted socially, I’m not saying that (and in actuality I find socialising pretty nerve-wracking and uncomfortable a lot of the time, you might be able to tell lol), I’m just thinking through what I would do and have done in these situations. Also yes yes this comic is a joke obviously etc., this is more of a response to the comments.
Somehow I doubt you’d have trouble finding something to say…
Haha, sorry yeah it was a bit much
Not impossible. My social anxiety used to be much, much worse. When put in regular social situations with strangers my brain would just shut down.
Aw that’s kinda mean. You can learn a lot about someone from why they took a trip like that. Was she checking out art museums? Or the summer festivals? Or shopping? Or visiting relatives? Did she have to save up to go, or was she using daddy’s credit card? etc.
It also helps you know who pays for their lifestyle and what kind of lifestyle they want to have.
I think you learn more about someone based on what they do in their spare time instead of a one time luxury spend.
I say this having “travelled” and been a migrant to two countries and at least one continent, maybe two depending on how you view it.
This. There’s a lot of people who claim they’re into hiking despite only having done it once.
Find someone who’s regularly doing something interesting, they’re the actually interesting people.
Talking about travel is one of the best ways to find topics of overlapping interests. For me, food and drink are pretty important ways for me to connect to people, so talk about travel is always helpful for figuring out what we have in common in terms of food preferences, what we find interesting (cooking, gardening, restaurants, grocery shopping, books about any of this stuff, etc.).
Right but in this case they’re referring to the kind of person where that one, potentially shallow, trip is all they have to talk about.
Are they, though? The original comic reads to me to be a bit more condescending towards the idea of travel as a concept, and especially towards small talk about travel as a past experience.
Yes
I don’t mind people who have one thing as their “entire personality,” so long as they don’t try to make it into everyone else’s personality, too. When every conversation is about your special interest, and every occasion has to be about your special interest, and you refuse to talk about anything else, then you’ve gone from being a person who’s got a special interest to a person who can’t have anything else.
I’ve personally been to Occupied Palestine for a couple of months :3
If you ask me to tell you about me, and follow up with “what else?” then this is going to be a short date.
Right? It’s so hostile 😂
That depends on the guy telling you “What else ?”…
That look. He’s planning a heist!
She likes to drink wine and watch movies, too!
I laughed reading that. But, tbh, who doesn’t 😁
I’m a French guy who doesn’t like wine, that’s my whole personality.
Damn, and I thought it was hard being a non-drinker in the US.
Sacre blue
Tabernac!
A Frenchman, I can actually like! never thought I’d hear myself saying that out loud (French ppl are cool I’m just joking)
It must take a lot of effort to keep that hidden.
I smoke weed. That’s my personality. I also look down on alcoholics because weed isn’t a drug /s
I knew a bunch of people who smoked weed every single day, usually multiple times a day and said they weren’t addicted because they could stop whenever but they just really really really didn’t want to. That’s called dedication.
That’s kinda the joke lol
Sometimes that’s enough to base a relationship on.
Cool, now I gotta listen to that song.
Why a bear in a dump truck though?
Engagement
Oh, yeah. That is relatable.
And as I recall, I think we both kinda liked it And I said, “Well, that’s the one thing we’ve got"
Travelers meeting other travelers makes for an easy low commitment friendship
I’m dating right now and reading profiles is becoming torture again.
No shit you like food and travel. How fucking interesting for you. Wow. So unique.
Or their whole profile is shitting on the profiles of things they don’t like while offering absolutely nothing about who they are.
Like dudes are so thirsty that they’ll read “don’t match with me if you’re holding a fish” and think: yeah, there is something really special about this woman".
I’d say maybe 1 out of every 100 profiles is actually unique or interesting in some way.
And maybe that’s just because most people straight up aren’t interesting
This brings me flashbacks of when I was dating (happy couple now)…
I travel in Europe daily!
Though i live in Europe, it would be pretty hard to not travel at all
I’m back from travelling in Europe! (went to the fridge)
Friggin euro steppers ruining basketball
Usually when I meet people who say they travelled to Europe … I’ll ask them a million questions about what they did there, what they saw, what they thought about it, the food, the weather, the people … which places did they go? what are your recommendations? what did you like? what did you not like? any weird things that happened? any great things that happened?
It’s usually a source of a ton of information.
Hell of a lot better conversation starter than to ask the person what they’ve done in the small town you’ve both lived in all your lives and know every single detail about.
I got the question “what foods did you try?” I could not name a single food. I ate different foods and I didn’t remember the names. I’m usually bad when interrogated about what i have done.
I’m imagining them becoming increasingly suspicious
“I ate tons of different stuff… I just… I just don’t remember any by name h-haha”
“So where did you eat them?”
“Uhhh… a restaurant, you know, restaurants and cafes…”
I’m usually bad when interrogated about what i have done.
Who are your accomplices? Are there any more drops? Who was paying you? Cooperate and you’ll get a reduced sentence.
I’ve lived in Europe my whole life. AMA
What else??
What else do you have to say besides what else?
It’s like that K&P skit about that guy in the group who says “anyways…” but doesn’t follow up xD
gasp me too!
We have so much in common!
What is your absolute favorite restaurant?
Very hard question, I don’t know the exact names of many great ones I stumbled into during vacations in e.g., Italy, Malta, or Croatia. One of the best I’ve been to recently is Brasserie Sture 1912 in Malmö, offering a mix of French and Swedish cuisine.
How many languages do you speak?
Most North Americans are shocked that a human can learn more than one language
I speak English and German mostly fluent, and although I can’t speak it per se I also had Latin and ancient Greek in school. And I am meaning to but constantly forgetting to start learning Lower German and Arabic.
Core French starts in Grade 4 for Canadians. Americans typically need 2 years of foreign language to graduate high school and it’s required to get your undergraduate degree. Mexicans start learning English in Grade 1. Where are you talking about?
Just because they have mandatory French in Canada … doesn’t mean that people go on to learn the language. I’m in northern Ontario among a lot of Francophones. Lots of people went through school around me that had French but they went through the programs and never bothered to learn beyond that and then forgot it all as adults because their families looked down at the French language and French culture.
Many people don’t get to go to post secondary school unless you or your family have a bit of wealth … so they don’t bother learning another language for any reason. So being poor and from an anglocentric culture that looks down at other enthnicities usually ends up with people not learning or wanting to learn another language.
The sad part is that I’m Indigenous Canadian … my first language is Ojibway/Cree, it was the first language I learned and spoke fluently until I was about ten years of age - I learned English in school but it was more or less a foreign language to me until later in life. The sad part is that this was all about 40 years ago and now the majority of people being born into my family almost all of them speak only English and know little of our Ojibway language.
When you are poor and don’t have the means … you almost have no choice but to get stuck in one language because you don’t have the time, energy or resources to have the luxury to learn another language and poverty has the double edged sword of taking away any language you or your family already had.
That’s a very, very long way from “Most North Americans are shocked that a human can learn more than one language” which is what you said.
Yea I travel a bit, and I like talking about how they travel to gleen what kind of person they are. Like big cities? Do they take transit? What kind of activities? Lodging? Adventurous with food? Planned /spontaneous?
But at the same time, I typically move on to non-travel based chat pretty quickly. So I agree with the spirit of the comic.
“awesome! do you have any pictures?”
that usually leads to stories and stuff too
I’m sorry what
You know, rapist. Saying n-this, n-that in quick tempo music that rhymes
Lol, what’s the scene from?
The original screenshot is from Its Always Sunny, where the illiterate character has trouble pretending to be a philanthropist, because he can’t pronounce the word “philanthropist,” much less describe and understand what it means.
The comment you’re replying to is just riffing in their own way, completely unrelated to the scene where the screenshot comes from.
Ah, I’ve heard the rapper/rapist joke before and assumed it actually came from this scene.
I really should watch It’s Always Sunny sometime
I take mind altering substances and I play a couple video games about factories and dwarves.
So what? Who cares? Its good enough for me.
What’s your favourite game about factories?
It’s probably Dwarf Fortress.
And the dwarf game is Deep Rock Galactic.
Durin’s Bane.
And at that moment Sharon realized she was pretty happy with her life as is. And left to go enjoy the happiest life without being questioned.
A few years later Stan took his life because of male depression.
