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This is a personal essay from 2015 about conversation dynamics, not current news.
What to know
- This is not a news story—it is a 2015 personal essay being recirculated on Hacker News and Mastodon.
- The material contains no events, reports, statements, or developments that would constitute journalism.
The record 1 articles and posts · last 30 days
What people are saying 15 voices from 1 site · verbatim
- Oct 9
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I have a job that puts me often into the position of being in my office or my workshop and having random visitors coming in, that need something from me. Many of them entered the room for the first time and don't know how that interaction with me is supposed to go whst that relationship will be.What I noticed is that people are wildly different in…
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As the author of this article, which I had almost completely forgotten about, I find it quite amusing and apropos that 11 years later, we're finally getting around to talking about the point of this article.
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I can understand, but I was taught, from an early age, about the importance of "small talk," and ritual, in communication, and interpersonal relationships.I grew up in a number of cultures, where "breaking bread," was a common place for all kinds of negotiations, personal relationships, and diplomacy.It's more than just "not having to talk about…
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I'm not a very talkative person. I have a relative where conversations can go like this.Me: "so are we getting lunch today?" Them: "well, I called your aunt and she didn't pick up. Then she called me back. Then she said X. Then I said Y. Then we did Z. {15 minutes of conversation later}. We agreed to meet at X for lunch."I find if fascinating and…
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> the purpose of people getting together for a conversation over a beer or coffee or lunch or dinner is that it the food and drink spare us from the burden of needing to have something to say throughout the whole conversation.This is why I much preferred drinks vs dinner on a first date.At a dinner it's lose/lose. e.g. if it's going great you have…
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On the other hand, another value of not getting to the point immediately is in order to build suspense. Like the author, it took me a while to realise how important suspense and build-up is in order to communicate memorably and persuasively.I spent a large portion of my early twenties learning (through doing) about how important it is to "get to…
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> Someone would need a nice long conversational warmup before they’d feel comfortable enough to be ready to talk about something more uncomfortable.We kinda-in-the-spectrum fathers of young girls are something else. Finding out at your 40s-ish that sometimes people wants to talk to "just talk" is kind of embarrassing.The problem is the assumption…
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> And this, too, was a bit of a revelation to me, that someone would not want to get straight to the point, that someone would need a nice long conversational warmup before they’d feel comfortable enough to be ready to talk about something more uncomfortable. I’m very much a get-to-the-point kind of person. I tend to say what I mean, or nothing at…
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Being trustworthy and being perceived as trustworthy aren't the same thing. I think a lot of us who dislike small talk forget that the other person hasn't necessarily had a chance to establish the former yet.
- Oct 8
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I think a more helpful frame is seeing this less as a practice of rhetoric and to instead see it as a practice of emotional maturity.When you speak with someone, you likely are not aware of everything that is going on with their current emotional state. If they're having a good day or bad, if they even have had the time to build insight on it…
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Looks like someone just learned of "ice breaking" for the first time.All those "ice breaking" exercises you do at work? It's started by like people like the author. They don't have a clue exactly how it should come about. (at least the author understands the concept but still dangerous to implement it at offices as they don't really dig it yet…
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Thanks to whoever posted this 11yo gem. I've never read it. Its humbling and encouraging to see someone willing to post his fumblings even in his 50's. I feel like he'd been lambasted or mocked had he posted this today on substack or twitter.As a younger man I was more of the "Just say what you mean, get straight to the point" kind of guy. I think…
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(Getting to the point:) I once heard a perfect explanation of the small talk phenomenon. It's like two modems establishing a link: they send to each other signals that are intended to asses how the line behaves, how well the other side hears you, and what it supports. Thus small talk may never be a pithy conversation: its purpose is to be a…
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I don't think it's that people online need to have more unstructured discussion, or "not get to the point" -- it's that there's no real sense of community in a lot of online spaces. Why would I spend a bunch of time idly having Seinfeldian conversations with strangers with whom I have no rapport or continuity? The vast majority of people who will…
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Read it while you can, third-level .name TLDs are being discontinued next year by Verisign. [0][0]: