Comment by MrDresden
3 years ago
There are two sides to any coin.
Similarly put your self in the position of someone who is more attuned to a 'wait' mode who just had a conversation with you.
Only from your description above, they might walk away from it feeling you did not listen very well, rather one-sidedly just wanted to be listened to, and took the conversation all over the place.
In the end they might also walk away thinking how boring and wasteful of time and energy it had been
I just adapt when I see someone doesn't do cooperative interrupting; I switch to their mode. It's not difficult to tell when people aren't into it (if nothing else, they aren't engaging with you in the same way, so it feels wrong, like you keep hitting tennis balls to them but instead of hitting them back they catch them and then walk them over).
I guess to clarify, it's not that 'wait mode' people are always boring, it's just much more likely to be boring because:
1) You don't feel their engagement if they aren't interrupting you to dig deeper, clarify, respond to points etc.—that's what's fun (for me and many others anyway), when you are interacting live like that, quick back and forth. By contrast waiting and storing everything up and then trying to say it all in your turn, feels very slow and unnatural.
2) If I'm missing information and the other person keeps talking and I can't interrupt them to ask for clarification, then everything they're saying is meaningless to me, information free, boring. Same if they think I don't know about topic X, try explaining it to me, but I do know topic X, but I can't quickly let them know I already know it so we can move on, so I have to listen to an explanation of something that needs no explaining—also devoid of any new information, hence boring.
But granted, sometimes a non-interrupter has very practiced speech and will string together something that's nice to listen to as long as they don't hit the above obstacles.
I agree with you that there isn't always value in what people say, no matter their mode.
Being more of a 'wait' mode my self, I sure have had very long, slow and 'boring' conversations with other 'wait' oriented people before.
In those instances I have usually suggested to change the subject matter by way of 'I'm sorry but would you mind if we shift the conversation over to x?'.
Usually to great success.
This seems to be a recurring confusion in this thread: the boring aspect is a consequence of certain other factors, it is not a reason in itself for interruption. It would be rude in my opinion to interrupt someone and change the subject because they are being boring. However, if you consider the specific examples I gave you'll see it's not about it being generically boring, it's about the speaker having a misunderstanding of the knowledge-state of their listener.
In attempt to say it with absolute clarity: interruptions that shift topic are rude and I would not advocate for them
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