Comment by acuozzo
1 day ago
> I have zero idea how to make small talk with people I haven't known for years.
Forget small talk.
Listen-- really listen --and engage with open ears. When it's your turn to talk, offer up an anecdote in reply if it's on topic or take the opportunity to pivot to a related topic you're passionate about. If you do the latter: do. not. info-dump. Give them a chance to play the game I just described to you from their side.
Need a cold opener? Get the party going with something you anticipate the majority of the people there would remember.
--
You: "Hey, does anybody remember the Blizzard of '96?"
Them: "Yeah! I remember they closed down all of Route 9!"
You: "Hell yeah they did. My family pulled me down the highway on a snow tube. I've gone tubing every year since. Any tubers here?"
Them: "No, but I love snowboarding."
You: "Nice. I was briefly obsessed with snowboarding after playing 1080 on the N64, but I was always too chicken-shit to try it. Where do you go snowboarding?"
Them: "Vermont. Where do you go tubing?"
You: "I used to do it over near that big hill by the library. Ever see that?"
--
Arm yourself with personal stories to make situations like this easier. People would rather interact with the guy always telling stories than the visibly-uncomfortable one sitting in the corner.
As someone who really struggled with social interactions (and still does at times, just not as bad), this fails already at the first two steps:
> Listen-- really listen --and engage with open ears
How do I understand what is important? People say a lot of stuff, some important parts and some parts that are beside the point. Talking also involves identifying and reacting to the "important" bits, picking up the "wrong" stuff will be very weird. An exaggerated example:
> "We had a really bad traffic accident when we went to Sweden"
The obvious thing to engage with is the accident - but a struggling person might as well ask how they liked Sweden.
> When it's your turn to talk, offer up an anecdote [...]
I really struggled to even notice when it's "my turn" to talk. Either interrupting the other person or awkwardly looking at them until I notice or the other person tries to recover the situation.
Try Improv (comedy) classes. They sell them as something to do on stage, but the real advantage is pattern building around social interactions.
First, you will stop being afraid to say the wrong thing. Then, you will start to hear the important part in what they said. Then, you will start to hear the part they did NOT say or super-interesting bit they skimmed over because it is not interesting to them FINALLY (at least so far for me and with other training), you will start feeling the tension in the conversation, the good time to interrupt and the time to pivot the topic.
Think Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, but in a free-to-fail environment. This, incidentally, may be the reason why I LIKE when there is low audience for the shows I do. Because, then it is really just my personal/group practice.
> How do I understand what is important?
Operate under the assumption that the person on the other side of the conversation is under the delusion that every sentence they produce is gold.
Active listening = free points. Everyone wants to feel heard.
> but a struggling person might as well ask how they liked Sweden.
And sometimes this is the right question to ask, especially if the party on the other side of the conversation is giving cues suggesting that their memory of the accident is a painful one.
> I really struggled to even notice when it's "my turn" to talk.
Even highly-experienced conversationalists get this wrong at times. Sometimes the person with whom you're speaking has a weird cadence or is uncomfortable or...
---
Look, this is hard work. This requires literally years of deliberate practice, especially if you're on the Autism spectrum as both myself and my son are.
You will make mistakes. You will offend people. You will get depressed about having no charm/charisma. You will feel like the alien in the room.
Keep pushing forward. Force yourself to actively listen to conversations. Watch movies with magnetic characters and try to emulate their demeanor.
Don't beat yourself up. Embrace being the weird person for a while and find a group of weirdos just a bit less weird than yourself. Be vulnerable with them and get yourself a mentor. People, in my experience, love mentoring/teaching.
Just keep doing it. When you get good, it will pay dividends.
I myself also tend to do that, but that is a behavior that is seen by the majority/"normal" people as non-social, unless if you already know them very well or if you are the one initiating the conversation.
Listening to people means that you actively listening and supporting them in their conversation, not bringing up your own angles to it. When you do that it is perceived by most people as you trying to one-up them in the conversation, instead of what you're actually doing.
In your listed example its fine because you started the interaction, but let's turn it around and say you walked into a conversation where people are talking about downtown in ABC. You want to participate and remember that there was a blizzard there in '96, so you bring that up.
Most people will see that as severe ADHD, why are we now talking about a blizzard from 1996? We were just talking about about how DEF is happening in ABC later this month?
Pivoting has the same problem, there are social cues that display your role in the group. Just walking into a conversation while trying to pivot it to your interests is in general quite rude etc.
> When you do that it is perceived by most people as you trying to one-up them in the conversation
This depends entirely on the content of your reply and how well-trained you are in social cues as well as other unspoken parts of conversation.
It's also not comprehensive advice. Of course you should first help the person on the other side of the conversation reach where they're intending to go in what they're saying.
My advice is more applicable to the "sequence points" of a conversation.
> Just walking into a conversation while trying to pivot it
Doing this would be foolish. You have to read the cues for when the time is right. You also need to develop the right conversational demeanor to pull it off. This necessitates practice.
I would also add that people generally try too hard with small talk. It's SMALL talk. Tell them about the new brand of jam you put on your toast this breakfast. Ask them what they had for breakfast. Or recount your last trip to the grocery store.
Trying too hard kills the fun of the interaction. You're really just getting a ball rolling. Who cares where it starts, just see where it goes.
Also, as TFA also mentioned, it's not what you say but how you say it. >80% of the value of the interaction is just (non-verbally) showing you're happy that they're there.
What if I don’t have it in me to listen? I want to savour my active listening capacity with the people I love, not everyone I interact with.
Nobody is compelling you to do anything, but there's no free lunch.
Yes yes yes. You rarely need to DO anything other than listen. Just be a good listener. Maybe identify handles in what they're saying and then occasionally ask them about them:
How did that make you feel? Wait, you did what? Why did you do that? What do you enjoy about that?
>You rarely need to DO anything other than listen
There is a particular amount of risk here, this does set you up to interact with attention vacuums. People that will talk constantly without break nor desire to listen to what you have to say. Over any amount of time (weeks/months) a person that you can have a real two way conversation is needed.
In my experience such people are rare. You can always steer the conversation, give your input, tell them (nicely) to stop talking, or - if they're unwilling to take the hint - walk away.
That seems like the most pointless conversation ever though, neither side really got anything out of it. If you can't infodump or listen to someone else infodump, is it really anything but meaningless pleasantries?
You perceive it that way because you aren't into snowboarding, tubing or experienced the blizzard of '96.
If only I'd experienced the blizzard of '96, the bedrock of all modern socialization.
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The goal isn't to exchange facts, it's to bond.
Well I doubt I'm going to bond by being subjected to painful boredom, and neither will they. I've found it's so socially common to completely forget all of these things people tell you in small talk too, because I'd remember every one of these facts about the other person due to low frequency interactions, while they'll be like "I've never met this man in my life" the next time I talk to them and I can't help but find that a bit hurtful.
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