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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1506 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for March 6, 2024

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I get a bit anxious in big groups where I don't know many of the people. The anxiety gets worse if the people are considered high status or "popular" in the high school/college sense (e.g., more attractive, partiers, frat guys, that kind of vibe). Examples of big group environments are popular bars and house parties (again, it gets worse with high status or so-called popular people).

Modesty aside, I'm fairly witty, sharp, and interesting when I'm around people I'm comfortable with, but I clam up when put in the aforementioned environments.

Things I've done to make it better:

  • Act like the person I'm talking to is already my friend

  • Find a way that I'm higher status than them

  • Convince myself that I don't care about the outcome of this interaction

  • Put myself in these situations more

Things I'm working on to make it better:

  • Improving my ability to talk to everyone, regardless of the topic. I mostly enjoy deep, intellectual convos and don't keep up with pop culture, sports, etc. I find surface-level convos boring and tend to detach myself if we move down that path. Maybe there's a minimum amount of "normie" (I hate that word, but you get the idea) topics I should keep up with?

  • Putting myself in these situations more

Any other suggestions are welcome!

  • Choose environments that you’re more comfortable in that naturally highlight your good qualities. Maybe something like a book club
  • Prepare and bring something thoughtful to share with people. In book club it could just be some interesting knowledge related to the chapter. At a house party it could be a homemade snack. The thing that you share should be something you put thought and effort to, not just something expensive.
  • This last point is very controversial, and you need to proceed with extreme caution. In party situations you can explore the use of psychoactive substances that do some combination of: (1) reduce your anxiety (2) increase confidence (3) make socializing more interesting/fun (4) don’t make you noticeably impaired.

  • The problem lies in I may not always get the choice. We're going to a house party or bar if my girlfriend wants to go (not that she's unreasonable in wanting to go there!). This is what makes me want to fix this issue.

  • I like the sharing idea. Maybe an activity or game could also work.

  • I have a history of being slightly reliant on substances to help ease social anxiety, so I will be avoiding this one. I think it can definitely work for some people.

Any "normie" topic can be turned into an "intellectual" topic. Just think of how the culture war infects everything, and imagine its not people doing it maliciously, but just doing it to have some relevance to topics they otherwise would know nothing about.

Some people are amenable to these conversational turns, others are very much not amenable. But your options in those cases are limited to: suffer, eject from the convo, or change topics and make them eject.

Respect your own time. Don't waste it in conversations you find boring. Though a boring conversation requires two to tango, you are always partly at fault if a conversation is boring. Start taking responsibility by ejecting or trying to alter the conversation to something more interesting.

I try to turn "normie" topic into deeper convos but it never sticks, and I can't tell if it's me or them. (I'm the common link, but they are also similar people, so it's difficult to tell.)

Ending boring conversations is something I can do better at. I'll have to practice ending them so as to not leave a sour taste in either of our mouths.

Well, for the most part I would say that making small talk with strangers is practice for conversations that you go into with a goal e.g. evaluating someone as a potential friend or romantic partner. Knowing how to share just enough personal information to build a rapport without weirding someone out or shifting the frame to keep people engaged are skills that need to be developed like any other. Most people do this subconsciously, but for others it requires focused attention. The people you are now good friends with and can have deep conversations with were once strangers after all, and you need a way to get from one to the other.

As far as specifics go, I'm not sure what you are trying to get out of your time at house parties or bars, but that is a question you should be asking yourself. You seem to be thinking a lot about your relative social status in a way that is somewhat foreign to me, but if you are trying to achieve high status and then leverage it to obtain something else, then you might be better served by seeking that other thing directly. Also, you don't need to study things that don't interest you just to have conversation starters, but they key is to keep up with something, whether it's the news or how to tie fishing lures, and then be able to identify connections between that thing and your interlocutor's personal experience.

If the only problem is anxiety, just expose yourself to these kinds of situations until you're no longer afraid. Sufficient amounts of repetition will make anything stop feeling scary.

Examples of big group environments are popular bars and house parties

What're you trying to get out of these situations?

I don't like any of those situations for their own sake, and reckon that's alright. Maybe you're trying to make a friend, find a date, or network? And then once you have friends, a romantic partner, and a good job, you'll mostly stop going to those events? Most of the mid 30s people I know have friends, a family, and a job, and mostly hang out with the social group they already have. The exceptions come across as slightly concerning -- mid 30s women living alone in New York and constantly posting on social media about the various bars and parties they're at.

I'm not especially high-status. I was the worst distance runner to qualify for a letter in track. The only reason I ever made sergeant in the military is because they promoted over half of all eligible E-4s. The main reason I'm a board member of a neighborhood organization is because the person stepping away had new familial obligations to attend to - and she hadn't lived in the area for years anyway.

I got to where I am by being present at the right place at the right time with an agreeable temperament - with a handy dose of preparation & persistence. If I thought like you did, I doubt I would have achieved what I've earned.

I wouldn't call small-talk interesting. But it's the quickest route to learn if people care about things - and what. It's okay to not be interested in what they care about. It's a social barrier to be proudly ignorant of what they care about. It's entirely possible to get intellectual about the history & patterns of one's relationships. You don't need to know about Georgian taxes or bell curves to have intellectual conversations. Most of the time - in my experience - that shit doesn't help anyway.

And conversation is also a two-way street. They need to know who you are, too. Is the other person likely to walk away with a good sense of who you are & what you're about?

As long as you can find a reason to follow up via email or text message the next day, I call that a conversational success. Just keep recalibrating until you find reasons at least half the time.

Are you literally in college, or just out of it, or does it just sound that way? Asking before getting into any kind of recommendations.

It just sounds that way. 26 years old and well into professional life.

Improving my ability to talk to everyone, regardless of the topic. I mostly enjoy deep, intellectual convos and don't keep up with pop culture, sports, etc. I find surface-level convos boring and tend to detach myself if we move down that path. Maybe there's a minimum amount of "normie" (I hate that word, but you get the idea) topics I should keep up with?

I think what you're failing at is approaching sports/pop culture/etc. at a deep intellectual level. You can have both!

My wife wanted to have her friends over to watch The Bachelor every week. At first I moaned and groaned. Then I decided to watch it like an autistic sports fan, and I discovered the Game of Roses podcast for people who watch The Bachelor like an autistic sports fan. I found a way to enjoy the show: what's the Rose Quotient? Is she going to play her Personal Trauma Card on this group date, or save the PTC for her 1on1 later? What does it mean when a contestant a high RQ and a solid 3rd audience game gets a 2on1 this early in the season?

This is a good idea if you're regularly interacting with (or married to) someone into somethign you're not. But it's overkill if OP just wants more general conversational grease.

Moreover, unless he's willing to become a sportsfan all the way, keeping up on the latest talking points will be a tedius waste of time. And he'll still end up bored and anxious of being discovered a fraud in sports talk. Honestly if you want to make good sports small talk with someone, it's probably better to know nothing about sports than to pretend you care. Consider this opener.

"You know I haven't really kept up with college basketball in a few years. Which schools are doing well these days?"

You'll get the sportsfan talking! and you don't have to pretend you know or follow anything. Plus, a little understood phenomenon - you now have the conversation's steering wheel, while the other one gets to talk and like you for getting to talk. Once you start trying to demonstrate your own knowledge or insert your own talk tracks, you actually lose control.

Instead, you can take the converstaion where you want it to by asking questions. Like history? Interject with historical questions. Like strategy and theory, ask a question about that. "So how does a good team get good..." Like the culture war, ask about that. "You think ratings have changed since ESPN has gotten woke?"

Want to get off sports? Let them give you a little schpeel, they'll like you for letting them talk. Then play a game with yourself to see how many questions takes you to X. Say, X is crypto. Sports... Sports Betting... Gambling... Crypto.

Unless, like in your scenario, the topic is regularly the center of the activity, there's no reason to pretend to like it or to learn about it just to make small talk. It will actually backfire (without a genuine interest) because you'll be bored AND worried about demonstrating your boring knowledge.

I don't normally do this, but it's spelled "tedious".

I appreciate your demonstration of how to not make good conversation.

Like I said, I don't usually do this, but you misspelled it twice and I couldn't resist.

This is fantastic, compelling conversation. Not tedius at all. Tell me more.

More comments

I find surface-level convos boring and tend to detach myself if we move down that path.

Of course some people really are duller than others, or just worse fits conversationally for each other. Some people do like more or less substantative discussions, more or less argument, more or less critique, etc.

But taken too far this becomes a cope. And it's best not to self-frame like that. Almost everyone enjoys a good conversation. If you want to check out of a tedius or boring conversation, by all mean, it's your right, and might be the best use of your time.

But recognize internally that it's usually because you don't have the patience or interest in fishing, and probably NOT that the other person likes standing with his pole in the water not catching bites.

Two people go out fishing. Both are bad at it or are in an unfamiliar lake. They fumble around, leading eachother to different spots, as often moving on too quickly from a promising spot for other's taste or linger too long in an apparently bad spot. Neither one has the confidence, knowledge of the lake, or strategy to lead, so they keep stepping on each other's (and their own) attempts at catching something.

After an unproduction adventure they both walk away thinking, "It's too bad that guy didn't want to catch any fish. What a waste of time."

Maybe there's a minimum amount of "normie" (I hate that word, but you get the idea) topics I should keep up with?

Thinking they're being charitable and getting the entirely wrong message, the fishermen later say to themselves

"Maybe I should spend more time practicing puttering around in bad fishing spots, since the other guy seemed to like that."

No, that's not necessary at all.

In small doses, any kind of conversation can be interesting. Even the guy who only wants to talk about the drugs he's ingested today or how hot various women are - a lot of people are like that, it's worth having some understanding of how and why! Those people are 99.9% the same pathways as you, just (on a cosmic scale) ever so slightly dumber and with different tendencies, and it's interesting how that shakes out. And surely, if you're so far above that, you should be able to participate competently.

you should be able to participate competently.

You can, but I think this perspective dismisses an important point.

People have limited metabolic energy and therefore must have a system of filtering information in the environment to avoid combinatorial explosion. If your relevance realization machinery focuses on mastering a domain and looking into the unsolved questions of the domain then you can start finding small talk far less relevant. It is taking time away from you making a potential contribution to the domain that could help many people.

Small talk becomes far less interesting when you get good at predicting what the other person will say because you’ve had similar conversations with other people. It is no longer a source of interesting/relevant information.

'relevance realization'? I feel like paragraph 1 is a fully general argument against e.g. having fun, randomly reading wikipedia pages to learn new things, or really anything other than 'working in the domain you specialize in', unless i'm misunderstanding, which is plausible.

I agree with paragraph 2. But there are a variety of people out there, with a variety of experiences, and there are a lot of potential things to talk about. The common man isn't an infinite well of wisdom, but if you can't get anything out of talking to random people at a reasonable frequently you're doing it wrong.

'relevance realization'?

I was using relevance realization to mean the process by which things motivate people, what arouses their energy, what attracts their attention, etc. Right now you probably aren't paying attention to the wall or the furniture even though it is in your environment, there is a process that puts it in the background as not important.

I feel like paragraph 1 is a fully general argument against e.g. having fun, randomly reading wikipedia pages to learn new things, or really anything other than 'working in the domain you specialize in', unless i'm misunderstanding, which is plausible.

You can find anything relevant, including just having fun. A drug addict finds drugs highly relevant and salient. I was indicating that there is a process that causes people to find certain things relevant and causes them to background other things. Relevance changes depending on context too (such as when someone is at work, and when they are at home).

but if you can't get anything out of talking to random people at a reasonable frequently you're doing it wrong.

It isn't that you can't get anything out of it. It is that you have limited time/energy and you can get similar things more efficiently. If you read certain books you will gain knowledge you find relevant at a faster pace than if you spent that time on small talk.

I think there's something weird going on with the way you're using that concept, but whatever.

I think translating out of that language - you're arguing that such conversations aren't a good way to get information on the margin, but I'm arguing that, if approached correctly, they are. It's the same reason I just read random comments/posts on all social media websites - it's both valuable and intrinsically interesting to learn about all the varied aspects of the human experience.

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