I've had to spend week and a half battling Gmail daily email account limits sending batches of 500 emails just to notify people in her address book, receiving hundreds of responses. Her memorial was attended by hundreds of people.
It served her very well in her chosen career of real estate sales, although I think she'd might have done really well in community organizing or even politics where those skills are also very useful.
On the flip side, it was sometimes difficult to be there as family wanting some attention, since her bright light was always shining in many directions.
I've inherited just some of that talent, and I think it is a talent, but trainable.
I miss her already.
I love this story, because I had the same experience. When my dad passed, I had the same 500 email limitation, and had to send out multiple waves of emails through Gmail. He was loved by so many people!
A few shopkeepers waved through their windows as I went past, the greengrocer came out of his shop to have a quick chat, the dry cleaner asked after my dog, and the guy from the household shop told me they have more of the cleaning paste I use. We bumped into a couple of folk I see every couple of weeks, then got a coffee and I paid the “special” rate rather than the rate on the sign that they charge people they don’t know.
My colleague said - half jokingly - “I didn’t realise you were mayor”, and tried to convince me that I should go into local politics. She couldn’t understand when I said that would take all the pleasure out of it, because talking to people would become transactional rather than joyous.
I can’t imagine not talking to people. A while back I changed the route I take when I walk my dogs each day, and the guy who runs the local fish stall started asking people if I had left the area or died. I don’t buy fish from him each week- but every time I see him stop and we have a chat.
I feel incredibly lucky to be missed by my fishmonger just because I started walking my dogs a different route.
I grew up in a tiny village in the country. The building I live in has hundreds of people living in it, compared to the few dozen houses where I grew up. I think talking to people makes a huge city feel smaller.
Only if you let it! I am guessing you would do well, because people can absolutely tell when you are being a smarmy politician and when you're actually a legitimately friendly, decent person.
It doesn't have to and I suspect that's why your colleague suggested it. Politicians act that way because that's what people want except they don't want someone who is acting.
You have what politicians pretend to have because it makes people like them.
You might be a terrible politician for other reasons but I don't think what you've said is true.
Thing is, if normal people don't talk to strangers anymore, then only the weirdos are left, reinforcing the idea that only weirdos talk to strangers...
Nobody wants randos coming up to them and asking for something.
Most people would be less lonely if everyone had more practice at making non-transactional conversation.
Actively avoiding conversation still qualifies as "weirdo" behavior to most people.
Are you willfully ignoring people at bars, night clubs, supermarkets, etc?
It's obvious 99% of the time whether or not the conversation is in the wrong place and wrong time.
I still can’t understand the point of this. Do you get a charge telling social anxious people they’ll be weird if they do their homework? That’s precisely what you did. Why?
If someone on the street tries to talk to me, I try to avoid even looking at them or acknowledging them. They'll use that as an opening. Just keep walking.
I'm glad for people who don't struggle with this, I just wish they would be more empathetic.
The main ingredient, at least for me, was being determined enough to push through the discomfort. A lot of the early interactions were awkward, sometimes overtly uncomfortable, but that's an unavoidable part of the learning process (and I took a key lesson from it - it's okay to look like a dork, usually it's only our inner critic that turns it into an immortal sin).
Nowadays I feel a pang of sympathy when I see someone feeling shy or speaking in self-deprecating terms. I remember how that felt, and I remember how easy it would have been to have stayed inside that box for the rest of my life.
Glad I didn't.
It's a valuable skill, so I do sometimes practice trying to adopt the work persona at home, but it really doesn't come naturally.
I just love it, it’s easy and I get a lot in return - from perks to incredible encounters. At work it’s been very helpful.
I developed that skill while traveling alone for a year , and it boils down to practicing and reading whether the person you’re talking to is ok with your talking or not.
In any case, it makes me immensely happy.
And now because I know them I go there because I can buy my stuff but also spend five minutes chatting and that makes going grocery shopping a real joy. And because I go there and chat they do nice things like give me a couple of tomatoes or “you’ve got to try this cake” or the wine shop where I automatically get a 15% discount, or the butcher where they let me in when are already closed but they know I’ve come over specially.
And some of those people have become real friends, like go and have dinner together friends. We have very different lives but we get on because we get on. I think everyone benefits from reaching out of their bubble a bit.
If I’m feeling a bit glum I’ll go out to buy bread or something because I know just seeing the people I see regularly will lift me up.
There's only so mach a person can take being on the other side of someone like that. We drifted apart...
It's all nice to imagine everyone talking to each other, but the reality is that in (western?) society, we have kinda collectively decided that socialisation is to be avoided. Either it's too weird, too boring, or too unsafe. I mean have you tried randomly talking to people? Most don't seem very open to it.
Also it doesn't help that the little "pretext" scenarios that can lead to socialising are being systematically eliminated from our lives.
And finally, if you're neurodivergent or otherwise aren't perfectly typical, enjoy people thinking you're weird anyway.
I agree re the pretext scenarios disappearing and re neurodivergence adding extra challenges.
RE the former: there are lots more of these pretext scenarios than you might realize
RE the latter, I realize it's not your point but for what it's worth, you won't really be able to tell in most cases that someone on the street or wherever is or isn't nd. Meaning: there's a good chance that the person you are talking to is nd themselves. Lots of us are pros at masking
In general though i would say to be careful when generalizing about human behavior in a way that causes you to implement and enforce rules / limitations on your own behavior in response. This is unavoidable, right? And yes, there's often an nd component to this. But especially as you get older, these can start to calcify and limit you in increasingly destructive ways
When I asked about him, he mentioned he’s Irish but moved on to tell me about his plans. How he was saving to have a farm, planned what to grow, animals - 15m of quite precise description. His story was his future.
This was striking for me - when asked most people tell you about their past, where they’re coming from. It was the first time I realised that where we’re going should be a bigger part of our story and identity.
I try to keep that conversation in mind.
I never practiced "idle conversation with a complete stranger" like that because I was lazy. But I did practice making normal, non-sexual, conversation with women on dating sites and dates so that I could go from "isolated in school, then after going online, low response rate and never more than 1 or 2 dates" to someone in a long-term relationship. And recognizing that sort of "ok there's just not any interest here, move along" signal was definitely relevant there too.
Skills take investment.
My parents didn't give me nearly as many opportunities to practice these skills as they had when they grew up, and pop culture actively encouraged me not to talk to strangers as a kid, so I had to work harder at them as an adult. But it was worth it.
Are there people still using the app? If so how are they making money?
It’s a good app, I’m not saying the people that run it are good lol.
I've had three long and very memorable conversations on internaltional plane flights in the past, with three extremely interesting and intelligent people. I don't tend to take those flights anymore, they were for work and the novelty of international travel for work wore off. Now I get out of it whenever I can.
But those three conversations have stayed with me.
Didn't catch on, though. Setting up events turned out to be too prohibitive. If this interests anyone feel free to contact me at contact [at] eventful [dot] is
joke or not (actually not) but read some women spaces and it's obviously a lot of people, especially women, just want to be let alone. Don't start talking with random people unless they start talking to you and it's consensual, simple as that.
If you’re a man and go into it with the mindset of only talking to women, especially attractive ones, then of course that would get you labeled as a creep because it is creep behaviour. That’s not striking up a conversation with strangers, it’s hitting on women. You have to approach anyone equally. Address the attractive woman the same way you approach the old man on the bus stop.
Nobody would talk with anybody if both sides thought like that
We are in a public forum afterall and we are all strangers here. I'm always happy when random person sends me an email.
Not everyone wants to talk but you can pick up on that pretty quickly.
Hmmmm.
People are compartmentalized into groups hating on each other. They're afraid of committing wrong-think and getting labelled, branded, attacked. They prioritize people who aren't there (online people, like you and myself) over those who are.
It's especially interesting from my perspective, because in Vienna we still have some sort of KaffeeHaus-Kultur. CoffeeHouse culture. You can sit there for hours, reading your book, with a coffee and it does not matter, unless the space is really needed.
It's very common to just chat with whoever runs the place at that moment, too. A sense of familiarity is part of the job. For regulars, like myself, the coffee house turns into a second living room:
We people there started talking to each other.
When I was a teenager, many years ago, I had a coffeehouse for table-soccer. It wasn't a club, or association. It was a coffeehouse with table soccer, with gatherings of players.
...
I guess my tangent meant to point at the need for both general, or specialized, "social hubs", where regularly appearing people silently agree to, eventually, getting talked to.
Not like a club. Clubs are too much commitment, causing resistance.
It's reasonably possible at events. Cars and Coffee works great, since everybody wants to talk about their car. I doubt it will work at the dentist, since nobody really wants to be there in the first place. Maybe if they're wearing a shirt or something you can compliment or ask about and then can use that as a springboard?
If you're the dictionary definition of an extrovert you can probably still make it work, but you'll really stand out, and you'll be rejected a lot.
I wonder if anyone who did this had to start from a baseline of feeling this is straight up weird (I'm pretty sure it is weird in my culture).
Most random encounters have a pretext, from smoking a cigarette to talking to the shopkeeper, or being in a queue for a long time.
Talking to a woman ( esp given that many of them are harassed from what I understand from my female friends ) without any reason to is much harder
Growing up in a conservative, religious household outside the US, there was no support for slow processors, and those who didn't fit the dogma were simply told to 'shut up.' The more you were forced to shut up, the more you closed off. Since this was before the internet, self-help tools were non-existent. I really wish the coaching tools and protocols we have today had been available back then. It wouldn't have changed everything, but it would have given me the tools to manage many situations that I simply couldn't handle at the time.
And yes, I agree with the headline... talk to people, anyone, everyone. Maybe you’ll get help, or maybe you just go for it—because regardless of any embarrassment you face now, you may find yourself proud of that courage decades later.
PS: Improved with AI
The question is rather why would you assume that is the case? If it were, the majority of people wouldn’t have an issue striking up a conversation with strangers, but they clearly do.
> I have not read the article and never am going to.
Then perhaps refrain from criticising it?
> I do not, ever, want to talk you as a standard and you should never force that to me.
The article isn’t suggesting anyone force anything. Quite the contrary, it advocates for respecting boundaries and even suggests how to communicate your own.
Respect people's boundaries please. Don't force yourself on people unless they're obviously willing participants.
People put extroversion/introversion as like this binary, permanent thing that cannot be changed. In reality I think it is a spectrum that changes throughout the day and the situation. Someone might be introverted at 8am on their commute, but a wild extrovert at 9pm in the bar. Don't assume, don't try to "help" people you know nothing about.
In your ideal world, how would someone even signal they are a "willing participant" without talking to someone?
It's supreme arrogance. Read the body language and just leave people alone.
If someone is up for talking they'll show the obvious signs - facing you, eye contact, smiling, that sort of waiting-for-something look/expression. I've had e-fucking-nough of people thinking they can "fix" me when I am trying to get some time to myself waiting for a train or whatever after a stressful day at work or being woken up endlessly by kids/neighbours/whatever.
Otherwise it should be "talk to anyone who is obviously open to and willing to have a conversation with you", at which point it's a total tautology anyway and you don't need a guide, it's just natural chat that you don't need to force on someone to make it happen.
I don't fathom what kind of trauma would lead you to take this positive, light-hearted advice to connect to fellow human beings, and to spin this into such a vile, evil, anti-social narrative.
How does that help?
Don't assume people want to talk. Respect boundaries, leave people alone.
It gives me anxiety lmao you will have better time with hobbies.
Author should know better. They seem to be well educated, and write about consent of filming.
Not everyone is interested in small "therapeutic" chitchat. I am not unpaid therapist, and I have no interest in other people problems or opinions.
Talking to strangers is not 'impolite'[1], let alone 'border line illegal', in the UK.
[1]Depends on context of course. No chit-chat in public toilets, thanks.
2) There was a (small) government taskforce in the UK to prevent/arrest men for approaching women on the street. It backfired badly as you might expect. It was politically unpopular, yet it got enough coverage to change people's behavior but not in the way the politicians expected. Specially, amounts of SA didn't change but the number of dates did.
3) Someone is upset at this change in behavior and is trying to revert it.
4) This is someone from the leopards eating faces party complaining about having their face eaten by a leopard.
Based on what evidence?
>There was a (small) government taskforce in the UK to prevent/arrest men for approaching women on the street.
Never heard of it. Do you have a reference?
So yes, then?
Border line means there are many variables, individial feelings and so on. In UK this interaction may be criminal with recent updates. Law is very vague and wide open to interpretation.
Consider this:
* it is illegal to block someones path, law is very specific about that
* is sniffing or even licking someones cooch normal? I can ensure you, many people have VERY strong feelings about that! For some others it is normal behavior!
* is commenting on apperance, clothing etc.. acceptable? Law is very vague
What updates? Be specific. Or are you just trolling?
https://parliamentnews.co.uk/is-street-harassment-a-crime-in...
That is a totally different thing from just having a conversation. You are clearly posting in bad faith and I won't be bothering to respond further.
I do that now and it brings me a lot of joy. Recently while leaving a botanical garden I spoke to a man who was excitedly looking for a few specific plants. He is a botanist (amateur? professional? unclear) and I enjoyed sharing in his passion for a moment. Then I saw a maintenance guy moving with great intention who took a moment to ask me and my family if we had a nice time. We did, and I asked him about the papers in his hand. “Gotta get approval for this purchase request asap.” He said. We talked a bit about how nice it is to work at such a beautiful place.
I highly recommend talking to strangers! People are lovely. Go out and try it.
It was a much bigger struggle with conversations where I was putting extra pressure on myself. Being able to have those other conversations was helpful though. Eventually, I found a therapist and am in a better place with this.
One antipattern I've encountered with this approach tho is that sometimes anxious people will exhaust their conversation partners with a battery of questions. Even if thoughtful, this can sometimes have the effect of exhausting your partner, and tends to keep the conversation steered away from actual connection. YMMV, but either way be mindful and make it a point to share yourself
One of their articles though was about “talking to women” but it also emphasized just talking to _anyone_. It had suggestions like “if you’re out at the bar, just ask to sit with a random group, introduce yourself, and have a conversation.”
Many years later in college, I did indeed try this at a bar and was pleasantly surprised. I didn’t make any long term friends, or find a new partner, but I did really start honing the skill of being social with anyone. It’s hard, and especially for me and my social anxiety, it has also really helped me feel more comfortable in places unfamiliar and people unknown.
How do you deal with that?
New Yorkers have a reputation for being stone cold with strangers, but the truth is that anytime somebody approaches you out of the blue, there's an assumption that they're about to ask for money or try to get in your pants. Once you demonstrate you're not looking for either (or, if the second I suppose, that you're at least smooth enough for it not to be immediately evident), people are generally really kind. With some exceptions, I've usually found that the coldest looking person will stop to give a lost tourist directions if it's clear they're in need.
> How do you deal with that?
You teach yourself to say no, to the things you don't want to do.
I considered leaving just that pithy reply, because that's really it. But some of the extra context; It's not a bother to ask someone to hold the door they're already going through because your hands are full. Starting a conversation is about as intrusive as that. The vast majority of people don't mind making some small talk, and ontop of that, the majority can make an excuse if they don't have time. You only assume they can't politely decline, because you can't. Once you learn to say no thanks, politely, but explicitly and directly. You'll actually understand and expect others to return the favor.
That's a much more fair way to interact with people too.
I’m also never going to be rude about it — unless you are first. Just pick up on the obvious hints that I’m not super into talking.
On the contrary, they’re usually very happy to tell you about what they do.
When someone occasionally engages, I extremely quickly dismiss them in the most polite, but firm, way possible. I also intentionally keep a demeanor that generally signals I’m not open to random conversations (I avoid eye contact etc.), but that often doesn’t work. At the gym it is particularly problematic, I’m focusing on gathering strength for my next set and sometimes people bother you even if I am wearing headphones.
I truly do not have a problem with who I am, I’m comfortable in my shoes.
As such, never in a million years I would approach a stranger to strike up a conversation, it would seem an incredibly rude thing to do towards them, on top of clearly not having any desire to engage from my side.
I’ll talk for hours straight to my wife, close family and the very few friends I have though!
And I think that's the answer; people who don't want to talk will simply tell you! And everyone carries on.
It's one thing to not want it and to be comfortable not wanting it, but viewing it as rude goes way beyond that and is not rational.
I am bothered by random people wanting to talk to me -> Randomly talking to other people would bother them -> Bothering people is rude -> Randomly talking to people is rude.
Hence why the platinum rule is better. Once you know that other people (apparently!) aren't bothered by randomly striking up a conversation, you can adjust your actions accordingly.
As he put it, it’s a coin toss. Maybe you’re bothering them or maybe they’re grateful to have someone to distract them. Each is equally true before you start the conversation.
The key is being able to read social cues. If you can, you can stop bothering them.
Sorry but I couldn't help imagining you as the fake health inspector from Fawlty Towers while reading your comment.
I do agree with you though, talking is great, we are social animals even though modern life allows us to forget this, to our own detriment.
I did this a few times and it surprisingly worked. I was able to make small talk about an article I was reading. Did it matter that I didn't come off with the confidence of Tony Robbins? No.