I find that it is easy to become disinterested when your talking to someone and, the topic of the conversation is directed entirely towards their interests. I also find that people lose focus very quickly when you talk more than a few minutes about what you want to talk about.
I really do try to stay interested and I really do try to actively listen,
but mostly I’ve done nothing more than hone my skills of seeming as though I’m actively listening while I think about other things.
Do people really ever listen to each other, or do we all just play this charade, sometimes faking the orgasm, or give up, call our friends and masturbate (conversationally)?
In that same vein, are good listeners also selfless lovers?
And either way, maybe good listeners actually get more out of conversations by building trust in their partners-in-convo and thus potentiate the slipping out of some golden nuggets of interesting material every once in a while.
Seriously, while I think that this is possible sometimes, I have no problem listening at length to people who talk about subjects I wasn’t previously interested in.
To me it depends on what they’re talking about. Quite often I really am interested, but I probably fake it just as often. I often quite enjoy hearing people talk about unusual jobs or experiences, for instance. A lot of people have intriguing stories once you get past the superficials.
A lot of topics certainly are NOT interesting, though. Some subjects that make my eyes glaze over include discussions about fashion, people I don’t know, TV shows or books I’m not familiar with and medical stories.
Nah, socializing is a way to find out what someone is interested in and make connections with them. Sometimes people go on at length about things their conversation partners aren’t interested in, but usually when I talk to someone, even if I don’t know them very well, I’m sharing things about myself and learning things about the other person, telling jokes and stories, finding out what mutual friends have been up to, etc. I’ll admit I’m not the world’s best conversationalist but I love and crave good, balanced conversation.
I like to talk about the things I’m doing, and my own interests, and tend to lose interest when the subjects drift to things that don’t um, interest me. But then, I am spectacularly selfish and egotistical person.
I like to listen. I like to absorb knowledge, let it marinate in my brain, and then think about it later. Sometimes I have something entertaining or interesting to tell others, but for the most part I am the passive member of the conversation. I have the same behavior online too… look at my post count and my join date.
… But…
… this one time, at band camp…
That shit irritates me. Some people just need to talk constantly about everything, and I don’t care about any of it. But damn me if I say that I’m not interested, that makes me out to be the bad guy, even though they are annoying me. So I just have to put up with it, or hopefully tune it out until until they leave.
I recently worked with two of these types, and they both became exponentially more annoying when they were working at the same time.
I like talk as a form of entertainment. My family is good at it in an eccentric Southern kind of way and I was brought up that way. I do love to listen to people as long as they can tell a semi-good story and I love talking to degenerates and the scum of the earth for that reason. They are usually entertaining. I don’t like to listen to bad storytellers no matter how interesting the story matter could be.
That has been a big problem for me in Massachusetts because I encounter the liberal monotone droning lecture way too often. You would think those years studying abroad would be interesting but not usually from the way they tell it. I can listen to a trucker or someone who has done more than her fair share of hard time for quite a while though and I am a good listener. I have an employee who is quite the screwup and he loves to fish more than life itself and can tell you about expensive custom carved lures all day long in a way that is interesting. I like fishing Ok but but I don’t know much about the kind he does but I always get him started talking about it because I really am interested in the way he tells me about it. Someone could tell me about doll collections the same way and it would spure my interest.
OTOH, I would never want to hear from someone that was an NFL football player that droned on and on about it in a way that isn’t entertaining. The Dale Carnegie books are all about this from both sides and that is good advice for anyone. Being boring is a cardinal sin in my book.
How the heck am I supposed to tell if I’m being boring though? I’m interesting to me because the subject interests me, and sure my audience never complains, interrupts, or throws themselves into traffic to get away from me, but maybe they’re just being polite.
Yes. To be honest it sounds like you have two issues going on here - you may be dealing with some selfish people and you may have some loneliness or depression problems. I say that based on some of the other questions you’ve posed here, not just this one.
Well, body language could be a hint. How much eye contact are you getting? Are they leaning in towards you, or are they turning slightly away from you? Are they being distracted by other, more interesting things? Also, are they participating in the conversation when given the chance, or are they just acknowledging that they heard you?
Even if you are “boring” to someone, that doesn’t mean you are boring in general, it just means that person isn’t a good conversationalist for you to talk with. You may get better reception from other people.
I wouldn’t just limit it to liberals, but I know exactly what you are talking about (having lived in MA for several years). I call it the “Corporate Middle-Class Monotone” (well…since about 5 minutes ago).
Basically it is a conversation style that seems particular to the middle classes where you only care about yourself but don’t have anything particularly interesting to say or ask. It makes for a tedious, monotonous canned conversation that serves no point other than to communicate how like everyone else you are while not offending anyone.
The thing is, unless you have some shared experiences or interests with the person you are talking with, it can be a bit “verbally mastabatory”. It will mostly consist of a lot of back and forth boring probing questions about class/dorm/major/college/sports/job/house/neighborhood/wife/kids.
Compare the boring conversations with those you have with a close friend where the exchange is effortless. Or even one with someone you just met where you seem to hit it off right away. There is usually some level of passion or interest with the later as well as a level of comfort that you can disagree about those things without insulting the other person.
I have mixed feelings on some of that self-help Dale Carnegie style books (although I can’t speak for the Dale Carnegie books specifically). A lot of them seem written to make you end up speaking in that stupid fake corporate “everything is super positive because I’m an idiot” style that Lindsey Neigel and Lionel Hutz use on The Simpsons.
They’re doing all these things, except the last one, because I hardly ever let them get a word in when I’m rambling along on my favorite subjects.
But these are really polite people; how do I know they’re not just faking it? I am wracked with paranoia.
It’s certainly true that there are some people I can glaze over with just a few words. “Hey, I watched this awsome animated show yesterday…” But just because other people don’t glaze doesn’t mean I’m interesting; it may just mean they’re better at hiding their boredom.
I feel I must hide myself away from civilization now, to protect the people around me from boredom. Except you people here on this message board, of course - I don’t care about your well-being.
You shouldn’t do that – its a conversation, not a lecture. Of course we all get overzealous sometimes, but you shouldn’t make it a habit as other poeple find it disagreeable, and frankly, it is VERY hard to concentrate when you are a passive listener for an extended period of time. Even if the other people are actually VERY interested in the topic you are talking about, their minds might be wandering because of this. Don’t you get distracted when someone else does this to you?
Just pause now and then to let the other person participate. Something simple like “what your thinking on [topic]?”
I would consider this a long throw at a target you’re not even sure is there.
In most circumstances, you will not be interested in what a person has to say. If you surround yourself with people who have similar interests then yes, you might look at this question and say, well now this person must be depressed and lonely.
Finding things that are normally interesting to a particular person no longer interesting may be sign of depression, sure… But here I don’t see your case.
On this topic of the others being selfish, I suggest that most people are inherently selfish.
You care about you and yours, and if you claim otherwise, you are lying. You may act differently, but acting is a very common thing, and that’s not true feeling. If you act, then your’e doing it for selfish reasons. Not hurting someone’s feelings is a selfish reason. You don’t care because you can’t, but you don’t want to feel bad for doing it. Selfish.
It’s not even about opinions at this point. There are only so many people you can give a crap about. There was a great post someone put up about the monkeysphere. Which is a displays of how far our network of giving a crap is capable of reaching. The outer limits are somewhere around 150 or so.
Now I know more than 150 people. Maybe not everyone does, but I’m sure many people do. At least in denser populations. Even in small communities there are many more than 150 people.
So we don’t care about what another person thinks whether you like it or not.
And if you do care it has something to do with yourself. Like they share your interests, or they know or do something you care about, where at this point you may add them into your monkeyesphere. Other people are no different than new activities. You don’t care unless you care.
