What's the single most boring, yet wildly popular, topic of conversation?

In My Humble Opinion
1

People can blather on about all kinds of things. In my office these days, people talk about wedding plans (two brides!), the arrival of spring weather, how those Mariners are doing, an annoying departmental mascot that’s mysteriously disappeared, Lost, upcoming vacations, fitness routines, who’s hot and who’s not, Beautifulpeople.net, and what your kids have been up to.

Even if I’m not interested, I’ll often join in the chit-chat – it’s polite, it keeps the office in harmony, it shows I’m not always a stuck-up (or socially awkward) know-it-all.

But the one topic of conversation that guarantees I’ll tune out within 10 seconds: diet. Not dieting, though often that’s part of it. And not food, as in good recipes or restaurants, though those topics often segue into diet discussions.

No, I’m talking about long, dull conversations about what people do or don’t eat for health reasons. Blah blah blah don’t eat peanut butter, blah blah blah carbs, blah blah blah oh that’s too much fat, blah blah blah recipe for cheesecake with half the calories and really you’d never notice the difference, blah blah blah 10 pounds. Boring, boring, boring!

It can be a reasonable, 2-minute conversation, and I’m likely to have my iPod headphones on within 15 seconds of any mention of not eating chicken skins or why strawberries actually aren’t good for you. Boooo-ring!

So what’s the dullest regular topic of conversation in your neck of the woods?

2

Diet, exercise, and American Idol. Okay, I’ll cut the AI people some slack, because we can all be found at my supervisor’s desk on Thursday morning rehashing Lost.

3

This one.

4

The worst is when you go out with a bunch of people who all work together, but that you don’t work with. Yawn festival in hell that one is.

5

Gawd. My roommate, her brother, and his girlfriend (who are pretty much my three closest friends) all work together. It’s awful. Thankfully, they don’t seem to get offended when I zone out.

6

Sports. Man, what a boring topic, and man, can people ever go on and on about it.

7

Sports. Good God, would I be happy to never have to hear about sports ever again.

8

Star chat- who’s pregnant, who has a “baby bump”, who’s screwing who, who’s getting married/divorced/whatever. Gah. STFU! Who cares? Get a hobby!

9

I second(third) diets. It’s slightly less manic than when Atkins first got big, but jesus on a low carb cracker, shut your pie hole, people.

Any time a group is talking about something that you’re not into it can be pretty damn boring. My boss (a 50something year old male) and three of the young women in my office have a fifteen minute gabfest every week about The OC. If I had no interest in watching it before, they’ve pretty much ensured that I will never watch it.

10

I’ll add another vote for sports.

11

The weather. As Mark Twain said, “Everybody talks about it, but nobody ever does anything about it.”

12

I apologize for excitedly describing my modified cheesecake recipe at trivia last night. :wink:

My nomination: Reality TV in general. All of it. I do not get the fascination.

13

You were not going on and on about the amazing health benefits of your modified cheesecake recipe. There was another cheesecake conversation here at work this morning, involving several people agreeing that you just can’t taste the difference between stuff made with a lot of fat and stuff made with no fat.

I am skeptical.

And I don’t care for sports, but I’d much rather listen to a sports conversation than a diet conversation. Mostly because I find the psychology of sports fans kind of interesting, and the politics of sports in communities kind of interesting, but I don’t find amateur health detecting interesting at all.

14

Well, what’s boring varies wildly from person to person - it just means something you involve yourself in neither physically nor emotionally. I can be interested in virtually anything if I can have a one on one conversation with someone.

When a group is talking about something I personally am not interested in, such as sports, although I won’t contribute to the conversation it can still be very interesting to me to observe - people tend to display key aspects of their personality and attitudes no matter what they are talking about. And I’m always fascinated by the topic of people, so this sort of silent observation can be both enjoyable, and useful to me if I am working/interacting with these people. (know your enemy and all…)

15

Me, too, unless it’s rowing, in which case that’s all my friends and I talk about to the utter dismay of significant others/occasional non-rowing aquaintances…

My second pick would be the long touchy feely conversations about psychological motivations of either themselves, you, or their significant others. Some of my friends can go for hours about this type o’crap…

16

I love talking about sports but I hate sports gossip. For some reason, people love to go on about who athletes are dating and what they were wearing the other day. Did you know that Jeter broke up with yadda yadda yadda Shaq wore blah blah blah Jeff Gordon likes…SHUT UP!

17

Sports. Celebrity Gossip, and Gas Prices.

18

Kids. I’m childless, so that’s no doubt the reason for my disconnect. But when the conversation turns to toilet training, and how Madison barfed up her dinner last night, and driving kids to soccer practice, I just tune out. I’ve heard it all before and tried to appear interested, but I just can’t do it anymore.

19

Football. I feel emasculated by knowing almost nothing, and caring even less. And now the World Cup is upon us. My work life is about to get a lot duller for several weeks.

20

Sports, American Idol/Gilmore Girls/Whatever the hell godawful crap is on the networks nowadays, and kids. Especially kids. I’ve started getting snarky about it, too. “Why don’t you have any kids?” “Oh, I take medication for that!”

I’ll happily chat about diet, if only to smack down some serious ignorance about it (“OMG I eat no carbs why am I fat!!?” Uh, 'cause you’re still eating 9 billion calories, duh!)