Saving the Lost Art of Conversation(theatlantic.com)
theatlantic.com
Saving the Lost Art of Conversation
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/01/the-eavesdropper/355727/
24 comments
If the goal is interesting conversation, I completely agree.
That said, I've actually learned to 'stick' with friends that weren't similar enough to me in interests, beliefs or conversational styles, and I believe my life is better off as a result.
There was a period in my life where I mostly had 'engaging' friendships, but I noticed that it resulted in a certain disconnectedness from the rest of the world. I would often find myself unable to engage with the 'small talk people' or those that didn't seem to have anything in common with me for other reasons. And I didn't like that.
So I started learning to engage with exactly those people, practicing ways to still have engaging conversation, but also enjoy 'inane smalltalk'. And I noticed that sometimes it was precisely these types of people that would give me 'aha' moments, often right in the middle of some inane conversation. Or perspectives I would've never considered.
That said, I've actually learned to 'stick' with friends that weren't similar enough to me in interests, beliefs or conversational styles, and I believe my life is better off as a result.
There was a period in my life where I mostly had 'engaging' friendships, but I noticed that it resulted in a certain disconnectedness from the rest of the world. I would often find myself unable to engage with the 'small talk people' or those that didn't seem to have anything in common with me for other reasons. And I didn't like that.
So I started learning to engage with exactly those people, practicing ways to still have engaging conversation, but also enjoy 'inane smalltalk'. And I noticed that sometimes it was precisely these types of people that would give me 'aha' moments, often right in the middle of some inane conversation. Or perspectives I would've never considered.
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I find that "interesting" and "artful", while not quite orthogonal, are not exactly the same thing. There are many people with which I can have an intellectually stimulating conversation, but really feeling cared for, appreciated, seen is rare.
"Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1863
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1863
Gwern addresses this issue in his essay, "The Melancholy of Subculture Society" [1]. In it, he focuses on this very issue. Society is fragmenting as information technology allows people to congregate by interest rather than by geography. As a result, we have deep conversations online, with others in our subcultures, but shallow (or even nonexistent) conversations with those who happen to be geographically close to us, but with whom we do not share interests.
I've noticed this in my own life, to a certain extent. I have deep and fascinating conversations with people online about all sorts of topics. But off the Internet, when I don't know if you're interested in the same things that I am, I'm a bit (well, more than a bit) boring.
[1] http://www.gwern.net/The%20Melancholy%20of%20Subculture%20So...
I've noticed this in my own life, to a certain extent. I have deep and fascinating conversations with people online about all sorts of topics. But off the Internet, when I don't know if you're interested in the same things that I am, I'm a bit (well, more than a bit) boring.
[1] http://www.gwern.net/The%20Melancholy%20of%20Subculture%20So...
I'm convinced there's a one-line version of this article that is no less informative than the original.
Somewhat ironically, I would have appreciated it if the author had been under SMS/Twitter length constraints.
Somewhat ironically, I would have appreciated it if the author had been under SMS/Twitter length constraints.
This article, while cute, seems vacuous. 'We should talk to each other more, look into each other's eyes, and be comfortable with awkward silence.' Uh, okay.
The link was clicked because its great to hear real advice on how to be more engaging, how to find more interest in others and keep them talking, how to be interesting and how to help & encourage others be interesting. None of that useful advice was found here, nor anything else particularly helpful, just someone's opinion of what others should be doing.
Just to play a little devil's advocate, it takes energy, motivation and interest to talk to people at length on random subjects. While that might be occasionally fruitful, it could also be argued with an equal white-horse, academic, and holier-than-thou essay that searching for dense and meaningful conversation online with people who care about the issues you care about... like hacker news... is a far better use of your limited time than perfecting the art of wasting it on chit-chat. Maybe the waxing nostalgic arguments about the doom of the world our electronic devices are bringing about, and how great things were without all this newfangled technology, are getting a little sleepy?
Anyway, the last line made me laugh out loud.
> “Everybody’s talking,” she muses. “And nobody’s talking about anything except what’s on the machines.”
While in an Apple store. Seriously? You were expecting what? Philosophy? Commentary on international news? Intimate bed-side chatter? Deep eye-looking with sales people? Anything other than waffling on whether to spend several hundred or thousand hard-earned bucks on what the store is selling?
The link was clicked because its great to hear real advice on how to be more engaging, how to find more interest in others and keep them talking, how to be interesting and how to help & encourage others be interesting. None of that useful advice was found here, nor anything else particularly helpful, just someone's opinion of what others should be doing.
Just to play a little devil's advocate, it takes energy, motivation and interest to talk to people at length on random subjects. While that might be occasionally fruitful, it could also be argued with an equal white-horse, academic, and holier-than-thou essay that searching for dense and meaningful conversation online with people who care about the issues you care about... like hacker news... is a far better use of your limited time than perfecting the art of wasting it on chit-chat. Maybe the waxing nostalgic arguments about the doom of the world our electronic devices are bringing about, and how great things were without all this newfangled technology, are getting a little sleepy?
Anyway, the last line made me laugh out loud.
> “Everybody’s talking,” she muses. “And nobody’s talking about anything except what’s on the machines.”
While in an Apple store. Seriously? You were expecting what? Philosophy? Commentary on international news? Intimate bed-side chatter? Deep eye-looking with sales people? Anything other than waffling on whether to spend several hundred or thousand hard-earned bucks on what the store is selling?
I laughed at that last bit, too. "All the people at the car dealership just keep talking about cars. Same thing in the nursery—it's all 'flower' this and 'planter' that. And don't even get me started on that sex shop!"
In the future, psychologists will ask, "Why don't you point to the meme that matches your feelings about that?"
Seriously, in some of the most-heavily travelled corners of the internet, its endless image-macros filled with random animals and long irrelevant photos. What started as an internet version of the inside joke, has morphed into an impact-text filled super-emoticon. It's almost like cockney-rhyme slang for the internet, if you're not familiar with the original image, you have to climb into knowyourmeme in order to figure out what anybody is trying to say. If you head to somewhere like facebook, you'll find the same photos posted by women in their 50s, now completely decoupled from the original meaning. (We've all seen them abused in tech powerpoints, which is a separate story.) The strangest part about this is that I've now seen it leaking out into the real world, where people will use the catch-phrase as if we're all becoming our own meme-generators, with the pre-canned images burnt into our temporal lobes.
Seriously, in some of the most-heavily travelled corners of the internet, its endless image-macros filled with random animals and long irrelevant photos. What started as an internet version of the inside joke, has morphed into an impact-text filled super-emoticon. It's almost like cockney-rhyme slang for the internet, if you're not familiar with the original image, you have to climb into knowyourmeme in order to figure out what anybody is trying to say. If you head to somewhere like facebook, you'll find the same photos posted by women in their 50s, now completely decoupled from the original meaning. (We've all seen them abused in tech powerpoints, which is a separate story.) The strangest part about this is that I've now seen it leaking out into the real world, where people will use the catch-phrase as if we're all becoming our own meme-generators, with the pre-canned images burnt into our temporal lobes.
> In a fast-paced digital age, an MIT psychologist tries to slow us down.
In a cliché-filled age, an MIT psychologist goes balls to the wall cliché.
In a cliché-filled age, an MIT psychologist goes balls to the wall cliché.
Just like in meatspace, conversation online is exactly what you make it. If you create online social spaces for yourself full of superficiality and narcissistic triviality, that is what you will experience.
Just like how whether your in person conversations are substantial or not depends completely on who you chose to associate with and how you chose to communicate with them. Surely the author and the psychologist have observed countless people blathering on in person about utterly trivial topics, or sharing the equivalent of "verbal selfies" with their self-centered monologues?
You can easily create deep, personal, high quality conversation online, but it takes conscious effort, just like in the rest of life. The same goes for whether your online usage is isolating, or serves to deepen your in-person connections - it's totally up to you.
Just like how whether your in person conversations are substantial or not depends completely on who you chose to associate with and how you chose to communicate with them. Surely the author and the psychologist have observed countless people blathering on in person about utterly trivial topics, or sharing the equivalent of "verbal selfies" with their self-centered monologues?
You can easily create deep, personal, high quality conversation online, but it takes conscious effort, just like in the rest of life. The same goes for whether your online usage is isolating, or serves to deepen your in-person connections - it's totally up to you.
> The problem, Turkle argues, is that all of this [electronic] talk can come at the expense of conversation. We’re talking at each other rather than with each other.
-----------------------------
Electronics aside, is that new? If you read books like How To Make Friends and Influence People, it seems like most people were horribly self-centred even back then. If you've listened to Ira Glass' talk about creativity, one of the points he brings up is essentially that a lot of people lack interest in things other than themselves. He puts it a little more gently than that, but that's the core of it.
Heck, I remember the idea that we're all looking for the unconditional love we thought we deserved as children.
Now, I'm not saying that we're all like that, or that the majority of us are like that. But if you want to sing the praises of what we had before you have to paint a fairly rosy picture of humanity. Your null-hypothesis, so to speak, isn't electronic communication alone - that might just be making the pre-existing social dynamic easier to see.
If you want to make a strong argument, general rule, if you want to make a strong argument - to be persuasive to people who value no-BS, "just the facts please mam" - you have to either prove that you don't live in the situation where your argument would be really difficult to empathise with, or show that your argument still works even if you're in a situation where your argument would be really difficult to empathise with.
(Of course, for different people, different things are persuasive - one of the reasons this is written in the style of a story is that stories help us empathise with people and filter larger things through that empathy... I'd say there's too much of the reporter in this story for that to work as well as it should. But you can certainly get a lot of distance out of packaging up quite abstract thoughts into anecdotes. Even if, or perhaps especially, if they're not anecdotes about you. You may need a little bit of yourself in there as a hook but interesting people talk a bit about themselves and use that as a hook to talk about others - because they've got these interests in the world around them.)
-----------------------------
Electronics aside, is that new? If you read books like How To Make Friends and Influence People, it seems like most people were horribly self-centred even back then. If you've listened to Ira Glass' talk about creativity, one of the points he brings up is essentially that a lot of people lack interest in things other than themselves. He puts it a little more gently than that, but that's the core of it.
Heck, I remember the idea that we're all looking for the unconditional love we thought we deserved as children.
Now, I'm not saying that we're all like that, or that the majority of us are like that. But if you want to sing the praises of what we had before you have to paint a fairly rosy picture of humanity. Your null-hypothesis, so to speak, isn't electronic communication alone - that might just be making the pre-existing social dynamic easier to see.
If you want to make a strong argument, general rule, if you want to make a strong argument - to be persuasive to people who value no-BS, "just the facts please mam" - you have to either prove that you don't live in the situation where your argument would be really difficult to empathise with, or show that your argument still works even if you're in a situation where your argument would be really difficult to empathise with.
(Of course, for different people, different things are persuasive - one of the reasons this is written in the style of a story is that stories help us empathise with people and filter larger things through that empathy... I'd say there's too much of the reporter in this story for that to work as well as it should. But you can certainly get a lot of distance out of packaging up quite abstract thoughts into anecdotes. Even if, or perhaps especially, if they're not anecdotes about you. You may need a little bit of yourself in there as a hook but interesting people talk a bit about themselves and use that as a hook to talk about others - because they've got these interests in the world around them.)
Sound track of the article, courtesy of the witty Neil Hannon:
The Divine Comedy: The Lost Art of Conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSexRjTfmoE
The Divine Comedy: The Lost Art of Conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSexRjTfmoE
This thread seems like a good place to vent anonymously about something that's been eating me. I want to see if anyone can relate or will even have any idea what I'm trying to say.
I have this friend. We've been friends for a long time. I think we must have had a lot in common some time ago, but it's hard to remember for sure. Around 1.5 years ago, I began to notice a change in this person's way of speaking. They became perfectly inane, as if in a studied, practiced way. They never say anything the tiniest bit controversial or opinionated, or revealing they slightest bit of personality. It's as if they became a P.R. department for themselves. They utter many trite well-wishes, a lot of overt gratitude for very simple things, simply phrased banal questions, and absolutely nothing else. Nothing that any civil person could disagree with ... and to my ears, nothing worth spending the breath to say. A continuous stream of equivalents to "nice weather!"
I don't understand it. As a somewhat eccentric person, my reaction to hearing this kind of talk over any length of time is like I'm quaking with frustration bordering on rage inside. I don't say anything about it, because I feel like that could only be hurtful.
Explanations I've come up with include the fact that this person has adopted Facebook very heavily, seemingly getting a significant amount of social interaction through it. So perhaps they've adopted the voice that you have to when you're constantly speaking in front of an audience full of all your friends, family, co-workers, and even bosses. But it's like this person carried that voice into their offline life, and never, ever breaks out of that bland, trite, soul-less mode. It's all, "Happy about this nice weather!" and "This pie is yummy." forever and ever....
Ah well. I just thought I'd drop this here and see if anyone has ever encountered something like this. I feel like I lost a friend.
I have this friend. We've been friends for a long time. I think we must have had a lot in common some time ago, but it's hard to remember for sure. Around 1.5 years ago, I began to notice a change in this person's way of speaking. They became perfectly inane, as if in a studied, practiced way. They never say anything the tiniest bit controversial or opinionated, or revealing they slightest bit of personality. It's as if they became a P.R. department for themselves. They utter many trite well-wishes, a lot of overt gratitude for very simple things, simply phrased banal questions, and absolutely nothing else. Nothing that any civil person could disagree with ... and to my ears, nothing worth spending the breath to say. A continuous stream of equivalents to "nice weather!"
I don't understand it. As a somewhat eccentric person, my reaction to hearing this kind of talk over any length of time is like I'm quaking with frustration bordering on rage inside. I don't say anything about it, because I feel like that could only be hurtful.
Explanations I've come up with include the fact that this person has adopted Facebook very heavily, seemingly getting a significant amount of social interaction through it. So perhaps they've adopted the voice that you have to when you're constantly speaking in front of an audience full of all your friends, family, co-workers, and even bosses. But it's like this person carried that voice into their offline life, and never, ever breaks out of that bland, trite, soul-less mode. It's all, "Happy about this nice weather!" and "This pie is yummy." forever and ever....
Ah well. I just thought I'd drop this here and see if anyone has ever encountered something like this. I feel like I lost a friend.
I find this very interesting. Could you maybe give some more context? What age is this friend, and how long have you been friends? What has changed besides the increase facebook usage?
On the one hand I tend to believe (as others have remarked) that usually the explanation for such a change is simpler than we're inclined to think. It could just be that over time your interests diverged, for example. Or that your friend is just growing older and valuing conversation in itself over conversation as a way of exchanging ideas (similar perhaps to my observation that many people around me grow less ideologically-driven as they get older). I've seen this happen with some of my friends, and it's not necessarily a bad thing.
On the other hand, I've spent a lot of time observing people around me talk and interact with computers/social media, trying to see patterns emerge, and my observations fit your experience.
An example: for a few years I was a reddit-addict, and would spend hours just clicking on gifs, short videos, reading funny comments, and generally consuming that kind of short-attention-span content. So did my younger brother. And I noticed that many of our conversations would turn into 'did you read this', 'haha, yes', 'oh and look at this' type of stuff. It reached a point where we weren't just sharing trivial content, but mostly just comparing what trivial content we were both aware of (which created a sense of togetherness, I suppose).
Since then, I moved on to slightly more 'heavy' content (partly through HN), and my brother curbed his reddit use. Our conversations now our much more meaningful and we often have multi-part conversations that span months on a single topic.
My youngest brother, on the other hand, is firmly in the reddit/9gag area, and I often notice a discrepancy in conversation between the three of us. For me and my other brother, even a silly meme can be the starting point of some kind of analysis, however inane, and we linger on the issue, whereas my younger brother has a tendency to move straight on to the next inane-but-entertaining thing. This sometimes causes a bit of awkwardness in the conversation as we seem to have different purposes.
While part of my is, as said earlier, inclined to believe that the explanation might be different or simpler (personality, for example, or age), the fact that I've seen our individual behavior correlate strongly to our media use, at different ages, and regardless of our rather distinct personalities, leads me to think that perhaps media use is a huge factor.
On the one hand I tend to believe (as others have remarked) that usually the explanation for such a change is simpler than we're inclined to think. It could just be that over time your interests diverged, for example. Or that your friend is just growing older and valuing conversation in itself over conversation as a way of exchanging ideas (similar perhaps to my observation that many people around me grow less ideologically-driven as they get older). I've seen this happen with some of my friends, and it's not necessarily a bad thing.
On the other hand, I've spent a lot of time observing people around me talk and interact with computers/social media, trying to see patterns emerge, and my observations fit your experience.
An example: for a few years I was a reddit-addict, and would spend hours just clicking on gifs, short videos, reading funny comments, and generally consuming that kind of short-attention-span content. So did my younger brother. And I noticed that many of our conversations would turn into 'did you read this', 'haha, yes', 'oh and look at this' type of stuff. It reached a point where we weren't just sharing trivial content, but mostly just comparing what trivial content we were both aware of (which created a sense of togetherness, I suppose).
Since then, I moved on to slightly more 'heavy' content (partly through HN), and my brother curbed his reddit use. Our conversations now our much more meaningful and we often have multi-part conversations that span months on a single topic.
My youngest brother, on the other hand, is firmly in the reddit/9gag area, and I often notice a discrepancy in conversation between the three of us. For me and my other brother, even a silly meme can be the starting point of some kind of analysis, however inane, and we linger on the issue, whereas my younger brother has a tendency to move straight on to the next inane-but-entertaining thing. This sometimes causes a bit of awkwardness in the conversation as we seem to have different purposes.
While part of my is, as said earlier, inclined to believe that the explanation might be different or simpler (personality, for example, or age), the fact that I've seen our individual behavior correlate strongly to our media use, at different ages, and regardless of our rather distinct personalities, leads me to think that perhaps media use is a huge factor.
So perhaps they've adopted the voice that you have to when you're constantly speaking in front of an audience full of all your friends, family, co-workers, and even bosses.
Interesting insight. Would not be surprising if message boards like this and some mailing lists socialize us in a way to say things that are relatively anodyne, given the strong bias against trolling and off-topic, ill-considered remarks. Also, we come to learn that we're writing for an audience composed of anyone who might be on the Internet (!).
About this second point, I actually think that's a great thing. Because of it we're motivated to avoid writing to a select audience, saying things that would be hurtful to others if they were listening in on the conversation. It helps us to consider our comments within a larger context.
The part about anodyne comments can't be overgeneralized -- think of the types of threads on reddit and 4chan. It might have something to do with being exposed to venues that are moderated or in which there is a reputation system.
Interesting insight. Would not be surprising if message boards like this and some mailing lists socialize us in a way to say things that are relatively anodyne, given the strong bias against trolling and off-topic, ill-considered remarks. Also, we come to learn that we're writing for an audience composed of anyone who might be on the Internet (!).
About this second point, I actually think that's a great thing. Because of it we're motivated to avoid writing to a select audience, saying things that would be hurtful to others if they were listening in on the conversation. It helps us to consider our comments within a larger context.
The part about anodyne comments can't be overgeneralized -- think of the types of threads on reddit and 4chan. It might have something to do with being exposed to venues that are moderated or in which there is a reputation system.
> socialize us in a way to say things that are relatively anodyne,
I freaking wish. Have you read some of the vile nonsense spewed out on HN every day?
More seriously, people have a variety of fora, and so here they might be professional but they keep a different name for Reddit to post to the trolling subredits.
I freaking wish. Have you read some of the vile nonsense spewed out on HN every day?
More seriously, people have a variety of fora, and so here they might be professional but they keep a different name for Reddit to post to the trolling subredits.
I would suggest from a mental health and happiness perspective to avoid dwelling on why you believe your friend is acting the way they are. Their reasons are often less dramatic than what your brain might come up with.
But if you do feel like knowing their psychology would be important then I think talking to them would be the right thing to do. People rationalize passivity by telling themselves they don't want to be pushy/hurtful/creepy etc. You can always be nice about it or ease into the topic ("have you read this article about conversation I saw on HN?").
But if you do feel like knowing their psychology would be important then I think talking to them would be the right thing to do. People rationalize passivity by telling themselves they don't want to be pushy/hurtful/creepy etc. You can always be nice about it or ease into the topic ("have you read this article about conversation I saw on HN?").
I noticed you made a very conscious effort not to identify the gender of this person. I sense some amount of obsessive-compulsiveness.
I don't mean to offend you, but perhaps the problem is within you, and that your own over-analysis of your friend's behavior is what is ruining the relationship? Lots of people engage in small talk, very often. You may be focusing on it too much. And perhaps you're holding your friend to a higher standard of deep conversation than others - so you don't notice the small talk of other people.
I don't mean to offend you, but perhaps the problem is within you, and that your own over-analysis of your friend's behavior is what is ruining the relationship? Lots of people engage in small talk, very often. You may be focusing on it too much. And perhaps you're holding your friend to a higher standard of deep conversation than others - so you don't notice the small talk of other people.
I didn't identify the gender, because I didn't want that to affect anyone's evaluation. It was a choice. Relation to OCD, zero.
And really, small talk is well understood, and it's something everyone does sometimes. I feel like it takes a special kind of ... something ... to literally avoid saying anything of substance, ever.
And really, small talk is well understood, and it's something everyone does sometimes. I feel like it takes a special kind of ... something ... to literally avoid saying anything of substance, ever.
Have you considered the possibility that your friend may have a brain tumor?
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Yeah, this is weird, I also know somebody with similar patterns, mentally healthy otherwise.
I think some people are just uncomfortable with periods of silence that follow any conversation, view it as awkward and try to fill it in with some verbal minutiae.
I think some people are just uncomfortable with periods of silence that follow any conversation, view it as awkward and try to fill it in with some verbal minutiae.
My entire quality of life improved dramatically when I stopped going to the same, old wells for my friendships.
First, I stopped trying to be friends with everyone I met. Not everyone is going to fit in your life. I don't mean that there will be arguments, just that things you find interesting won't be interesting to some other people as it would be to some other-other people. So, the pursuit of making everyone like me required that I focus on their interests and be deferential to them. Well, turns out, most people don't like a carpet as a friend. It's far better to be interesting yourself, in some specific way, forgo the potential friendships that don't "get you", and cultivate the ones that do. In other words, I was trying to make quality out of everything, which is impossible. It's better to winnow quality out of quantity.
Second, I stopped prioritizing friendship based on length-of-time. Most of the kids I grew up with grew apart in college, as people do, but afterwards we clung to this idea that we were once friends, thus should always be friends. It became a serious issue of clashing ideologies, and I realized that, if we had met today, we would have been much more polite to each other than we had come to be, and we would not be trying to spend a lot of time with each other. This notion of eternal friendship was exactly the reason why we were arguing so much all the time. It made us refuse to see the differences between us.
I just stopped spending effort on relationships that weren't going anywhere. The interesting people who were interested in me were out there. I just had to find them. Once found, the conversation was, of course, interesting.