Conversation

I try not to go to places 'full of strangers'. A mix is best.

this is a very important question and needs many more answers. go.

Well, it's impossible not to know anyone or not to have spoken to someone once because then there would be no reason for you to be in the room. So you eventually start talking to the last person who had something interesting to say, but you don't talk only about that but also about what you guess could be that person's next interest. So in other words a lot of guessing.

wise response

i like my conversation very light. very. big things to discuss can be awesome but i have to be in a good mood, i think. i don't find myself extrapolating on heavy issues when i'm sorta down. :/

The weather.

"Yeah, this fuckin rain this afternoon sucks, huh?"
"Yeah, kinda fucked up my day, I was gonna do blah blah blah.."
"When it rains I like to..."

or food.
"You had anything to eat yet tonight?"

or politics (not light.)

okay but here's the thing about the weather.

i genuinely like talking about weather, like on a regular basis. i'm always afraid ppl think i'm small-talking them, when i'm really just kind of struck by the weather.

talking about the weather is usually just a means to start a conversation, and not an ends. unlesssssss the weather is really peculiar.

I really like talking about:

muppets, sweeping v. vacuuming, dogs, pets, cooking, many misc. nerdy things, computers, jokes, animals, gardening, diseases, psychology, kinds of alcohol, movies...it's way easy to have conversation with most anyone if you stick to these kind of broad but interesting generalities. If you know about a lot of things, you'll have lots to talk about with lots of different people.

I had a conversation w/the grocery clerk about Peter Gabriel's early solo stuff and goddamn that was the most exciting conversation I've had with a stranger in a long time.

I have recently decided to become highly disillusioned with conversation

But conversation efforts help make the world a greener place!

Bah.

tom's pretty OTM.
the fewer people i have to deal with in a given day, the better. i think i actually have meaningful, stimulating conversations with mmmmmmmaaaaaybe 7 or 8 people in my life. including like, my parents & girlfriend & cat.

I just get drunk and recite the Simpsons at people until they get annoyed and go sit somewhere else.

The ones that don't, I end up getting on with? I dunno.

dick size.

ts:

conversation which is just shuffling a few common words around (weather, sport) to pass time vs. conversation which is actually communicating some information

yeah well where do we actually draw the line? I mean after enough conversations it's all just shuffling a few common words around

see fucking ILM

i had some awesome conversations on saturday night, but i was too drunk to actually recall any of them

or whatever, ilx as a whole

for the sake of argument let's say there's only about 22 different conversations any given human being can actually have, the rest being vocabulary test variants, and that out of those 22 types only about five can be considered "useful" in the sense of helping one or more of the participants in making a future decision, or adding to their trivia collection

the thing is I actually like people and I'm an incorrigible extrovert but I've begun to recognize that most everyone including myself amounts to a bunch of broken records, and I hardly even watch tv

where's chaki with that "STOP POSTING" gif when you need him

hahahaha my favorite: sweeping vs. vacuuming.

this is very good.

i thought of a good conversational topic last night: your good friend of the family's daughter.

everybody has one.

mine has brown hair.

Lately I really, really am liking ppl in general and enjoying their company to an unprecedented degree. It's weird. A whole new thang for me.

Like, I've come to have enormous respect for everybody, universally, just for going through all the shit that is part of life, and also there is the element of hearing interesting/valuable things from the seemingly most unlikely of ppl.

i understand

I often catch myself thinking "whatever is the point in talking to anyone about [whatever problem i am suffering from at the time], they will surely not be able to offer anything I haven't already thought of myself", I then speak to someone about it and they tell me something and I go "oh yeah I hadn't though of that". So problem-sharing conversation = pretty classic.

i totally agree. i'm actually one of these ppl that doesn't talk about myself too much, which i feel is good but also bad. sometimes it feels great to just fucking TALK ABOUT ME and let ppl in.

conversation with an aim or a point is the worst, fuck off man I've unimportant idle fantasy I could be considering

imo that is a hijacking of the word 'conversation'
it's something else -- a lecture, an act of persuasion, a scold, a voiced opinion, a charade, a joke, an act, a conceit, a way to appear busy, attention-seeking, blogging, whatever
i cannot pretend it's a conversation

the semantic map of conversation is similar to that of friend iirc
RIP actual conversations :(

A conversation should be an improvised dance imo

what if you need to talk about kevin, and so you do, is that a conversation

also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02_R8aiUAKw

if you need to talk about kevin, that is not a conversation

A conversation should be an improvised dance imo

agree

cool

I think I mostly agree but I was thinking of [conversations/not conversations] which have an aim or point that are less one-sided than a lecture, an act of persuasion, a scold, a voiced opinion, a charade, a joke, an act, a conceit, a way to appear busy, attention-seeking, blogging, whatever

like a mutual direction however vague, what would you call that

iirc conversation is the common go-to metaphor used by improv musicians to describe what they do

Yep, Dannie Richmond talks about how Mingus taught him to play conversationally at 33:37 here:
http://youtu.be/2E7Xs8gD3io

this is going splendidly, more tea?

you always say that when it's your round

colonial sympathy

I thought this piece (
also references this piece from the NYT) was pretty interesting. I think I enjoy some conversational overlap. It does make the conversation feel more alive and exciting.
However, it's hard not to see it as obnoxious to those who are not into it. It can often devolve into people talking over one another or just interjecting random ideas. Those who aren't willing to amplify their engagement in a conversation can get left out completely. And it smacks of in-group privilege.

I like giving it a name and pointing out the value in it, though. Hopefully it isn't just a self-serving justification of boorish behavior.