Up Front: Casual, Shallow and Meaningless
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BenWilson, in reply to
I've been pondering this, and why I'm pretty sure that, while I suck at small talk, I feel I'm pretty good at this. I don't think it's just the alcohol. And it's why I so enjoy PA gatherings, too, because I'll be able to find some of this.
They're pretty amazing. It's quite something to be able to skip small talk because you meet people who have deeply shared experience, despite possibly having never actually met. Never had anything like it before.
Mind you, even at Great Blends, you don't know most of the people, until you know them.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
Mind you, even at Great Blends, you don’t know most of the people, until you know them.
You get those who remember bits from online and as the group moves around each other ,one can cross paths by intros. I tend to go, peeps I do know first then anyone else who bothers to communicate. I'm a bit of a pig like that :)
I'm always happy to meet others and sometimes my chats are really short because my memory is. I'm missing a bit in the brain. My concentration is real bad because I cannot remember. It is not disinterest, it is, can't remember. And I'm loud because my hearing in one ear was paralysed along with everything else. but very happy to meet PAS peeps. -
Tom Beard, in reply to
Does that work on many young people?
On the ones worth talking to, it does.
Which sounds very snobbish, even for me, but even if I'm not expecting a conversation about literary criticism, I find that the people with whom I'm most likely to have engaging conversations would be able to respond to that question with something other than a blank stare.
It might have something to do with the fact that my imagination is primarily linguistic, whereas others' are sometimes visual or musical, and that I'm more likely to make connections (in form and content) with people who read and/or write fiction, poetry, philosophy, politics, history and the like than with those who don't. Even with those whose creative interests lie elsewhere, text is so ubiquitous a medium that for most people the question could lead onto a discussion of their interests: "I've just read a review of Pina, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it", "Have you seen Q's best band awards? What a bunch of out-of-touch old farts!", "I've just found this wonderful collection of old maps".
Of course, reading "books" is no guarantee of a good conversation, but that makes the question useful as a test. If one's interlocutor responds with a panegyric to Dan Brown, Ken Ring or Ayn Rand, it's a good opportunity to remember an urgent appointment elsewhere.
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