Good conversations have lots of doorknobs
experimentalhistory.substack.com
experimentalhistory.substack.com
> “What’s up?” is one of the most dreadful texts to get; it’s short for “Hello, I’d like you to entertain me now.”
The typical response to "What's up?" from myself and, uh, nearly everyone I know, is some variation on
"Not much! What's up with you?" or
"[trivial recent happening, quickly related] So, what's been going on with you?"
...and that's because "What's up?" is nearly universally a way to prompt someone to ask you that question back, so you can tell them about the thing you really want to say without it seeming sudden or forced.
Something that happened recently or something that you heard about or something you remembered or something you are looking forward to, just... anything.
I'm playing with LEGO®.
I'm eating sushi. You?
I'm in spaaaaaaceeeee but I'm separated from my module!!! Halp!
In async communication it's unnecessary though, people might do it by inertia.
TCP RST
If someone just wants to send me an information, email is great for that.
My personal order of contacts is snail mail → email → IM → phone → in person. Each of the steps is one order of magnitude of urgency greater than the previous one.
There is probably also a cultural component.
Every other time when you don't need to know that, you can still not get all the problems of the empty "hello" message.
A "hello" means it is "IM urgent" so it can wait for the moment I am OK to exchange.
Like I said, this is also cultural - some cultures allow people to interrupt others, some not.
That is why hello is annoying. People are capable to talk immediately, but take forever to finish writing.
Re: your messages in this thread
Dear BrandoElFollito:
You're rebuilding TCP over UDP. Chat apps are connectionless (or RESTful, if you will). What makes them productive, especially in the workplace, is the fact that they can work without all the handshaking that accompanies more structured communication like in-person, spoken human conversations.
Nothing is stopping you from adding back all your binds, listens, SYNs, and ACKs to a protocol that doesn't need them. But it's a conversational code smell if you do.
Sincerely yours,
sowbug
Sending Hello this way seems like calling somebody and if they answer it's ok to interrupt.
Being responsive doesn't mean you're idle.
If this is to say something minor I will block that person, or never pick up their call again.
I almost always have time to fight fires — unless busy with a larger conflagration. I may or may not have the time to debate the finer points of table naming conventions however.
Without context I might say yes and then have to take it back once I discover the topic.
Hello without a context is ignored.
Hello with a context empowers me to make a decision about how my day will go.
If I’m at work, I’m always going to be available to talk, and anyway, nothing is lost by them sending me what they want to say and me responding when I become available.
I’m of the opinion that you shouldn’t ever send messages that are unsafe for 200 of your colleagues to see.
“Hello, could we set a time to chat about xyz” lets the reader give a meaningful response when available (and maybe thats immediate)
I simply ignore hellos but happily respond to questions.
It's possible to be polite while being mindful of how many interrupts you are causing another person.
Good! If you went up to someone in person who is in flow state and say HELLO! you'll probably get a rude response too.
It was such a dead end for getting things done (he was productive on his things, but blocker for everybody else.
It was a weird hill to die on.
If that wasn’t desired, the greeting would be more like “Good day” or “Hello”.
You should essentially never do syn/ack IRL. If you don't know precisely what the recipient is doing, you do not know what they are doing, it could be important. Always lead with info to help them prioritize things. Ideally in the first ~5 words, because that's all they may see in the notification.
(this is also IMO why phone calls are terrible. they're the equivalent of "hello" over a channel that has no other message, so everything must be assumed to be maximum urgency or you might miss something truly critical)
“Hey I’m blocked on xyz, thanks anyways how was your weekend?”
Is far more pleasant than
“Hey how’s the weekend? anyway I’m blocked on xyz”
How difficult would it be to design a mechanism that facilitates humans being nice to each other, rather than making humans emulate emotionless robots?
(I'm picking up kids)
Me, Mon 5pm: hey
(He's gone for the day)
Bob, Tue 9am: can you check the logs for xyz...
The number of times that this has happened, with certain colleagues of mine, over Slack. Ugh.
Dude, if you had just skipped the really-actually-not-required-on-slack pleasantries, I could have already given you the information you needed, 16 hours ago.
That way you'd only be pulled into the conversation once there's actionable information.
12.00 - Hello
12.01 - Hello, what's up?
12.02 - (long text explanation with some urgent changes)
(you just returned from another urgent 3-hours meeting)
14.40 - sorry, just read your message?
Huh. I’m glad this is not a thing in my circles. Being direct and exposing some vulnerability seems to work great for us.
I known its just a custom that can’t be analyzed too deeply, but what you describe sounds so timid and shy from the outside.
Rightly or wrongly (probably wrongly), if I picked up that someone was doing this, I’d assume they need a lot of special handling and ceremony to feel comfortable. It would take a lot for me to want to bother.
Like he's swinging a club at you. The only reply is to raise your shield.
Or you could do something clever. But either way your attention has been lassoed.
Gotta be cleverer.
Maybe in the United States, but I would hardly call it universal.
Honestly, I've had a hard time turning these into interesting discussions. It amounts to, "no time to really reflect. Here are my mundane joys and traumas. Okay, back to the pressing issues at hand..."
Yes. And I find myself using this pattern when I want to talk (heck, I started the conversation, so I have something in my mind), but I’m not sure if it’s a convenient time.
If my asking “What’s up” unlocks a conversation, then maybe it’s not a good time to talk about what I was thinking.
https://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-bet...
Are people primed / wired to more readily understand things when they're explained in a "two tribes" way?
We all know it's simplification and it's easy to read so it looks intelligent, albeit incomplete.
For example I make 2x2 matrix of growing roses where axis are: amount of water and amount of sunlight, seems reasonable but we know that there are many other variables at play: soil, atmosphere, solar cycle, temperature, fungal growth etc.
I could make NxM matrix of all known variables, but it would be quite intimidating.
I'd crudely deduct that being takers/givers in a conversation may be a function of cultural, linguistic, social, and intellectual dimensions coupled with personal, emotional, and ambient states a person is in.
As such there's really very little just one party can do to have a better conversation flowing on their own. So apart from affordance, I think participation seems to also be a key factor and can be seen as "push or pull or slide" aspect of that doorknob.
But now I find myself surrounded by Givers. I'm not sure if this is a cultural thing (SF tech scene), a regional thing (west coast), or a my-social-circle thing.
So I had to learn to be a giver to make any friends. What's interesting is that my old friends are mostly Takers. I imagine this was a selection bias: givers got bored of talking to me quickly! I get together with some old friends from college once or twice a year and every time it's a bit jarring for the first hour as I have to switch to all-take mode.
Anyway, the point being that I think you can learn to switch, and to blend between the two modes. In fact, I think being able to do so is generally good and helpful.
People think it's being polite and decent but to me it just seems boring.
Anecdotally I think 'taker'-ness is associated with immigrant cultures (Jewish and Italian come to mind, but I think it includes others also).
A topic I find never fails to engage is a recent movie or book, liked or hated. Why so? Did the techniques of the author or director or cast or production resonate or miss the mark? how would they have changed the plot, the actors, the setting, or the ending? How did this story compare to others they liked more? And so on…
There's nothing magic about movies or books, but everyone has opinions about storytelling and usually feels free to discuss it, since involvement and criticism are pretty much the purpose of fiction in the first place. That's one open door that will usually entice a room of strangers to break the silence.
Gonna keep that in mind!
https://ew.com/tv/saturday-night-live-the-chris-farley-show/
There used to be advice around "progressive disclosure" in conversation. You say something e.g. very-slightly-risky to disclose, while also asking e.g. a less-risky-to-answer question. The other person then has a choice of gradient toward more or less disclosure or inquiry, and whether to answer or ask more.
I may be misreading this, but did you mean to link to something?
Since you ask, found this link:
http://changingminds.org/techniques/conversation/sustaining/...
wait, did I just create one?
I tend to think that, in general, there's very little new under the sun, so most students are already equipped with analogies that will help them understand what I'm teaching. That is, if I can just figure out what they're familiar with and draw the appropriate parallels.
Teaching, then, becomes an exercise in learning my student and trying to express analogies that they can grab onto. Which means sometimes throwing out a slow-ball so they have an easy hit, and seeing which metaphor they use to hit it with, which then gives me some information about how to proceed.
The only issue is that people can't always listen, or speak, so they need to either just wait to reply, or you both need to switch to text often.
We tend to learn each other's schedules and then send messages based on availability.
Dad would gleefully find one in the mail, unwrap it, open a beer, and sit down with his headphones on and notepad in hand. Once in a while he'd actually pause the playback while jotting notes, but mostly the things he wanted to respond to only needed a scribbled word or two as a prompt for later.
Having finished the tape, he'd walk around for a minute to collect his thoughts, grab a second beer but not open it, rewind the tape, press Record, wait a count of 5 for the leader to be past the record head, then crack that beer right into the microphone -- every tape started with that sound -- and begin to hold forth.
I do this with a friend in England that I met and became ultra fast friends with years ago. We traveled Asia together for 2 months. Haven't seen him in years and honestly might not again! But we are buds for life and keep in touch via async voice messages. The other day I sent him a short one asking a relatively intimate question and received a reply with an 18min message. Receiving it felt like Christmas.
The author, given the context of improv, seems to have been implicitly using that as the metaphor the entire time but it didn’t stick to me until I thought about it more.
Give the spotlight o another person,
or Take the spotlight and hold on to it.
...wait, we can do what now?
(or should I have learned it much earlier? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sneetches_and_Other_Storie... )
> There is no known cure for egocentrism; the condition appears to be congenital.
Which is why I can't see why this is suggested as an independent issue that should simply be accepted, without additional reference. The lack of doorknobs, if you will.
As a giver, I'd usually rather not be stuck in the "conversation" (more like, speech) that the taker is dominating.
This might be true; but looking into the linked study, it appears to be on Dartmouth students. This claim at least maybe culturally dependent.
https://podcasts.apple.com/my/podcast/marvel-sing-ematic-uni...
They definitely rely on musical tropes they all know, for example "rock song" or "broadway song". But overall, it's a combination of them all being insanely talented, having worked together a lot, and once in a while cue-ing each other.
Here's an episode of another podcast they guested on (Switched On Pop) where they walk through their process (AND do an improv musical at the same time): https://switchedonpop.com/episodes/switched-off-book-with-je...
Also, if you want a quick video of them doing it, here's an example with them, the band, and Jason Mantzoukas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCI0gD_K27M
Paul was an improviser, musically and comedically. Some word or concept Dave was riffing on would catch something in Paul and out would come related (often hilarious) music. On SNL, he and Bill Murray did a great lounge pianist/singer duo, playing off one another and obviously not entirely rehearsed.
I'll let you dig for links to that stuff. The digging is probably more fun than some presented example in this case.
Many of encounters where I had to resist their "and you?" questions, as I saw an opportunity to expand on what they were saying.
Which I find weird because then I am completely terrible at group conversations (as there is already taker & giver, so I just go to role of listener)
Isn't that just giving? I mean, sure, I guess you can say "That movie sucked and anybody who liked it can fight me!" and then not give a shit about what anyone else says which probably isn't giving, but putting that out there and watching for who responds to what and then enticing them with more of that is the essence of giving (and conversation).
Eventually I just gave up on that and realized that the rest of the point was thoroughly useful without those terms.
I have trouble with the other scenario -- possibly more common -- where the participants are reluctant to say much. I used to define these as takers ... they take energy from the giver (the initiator of the conversation); the giver needs to constantly re-up the energy.
And for good friends the turns could be weeks long rather than minutes. As you have proven to each other you care about each overs life already, so it can adjust to circumstances.
Is this related to social comfort speaking with others?
But even within outspoken/quiet, you can easily see those attributes in different takers and givers. For instance, a circumstance where someone is constantly asking questions, and getting short, blunt answers seems like an outspoken giver overpowering a quiet taker. On the other side, someone who blabs incessantly while the other party meekly subsides to just asking questions occasionally is an outspoken taker, taking the stage and never letting go of it.