Stop making every conversation about yourself | Hacker News Reader

Stop making every conversation about yourself

thoguhts.substack.com

168 pointsaksh7i149 comments

I always hate these kind of conversation advice/social advice blog post things because the reality is that you can be an excellent conversationalist and make friends with everyone with all different conversational styles. I have friends that talk about themselves 75% of the conversation but nobody gives a shit because they’re interesting/funny/unusual/whatever and people like to be entertained. Similarly I have friends that typically talk very little about themselves - few short sentences and back to you - and that works too! You can be the kind of person who uses someone’s name all the time or literally never uses it and BOTH of those work just fine.

You know what doesn’t work though? Weird advice about making it about them, or mentioning their name X times, or other specific rules. You can spot someone who just read How To Make Friends or whatever else a mile away - why? Because they seem to be nervously following some invisible rule and it ends up making them seem like a kid from the school paper conducting their first interview. You know what DOES work every time? Having a relaxed, natural conversation! “Have a few beers and relax and just talk normally” is better advice than any blog post or self help book out there.

If you do not want to see articles like this on HN, you can always flag it to seek moderator attention.

The author aksh7i seems to be using HN purely for self promotion who posts self-help (and dare I say, offtopic) stuff like this. Their last post was flagged too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37963914 And in the first comment in that flagged article, they were made aware of their inappropriate and blatant self-promotional behavior:

> OP, every single one of your submissions is a blog post of your own, and every single one of your comments is a non sequitur on one of those submissions, apparently in an attempt to boost it. Get that kind of drivel off HN.

> Also, this particular article is nearly 100% insight-free, rehashed, productivity influencer pablum.

They choose to continue spamming HN regardless.

certain personality types don’t just talk about themselves but rather lack awareness of others and don’t know how to read the room, as you suggest they should. Really, these people are unlikely to change, much less realize they are bothering anyone or appear selfish. And indeed, trying to follow a set of rules laid out on the internet would just shine a light on it.

This has gotten a ton of votes in only a few minutes, so I figured I’d add:

If you want to get deeper into this - very few people can have a conversation, discreetly think about something unrelated at the same time, and then change the conversation accordingly. If you’re one of the few that can do this you’re definitely not taking conversation advice from a poorly written blog. There’s nothing that throws off a conversation faster than the other person clearly _thinking_ about the conversation. Doing that is also a social signal the size of Texas that you don’t have normal conversations. Just relaxing and talking normally, even if you talk about yourself, even if you never say their name, even if you bring up politics, even if you break every rule in the internet conversation blogger rulebook? That’s a social signal that you DO have normal social interactions. Relax and just talk like you normally do, not like some blogger told you.

> I have friends that talk about themselves 75% of the conversation but nobody gives a shit because they’re interesting/funny/unusual/whatever and people like to be entertained.

What if you're talking 75% of the conversation, but the content isn't particularly interesting/funny? Is that still fine?

> Having a relaxed, natural conversation! “Have a few beers and relax and just talk normally”

Where "natural" and "normal" is completely clear and self-evident to everybody.

Most of these advices are targeted at people who struggle with social interactions. Many people are lonely without friends and bad habits like talking only about themselves won't help with that.

If you have great social interactions then great! You likely don't need such advice.

(Although I think most people could learn some "tricks" to improve their relationships)

Natural is just that, natural. I have never met a human being alive that has never had a natural conversation and yes that includes people with strong social anxiety, autism, you name it. Maybe that’s when you talk to your mother, or when you’re drunk, or when you’re talking to your best friend, or you live in a basement and it’s some guy over voice chat in a game or whatever but I guarantee you have had at least one.

Pretty sure everyone knows what “relax” means.

I never said you should talk ONLY about yourself. I just said that a realistic conversation can be all over the place and the exact split doesn’t matter.

Pretty sure not everyone knows what "relax" means. People who overthink, people who go to therapy, people who have mental problems. Do you just tell them "come on, you KNOW what relax means!"

Even if you had a "natural convo" with them, you'll never know if they were STRUGGLING to have this "natural convo" with you.

I assume you work in software since this is HN. Never assume you know about your users. Please.

This is such an incredibly weird response, did you even read my comment properly?

You think people who go to therapy or overthink don’t even know what it is to relax? Not even that they can’t relax but that they don’t even know what it means?

I never said anything about perceiving anyone else’s struggle or issues… that’s an entirely different subject.

> or mentioning their name X times

Reminds me of this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W34wyKZlWQ (Mitchell and Webb, 'People Person' sketch). Yes, it's obvious when people do this, and unconvincing.

Ah, I love Mitchell and Webb! Somehow I forgot about that sketch but yes it’s absolutely spot on as usual.

> You can spot someone who just read How To Make Friends or whatever else a mile away - why? Because they seem to be nervously following some invisible rule and it ends up making them seem like a kid from the school paper conducting their first interview

I had dinner once with an acquaintance in the industry who did this. Every interaction we had with someone else (hostess, waiter, etc) he made it a point to stop them and ask their name. It was incredibly awkward because there was no point in knowing everyone’s name.

There is a balance to this. If you always only listen to others and never speak about yourself, you fail to build connections with them (because they know nothing about you). I had the opposite problem, I made every conversation about them and had to learn to change that in order to be able to make friends.

I know your type and it's great! But yes, a connection is a dance, so if I'm getting pelted with these seemingly reasonable questions (read: "and how did that make you feel?"), they start feeling insincere.

I can't tell you how many people I know who must have read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" once and became parrots whose only contribution to the conversation was to ask me questions and say my name repeatedly. That does not make a good conversationalist.

There is a balance. I often tell people a funny anecdote to loosen them up and break the ice. It’s work entertaining people all night though. Back and forth is best.

I still have this problem, I have friends but when we talk I often drift to make conversations about them. I think it is a difficult habit to get out of, and it feels awkward to say things about myself without getting an explicit question. For a long time I just thought people were rude but nowdays I understand the problem to a big part is with me. I have started to talk more about subjects that interest me since that doesnt make me feel as egocentric as straight up talking about myself. It feels like a step in the right direction…

I had the same problem.

It makes sense tot think about it in terms of space. If you never speak about yourself the other person "is taking up all the space".

Speaking about yourself, or at least choosing topics proactively can improve your interaction with others. People often want to hear about you, but they prefer to hear about positive or interesting things that happen to you or what's on your mind. For example I love telling funny anecdotes, people love it and they have a great time.

The key is to focus on their reaction. If they don't care about your interests or your day you'll know, and don't feel invalidated or get upset. Just change topics and have a good time.

A big thing I’ve adopted recently is being open with my mental health with my friends (similarly, with a balance; nobody wants to be trauma bombed) which has helped a lot with both strengthening bonds and making sure my friends know when I’m not going to be at my best.

Everyone deals with fucked up brains, and having people to openly talk about it with casually has both helped me deal with my own shit and get through it faster and meant we know each other on a far deeper level.

I’ve found that people generally really enjoy talking about themselves but only if you’re truly interested and are drawing connections between yourself and them and their experiences and interests. If you’re merely pumping them for information or listening to their stories about themselves it’s not a connection building experience, it’s just setting them up to self reflect verbally to you.

The key for me is people like to engage in a conversation about themselves, and that requires you to:

* deeply interact with them about what they care about, challenging them m and giving them a chance to defend themselves and their beliefs in a way that is respectful and demonstrates true interest

* weave yourself into the conversation bringing your experiences and thoughts into their conversation about themselves

* try to learn something new from them, and be sure you articulate what you’ve learned clearly

* bring new information to them about the things they care about and get their views on that information

Etc

It’s basically the same as any conversation that’s not a monologue, even a solicited one. They want to feel important and interesting to you, and learn about you at the same time. But in the end you can’t assume they’ll be interested in you at first, so it’s often useful to lead the way by being interested in them. If you are a person who likes to learn, this shouldn’t be hard. Just try to avoid sinking into social anxiety as best you can as that’s when things become forced and weird.

The way people approach conversation is strongly culturally ingrained.

The way it was explained to me by a Brit is that he had to stop looking for "normal conversation" because Californians just "take turns talking about themselves".

There's advantages and disadvantages both ways but most people are strongly biased to whatever approach they grew up with.

Californians just take turns talking about what turns they took to drive to where they are talking about what roads they took to get there.

Every Californians Ever (Part 1 of 2):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCer2e0t8r8

Every Californians Ever (Part 2 of 2):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzZkaqBmH-s

I love how the actors have such a hard time keeping from cracking up while delivering their lines and facial expressions, because it's TOTALLY how Californians actually talk. (Except for Betty White whose performance was flawless.)

Q: How many Northern Californians does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Hella!!!

Q: How many Southern Californians does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Totally!!!

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6492j904

Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal?: The Perceptual Dialectology of California

Mary Bucholtz, Nancy Bermudez, Victor Fung, Lisa Edwards and Rosalva Vargas. Journal of English Linguistics 2007; 35; 325. DOI: 10.1177/0075424207307780

>Abstract

>This study provides the first detailed account of perceptual dialectology within California (as well as one of the first accounts of perceptual dialectology within any single state). Quantitative analysis of a map-labeling task carried out in Southern California reveals that California’s most salient linguistic boundary is between the northern and southern regions of the state. Whereas studies of the perceptual dialectology of the United States as a whole have focused almost exclusively on regional dialect differences, respondents associated particular regions of California less with distinctive dialects than with differences in language (English versus Spanish), slang use, and social groups. The diverse socio linguistic situation of California is reflected in the emphasis both on highly salient social groups thought to be stereotypical of California by residents and nonresidents alike (e.g., surfers) and on groups that, though prominent in the cultural landscape of the state, remain largely unrecognized by outsiders (e.g., hicks).

Extra credit question:

Can you locate the isogloss designating the "101" / "The 101" line?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isogloss

I (currently) have the same problem!

How did you learn to speak more about yourself when (if you're like me), your mind starts to shut down as soon as you start?

Same problem here - grew up in toxic friend, school, and social group environments where anything you revealed about yourself was almost certainly going to be weaponised against you at a later point. You pretty quickly learn to never divulge anything...

Yeah, this is so true. I read a lot of advice around how I should ask lots of questions etc when I was younger, and I fell into the opposite trap, which is that I never shared anything because I was letting other people do all the sharing.

The real key is curiosity - do you understand their viewpoint? Really? Really really? Are you just responding to a best guess of what you think it is? But once you really do understand (and they understand that you understand) it's totally fine to talk about some anecdote about yourself if it relates.

There are different ways to talk about yourself; the one that attracts me when spoken to enough to seek friendships and relations is the one where the words 'I' and 'me' don't appear in very often. Like 'let's go to that AI meetup, gonna be great!' is an indicator that a) you like AI b) you want little ol' me (blush blush) involved. There is no boasting, no #iamthemaincharacter etc.

But you are right; there is a balance, people that only ask about me and don't tell anything about themselves won't work either. Personally, the preferred route is to just quickly find common ground and go do something. Can be anything.

I think the balance is the conversation partner should be trying to ask more about you... it's a shared responsibility, and if they don't it equally means that they don't care about knowing more about you. If they're asking about you but you're giving minimal personal responses and redirecting the conversation back to them though, yeah.

And you can drop hooks for them to ask more about even while talking about them - like "Did you have any trouble getting through Y? I had trouble with X there a couple times before"

There are plenty of bad conversationalists out there though, and I sometimes wonder if it's worth the effort of forcing a totally one sided conversation the other way.

A lot of people out there do not listen to learn or share viewpoints or out of genuine interest for the other being, but to get information that they can later use against you. People with real interests (nerds) should be particularly careful when talking to most people because nerds don’t understand such intent, which is why I try to not share my interests or similar personal information when I don’t sense certain personality traits. Being shut up about yourself makes most people out there mad because they view a conversation as a “trade” and can’t expect a later dopamin fix if you don’t give them your share, but who cares.

I don't know what TotK is, or BotW (Zelda rings a bell, somehow), so she is probably right. Just own it.

It seems you did not understand what I was trying to illustrate with this example.

Edit: I removed the example because it just distracts from the point.

> If you always only listen to others and never speak about yourself

I think there's a big middle between this and "always making conversations about yourself".

Interesting. I had to make a conscious effort to go the other way around, i.e.: to talk more about me. I grew up reading too many books aimed at the extroverts among us ("There's a reason we have 1 mouth and 2 ears!"; "Silence is golden!").

It's hard to underestimate missed opportunities because a shy introvert (me back then) took and (mis)applied advice meant for extroverts who were already unable to stop talking about themselves. I became virtually invisible. Not good for my career, for my social life, or for my success with women.

I realized much, much later, that to advance in my career, to have a social standing within a group, to be accepted and to have my opinions valued, I HAD to speak up. I HAD to sometimes convey forcefully a personal point of view. That's what makes a person interesting. Nobody remembers a nobody who "listened to me all night long". That only works if you're already somebody that people wouldn't expect to listen to them all night long in the first place!

Sadly, very seldom this kind of advice comes with the correct nuances, in which situation it applies, etc.

To add to your experience, there's also a group of people that grew up and lived their adult life so isolated that they will start dumping on anyone that shows a little interest, smothering them. I know I'm guilty of that sometimes.

Then there are those among them with enough self-reflection to find a therapist to subject to the story of their life, instead of some random civilians. But when even the therapist can't keep up and starts being sucked down the whirlpool of criss-crossing plot threads, what then?

Exactly. I was also given feedback I should talk and express my opinion more, only later in my life. I was given this professionally, and it's possibly been one of the best advice I've received in terms of my life, it's weird it took me to get to the position of having a career and no one else before that thought to give it.

When growing up I also listened to those statements as you said, in addition I would like to bring out the very common "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt".

This type of sentiment actually gave me performance anxiety. Thinking people are constantly evaluating you, and at any given time if you speak you could significantly lose that rating. In which case it's always best to stay with the "neutral" or whichever rating. I thought it would be okay to kind of be this "strong, smart, mysteriously silent type".

Unfortunately if you actually follow this strategy, you will be left behind, because people who do talk, and say things that are stupid, are more likely to learn to talk better than anyone staying silent. Eventually they will say fewer stupid things, their communication skills will improve.

If I hold a stupid belief or opinion, and I never voice it, there's no one ever who could make me understand why the belief/opinion is stupid, meanwhile I'm wasting all this time with the bad belief.

These types of advices are, as one would also expect listened only by people who shouldn't listen to the advice, and people who should, won't listen to it in the first place.

So in the end it's people frustrated with other people talking too much giving out this type of advice without any thought on the consequences.

The "better to remain silent..." to me is worst of them all due to the mindset it brings to the social situations. As if it's a constant performance who is able to give a smarter impression, while a better mindset is that social situations and conversations should be about learning, improving, connecting and having fun. Sharing your thoughts, making mistakes, saying stupid things, arguing, are all part of this.

As a teenager I used to perceive most social situations as this sort of competition/performance, so I could never enjoy those situations since naturally the strategy I followed didn't make me become better at the competition. Only way I could've become better is if I actively participated and was okay with losing at least for a while. Now I'm trying to perceive social situations as something where I try to achieve the aforementioned goals (learning, improving, connecting and having fun) for the group as a whole rather than having a competition within the group.

If I ever have a kid and if that kid gets natural disposition to being introvert or on the autistic side, which could be likely due to how genes work, I will make sure to do my best to inject the mindset I believe is more productive.

I relate very much to this. I have autism and in-person social interactions have been challenging at times to understand. So, I became a student of the human social experience and read a bunch of books about how to speak human, which I think indeed sometimes were more for extroverts.

I have been learning how to gracefully interrupt, how to start conversations, how to have an opinion that is different from the others in the group, etc.

Though in the process I learned a lot about how many peoples' minds work, so that's been useful still.

How do you measure success with something so subjective?

There are some baseline metrics that are obvious right?

For example, if you have 0 conversations in a given week on average, then having 1 or 2 neutral conversations per week already feels like something better. Why? The goal is now to make those conversations feel slightly positive.

You don't need to prove your success to anyone else, so scientific rigorousness isn't needed. What's needed is your own evaluation of how things are going based on metrics you find important. The metric I gave is just an example, there are many metrics one could choose from. It really depends on the outcome you want.

Why do you want to measure it? If you feel you are improving, that's good enough in personal life.

Also, sometimes, the improvement is just so great (or paraphrased, the baseline is so low), that you don't need scientific rigor to see that things got better.

It seems that a subjective state of mind isn't a great way to tell if you are inconviencing others.

For example, an individual can feel great while being social on a narcotic, all while hurting others around them and being completely oblivious to it.

Do you have some sources to recommend or have you learned it all from your own experience?

I think this happens a lot with other advice too. Diet/health advice like the constant barrage of "eat less fat" and "eat less salt", dating advice like "don't focus on looks", etc.

I get it, in one way... there are people out there who are unable to listen to the end of a sentence that starts with any qualification at all, and barely listen anyways so it needs to be repeated, forcefully. But this is optimizing for them at the expense of the people who do listen and end up internalizing the message too well.

I'm more than happy to hear people talking about themselves - I just wish people would remember that they've already told me a story before. The third time you hear about someone's school days when they did X, Y and Z can get a bit boring :D

You can always politely remind the person that you've heard it before. Skip to expressing amusement or other before they finish the story.

Oh yeah. I have good conversational memory. Hearing the same story three times is usually when I start to doubt the other persons memory. However, they have a different task to solve. I only have to concentrate on what they are telling me, and that makes repetition detection easier. However, they likely told the same story to numberous people, so they are used to repetitions, but they have no (good) mechanism to detect when they tell the same story to the same person.

> they likely told the same story to numberous people, so they are used to repetitions, but they have no (good) mechanism to detect when they tell the same story to the same person.

Maybe, but then there was that person I was close enough to, that I knew for a fact I was one of up to three people she told some of the stories to, and yet I'd still hear those stories repeatedly, on a weekly or monthly basis. So at least in that one case, I feel she must've adopted a completely stateless approach to conversation. As in, there wouldn't even be an attempt to recall she told me that exact same story just a few days before, much less that it's at least the fifth time I heard this within last 6 months.

I guess "having your heart on your tongue", as 'teekert puts it, would be an apt description. It's only now that it clicked for me that this is, in fact, a viable approach some people might have naturally adopted. Maybe it's even a superior one, as it keeps the state in the relationship.

I feel like I have a hard time remembering who I've told what story. I don't want to repeat myself, but I want to tell the recent story I have on my mind (because I like it somehow).

Noticing that I'm repeating myself makes me feel old and congnitively unsound (I am hopefully not, I'm just shy of 40 ys old).

I talk too much about myself, but am working on it. I do notice it can build connections especially when you share ever so slightly embarrassing things or express emotions like doubt and uncertainty.

Anyway, I am always happy when someone interrupts me "yeah, you told me about that indeed", before I bore them with the same story.

Where I live we call this "having your heart on your tongue." It's a way to cope with stress (for me at least). I try to limit it, but it always makes me feel better when people have been through similar things and I am genuinely curious as to how they solved similar situations.

Btw, I may remember that I told the story before, I'm just very bad at remembering who I told it to.

>I just wish people would remember that they've already told me a story before.

I always get paranoid they'll remember half way through the story that they've told me it before, and then ask why I didn't say anything.

If you have a lot of stories and talk to a lot of people then this gets very difficult very fast

I suppose someone that genuinely cares about the people they tell stories would remember what they said to who, and how they reacted to it.

Think of it as an opportunity to annoy them by completing their sentences.

That's also part of the difficulty of having multiple girlfriends at an advanced age. If you have N girlfriends and M jokes, you should maintain a table sized N*M to keep track which joke already told to which girlfriend.

I often look back at a comment I've written or email I've sent, and am annoyed at the number of paragraphs that start with "I ...". This one included! I think it looks odd when it's every single paragraph, so in extreme cases I will try to rewrite some of those sentences.

With this metric in mind and considering the topic of the article, I think this comment section makes for an ironic and amusing skim. Although I guess it's totally reasonable to talk from one's own perspective when discussing a piece of life advice.

The flip side of this is that at least you make the "I" explicit instead of overgeneralizing yourself. Counterintuitively, rewriting that into a version with less "I" could actually make it more egocentric (:

Indeed - I see "a lot of people think that <my opinion>" in low quality political interviews. It's always fun when the interviewee just asks, "What people?"

I see what you did there in the second paragraph, hiding the „I“ after some participle clause. Not sure it works this way.

It's like the old story of an actor:

".. anyway that's enough talk about me. What did YOU think about my performance."

Hahaha, this is a genuine tactic people use to keep it about themselves indeed. Good one.

Like when an SNL host tries to make their monologue all about themself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiVUrOgxhf0

Sometime even a seasoned professional can't get it right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMFclAw6rnY

And then they have to improvise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtnBumt82_Y

Finally they may notice another actor on stage, find themselves listening, and make the beast with two backs, but only to further their own career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRkZYdWCe7w

Beware! This is an article from a spam account!

See:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=aksh7i (100% self promotion)

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37963914 (flagged)

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37966657 (warned)

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38067963 (dead)

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38187431 (flagged and dead)

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38188099 (warned again)

* https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=aksh7i (incoherent comments)

Nobody else has brought up the elephant in the room, so I will.

OP: Your Substack is called "Thoguhts" and not "Thoughts" -- is this entirely because someone else is squatting on thoughts.substack.com? Or is there some additional "deeper" significance to the obvious mis-spelling?

the word seems to be a bit like like yoghurt - and a thought is kind of like a yoghurt culture in that it's formed of a lot of invisible entities (in the case of yoghurt, billions of microorganisms in probiotics, in the case of thoughts, the human brain has billions of neurons)

I think its a delightful name for a blog!

This describes me well. How can you find the inner home? How can you be more conscious during conversations? I often come from an interaction with someone thinking: "God, I talked way too much. Should've listened more."

I can't give much advice there, other than be conscious/mindful and practice. Learn to pause between sentences, breathe, ask questions, listen, don't move to a next subject, etc. I think a lot of people have a fear that their soap box will be taken away if they don't fill the space, which... unfortunately isn't wrong because others love to hear themselves talk too.

But yeah, it takes conscious effort and practice.

You might have heard it from other places but meditation. It's literally training you to be present with your thoughts and knowing what exactly is happening in your mind at the moment (and letting it go).

Once you start meditating regularly you can observe that you got tangled up in thoughts quite early on and pull yourself back.

As many practitioners say it helps to create space between impulse and action.

A dating advice, for a guy, is "70/30"; Let her speak 70%, you speak 30%. People really like to share their own knowledge because that is their comfort zone, especially about themself.

When I throw a few cocktails back, I can get too comfortable with ranting, so I try to stfu every couple minutes to let others take the reins just in case I'm being overzealous (which is also embarrassing).

In that 30%, try to have maximum impact. That's the reason, clever, witty guys are admired.

Different women have different tastes.

Some women like skinny guys. Most women like muscular guys who can make them feel protected.

I'm sorry but that's just sexist nonsense based more in male fantasy than any actual research amongst women.

There's been tons of studies confirming what I wrote. In some studies, 100% of the women chose the muscular body type over the skinny type for an ideal male body.

But yes, let's ignore all the research and basic instinct because you want to be politically correct.

And would you care to link to some of the tonnes of research? It already sounds dubious. Ideal is not the same as most attractive fire instance. But let's see the science you're basing your generalising statements on.

A quick Google search would yielded at least 10 studies. Here’s one.

https://news.griffith.edu.au/2017/12/13/upper-body-strength-...

>The results showed that it was possible to almost perfectly predict how attractive a man’s body is from three things: how physically strong he looks, how tall he is, and how lean he is. The effect of strength was so large that none of the 150 women in the study preferred weak men. Furthermore, looking strong was much more important for man’s attractiveness than being tall or lean.

>“The rated strength of a male body accounts for a full 70% of the variance in attractiveness,’’ Dr Sell said.

Yes but A) I wanted to be sure we were looking at the same research and B) everything I found looked at bad as this one.

Firstly the relationship between the strength of the men and the women's abilities to determine their strength is weakly correlated (r=0.33).

Secondly, the sample of women here are all around 21 years old and all study at the same university. I don't think we can extrapolate what "most women" find attractive from this.

Thirdly, the women are presented only with photographs of male upper bodies without faces. The study itself mentions that other research suggests many women prefer men with "weaker or more effeminate faces." I think it's also clear that styling, manner, expression, personality etc all play a party in attraction and move of that is accounted for in this study.

I also believe you or the reporter have misinterpreted something here. You said that none of the women preferred stronger men, but the study actually shows a correlation of 0.8. None of the women preferred more weak men more often than strong men but some of them did prefer some weak men over some strong men.

The study also points out that asking a woman how strong a man looked was a better indicator of how strong he was than asking her how attractive he was.

Note also the quality of the questions here. First the woman is asked to rate the strength of the man and then asked to rate his attractiveness. I'm not a psychologist but it feels like the study itself primes the person being tested to consider the correlation ahead of giving their answers, which strikes me as poor research design.

As a man surely you're aware that your tastes differ to other men's tastes. Consider how much the cultural standard for an ideal woman has changed within our lifetimes. A woman praised for being thicc in 2015 would be ridiculed during the years of heroin chic in 2005 and vice versa. It's clear that these things are very much affected by cultural norms, by age, etc. A test which doesn't attempt to account for this can't be used to extrapolate in the way you're doing.

Finally, you made the claim that women prefer a certain type of man because they want to feel protected. You said tonnes of studies supported this but the one you gave me has absolutely nothing in it that makes any reference to this supposition. What am I missing?

Some women like a man with poop on top of his head more than without poop on top of his head.

What do you hope to achieve with this assertion? What should I take from it?

It feels like a very flippant response after I gave so much time and attention to your research.

1 minute Google search:

* https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31167552/

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4892674/

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1634963/

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5745404/

There are so many more confirming the exact same results. Free free to Google yourself.

What does any of that have to do with poop?

First study had "mixed results," second is about a healthy level of musculature (ie the preference was for men without dangerous levels of atrophy), third says that too much muscle was as unattractive as too little and again all three focus only on upper body attractiveness which is clearly distinct from overall attractiveness, and again suffer from similar sampling/methodology issues as your first study. The fourth is based on references to the others and self reported sense of attractiveness in men.

And all of the research confirms women likes muscular men more than skinny men. Good job ignoring all the evidence.

Just google for more. There are a lot more studies for you to think that you're smarter than.

By the way, after I went from skinny to muscular, I pulled way more women and higher-quality ones as well. Women were more receptive to my approach. Strangers smiled at me more. Some women gazed at me.

;)

This is self reported anecdata from the male perspective and I have to call out again your sexist language when you talk about high/low quality women.

Come back to the real world. Human nature isn't sexist.

When you both follow this advice, it leads to both talking for 30%, leading to awkward silences for about 40%.

Just kidding, but it’s generally true: two introverts have not much to talk about. I certainly always enjoy talking to extraverts because they fill up the silent space.

Most people love talking about themselves. So it's actually quite easy to be a good listener if you care to stop and listen.

I'm quite shy and don't enjoy talking, so I've learned to ask gentle but leading questions to encourage other people to talk, even if I already know the answer. It really works.

This is often quoted advice, but like many things it’s only true in moderation. People who take it too literally come across like therapists or interviewers. Some people are not comfortable talking about themselves, and most well adjusted people don’t want to talk endlessly about themselves. A good conversation should usually be an exchange.

I wonder how many HN readers need to read this - reluctant as I am to overgeneralise, my instinct would be: not many. And the comments seem to reflect that.

I'm certainly someone for whom the opposite advice would be more in need - I think listening to people talk about themselves is something of a defence mechanism; avoiding letting people in.

Certainly agree on the "think more, talk less" front.

I think we often forget or don't realize quite how central talking, and thinking about talking is thinking, is our thought process... or a substantial part of our thought process. How we figure out our values test them and learn to apply them.

We get extremely attached to the stuff that flies out of our mouth, consider it "me."

"You’ll seek only true friends who align with your values, and experiences that bring you purpose and fulfillment and you’ll find a calm quiet center within :)"

Here is where I diverge. I think better conversational habits kind of lead to the opposite. True friends with very different values. A better, calmer separation of self from others, and hence a better ability to appreciate and love those that aren't like us, don't align with our values.

I've been running support groups for the last two years. While there are a few people who try to take all the space, most people enjoy the explicit permission (consent?) to talk about themselves. When they do, it's wonderful. We need more of it. However, I think the main point of the article isn't about talking less, it's about listening more. Specifically I found people get way more out of it when they aren't just waiting for their turn to speak, but really engaging with other people's stories. Then when it's their turn they haven't been thinking about what to say so what they do say often comes as a surprise to them. That's where the real catharsis happens.

> Be more private. Think more speak less.

Something to think about: ADHD prevalence is between 5-15%, depending on region/study. Excessive speech is an ADHD symptom. It's part of physiology and not curable.

Pretty sure it’s curable in the sense that someone can make a decision to talk less.

This is something that probably makes some very isolated?

Not many people want to hear someone talk forever about nothing, which would lead to reprimanding and fear of reoccurance, avoidance, etc.

This is basically an advice for extrovert people. Another advice for such people would be "stop repeating the same concept/anecdote every time we talk about that topic", but then they would probably stop being extrovert at all :)

At least in my experience these two are the most common traits of extroverts (and I do wonder if there is any real connection to how their memory works).

How am I suppose to embody the world if I can't talk about myself?

You're aware of the problem, that's a good first step. The next step is wanting to fix it; your phrasing indicates there's something blocking you, have you tried looking into that? I'm not saying "go to therapy" but it might help to look around.

There is a huge difference in values to be observed between an individual who is interested and one who is interesting.

Interesting people are tiresome to be around and very rarely productive. If all you ever do is try everything possible to be interesting, you're boring.

Interested people are a lot of fun and get the ball rolling on a lot of productive energy. If you take a great interest in others and pursue that interest, you make the group great.

Its really that simple. Next time you find yourself nodding off around someone, count the times in the conversation they took an interest, versus the moments they spent trying to be as interesting as possible. You may observe a big release of energy by spotting this factor ..

Click on article. Discover I have to sign in to read. No thanks.

Are you sure, or is just the typical substack popover with the continue reading button?

(It isn’t really worth going back for, very short with basically no content)

The popover does seem to require entering an email address before clicking on "continue reading".

It actually doesn't, but it's not obvious and although this time I did click on the right button, I know there are at least a few times where I've just closed the tab because I thought I had to register or give an email address or whatever.

> (It isn't really worth going back for...

Yep. It was trivial for me to read (Default "off" for js, view source) - but still not worth the time.

Thanks for the followup.

I guess my reaction is partly just that if a site wants to immediately spam me and try and grab some details, then I don't want to be there.

On a related note, I'm usually a fan of the EU, but the mandatory cookie policy popup must be the worst piece of legislation in the history of the world. Very annoying, and absolutely doesn't solve the problem.

Is it even worth trying to differentiate? If you see a modal popover, just close the tab. If it was interesting, it'll get reposted somewhere without the modal.

The irony.

Can you elaborate?

Talking about himself while writing a post about not always talking about himself.

To be fair, the author acknowledges the paradox mid-post.

Well I'm pretty sure he's not saying to never talk about oneself either

The author is self-aware at least; I do think that the internet (blog posts, social media, comment sections) have something to do with the phenomenon described, since most people will share their own experience or opinion on something; slow form things like comment sections aren't very condusive for back-and-forth communication.

> Stop making every conversation about yourself

And yet all your submissions are about yourself to increase traffic to your website. Oh the irony.

The title of this post is also great advice to many tech/dev people who start doing sales.

Don't try to fit your solution to everyone.

Listen to what is actually a problem and solve it. You don't have to talk about this cool app you've built. It's not about you or your product, it's about someone's problem

Everything is a frontpage post nowadays. How about: just talk to people and don't be a twat? Enlightening.

Posts like this highlight that some people don’t know what is being a twat and what isn’t.

Likely because there is no absolute way people percieve eachother?

I mean, sure. I was just highlighting how little use the parent comment had.

That seems to be a very superficial and unactionable piece of advice.

Fat? Just lose weight. Poor? Just make money. Depressed? Just cheer up. Stupid? Just study.

I can highly recommend reading the book “I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships” by Michael S. Sorensen which not only provides useful examples but also paves the way to communicate and emphasize better. It’s been a real life changer for me personally.

when beginning a new interaction, I try to remember to "read the room" first, a mostly non-linear/non-verbal process that involves a lot of mimetic movement and eye contact that is governed subconsciously.

Then I can take part in the dance of chat better. Conversation is often best when it has a fast cadence and a lightness and humor to it. And charming qualities like self-deprecation, showing appreciation, going along with others' vibe etc.

Many people here are talking about "sharing" and "listening" - but that can be quite a dull and mechanical back and forth pattern! Facts, opinions and personal anecdotes, far from being the lifeblood of good conversation, tend to weigh it down instead, like pressing pause on the music.

Before I became a bit more natural with these things, I would often go to social events with a handful of questions pre-selected to ask people. It helped remove the burden of figuring out what to say in those first moments of silence after the how are you.

The described behaviors could be narcissism but are likely innocent ADHD. I have noticed that unmedicated highly ADHD persons will inject themselves into conversations they were never party to of close physical proximity and then redirect the conversation to their personal experiences.

To the uninformed these behaviors look like narcissistic personality disorders, but they are not. They are instead multiple hyper-stimulus seeking behaviors devoid of context and patience. Also bear in mind many people are ADHD absent of a diagnosis or diagnosed well into adulthood.

Also, related, is autism info dumping. (And, similarly, lots of people undiagnosed.)

I learned earlier this year what seems like autism to many people is just advanced ADHD. An autism diagnosis requires a psychological evaluation and consists of 3 parts of which one is centered solely upon social interaction adaptation. Unmedicated people with ADHD can have all of the characteristics of autism and still not achieve an autism diagnosis even with missing social skills for their age level. That’s unfortunate because delayed social skills will result in peer rejection which only increases the problem for young people.

Yes, stop making every conversation about yourself. No, do not stop sharing your knowledge and experiences. This article is like someone who once had a meal that was overcooked, and insists that all food should be eaten raw ever thereafter.

There's a song by John Grant song, GMF (Greatest Motherfucker), that made me painfully aware of me having the same issue. The line is: "I'm usually only waiting for you to stop talking so that I can"

Why is this on top of HN?

Its a post that could be a tweet...

Not well researched like a tweet...

personal opinion like a tweet...

It is indeed obnoxious that the under person keeps picking parts of the conversation and making it about them. They keep repeating things. Ignoring what the others say.

growing up I distinctly remember one evening, we were hanging out with couple friends/acquaintances and one guy called me out for always being there, but never participating in conversation. I thought that I just didn't have anything smart to contribute to most of the topics. I can't remember how or if that resolved, but from time to time that moment bubbles up in my mind.

If I had something interesting to say about me, I'd make more conversations about myself. This has yet to be a problem.

why is this on top of hacker news? He even starts the article by blaming his mother.

> I was an obnoxious extrovert who had no privacy, shared everything online, and never thought before I spoke.

It’s almost like they’re describing me.

> Whereas true happiness comes from finding the quiet calm, the ‘home’ within you. Once you find this place, you’ll see that your friend list is narrowed down.

I think I need to meditate more!

Careful because mediation can easily become performative (even to oneself). I've noticed this in some of my highly conscientious colleagues. Maybe it's "grindset" ideaology, but capturing the "point" of meditation takes much more than a scheduled 6 minute breathing session at precisely the butt-crack of dawn.

6 minutes seems awfully short, I havent practiced meditation for a long time but my sessions where 20, 30 or 60 minutes long, it takes time for the mind to settle down and to benefit fully from flowing consciousness. Anything less would feel like a rush job, which is kinda paradoxical for meditation.

Did it take you a while to be able to meditate for 60 minutes??

If you practice it daily, after about a week pushing that to 60 minutes shouldn't be too hard, it's not physical after all. What's important is to have a great setup so that it's super comfy for you to stay a long time without moving: hot, background noise should stay low, use some mat or pillow to sit on, and here you go...

I think I’ll need to work up to it over longer than a week, I find it super hard to sit still. But I shall take on board your advice! Thank you!

Isn't "being an obnoxious extrovert" a winning strategy?

I feel like social media made this trait almost into an epidemic.

https://xkcd.com/386/

For sure, most social media activity is sharing something about yourself (activities, etc), and it often feels like any interactions with others have an ulterior motive of getting something in return.

> This post is actually just me talking about me

Don’t WAIT for your turn to talk.

Worse than that are people that turn a subject into an opportunity to talk about themself. It’s always the clue I’m talking to a narcissist. They’re always offended, demanding answers, rephrasing what you’ve said, attracting negative attention and blaming you for it.

I think the whole world is already extremely familiar with how Donald Trump thinks and acts and talks by now, and why he is such a horrible un-empathic person and a menace to society, who is absolutely unqualified to hold office.

See? That wasn't about myself at all. That's how it's done.

It’s consumerisms effect on people in general. It drives them into lower states of consciousness. The ceiling for mindfulness becomes individualism, which is decent but ultimately a state of arrested development. David Foster Wallace cautioned the public about it.

I don't like to talk about myself and I don't like listening to others talking about themselves, and that's all there is to human interaction so I rather skip it altogether.

1) You do to like to talk about yourself: you're doing it right now.

2) And you like to listen to others talking about themselves: you just read an article of somebody talking about themselves.

3) And you don't skip human interaction altogether: you just initiated it right now, too.

Three in a row: You may not be very good at introspection, nor honest with yourself and others, but you do actually talk about yourself, listen to others talk about themselves, and initiate human interaction, so there is hope!

You should get out more, and learn more about yourself and other people, because you have a lot of mistaken beliefs about yourself and others, and as much to unlearn as you have to learn.

Sorry to talk about you so much, but you brought it up. Now I can get back to talking about myself!

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