How to Be Someone People Love to Talk to (2015) | Hacker News Reader

How to Be Someone People Love to Talk to (2015)

bakadesuyo.com

50 pointsTomte63 comments

I have the theory that the most powerful way to be someone people love to talk to is to learn to get into a good mood.

This theory is two-fold.

First: Mood is contagious. So being in a good mood yourself is the most direct way to make others get into a good mood too. And that's what makes us like being around someone. When they make us feel good.

Second: It is possible to learn how to get into a good mood. It's not so much related to the situation around you, which mood you are in. It's more of an internal state. Similar to how you can change your physical posture, you can put yourself in different mental postures. The more you practice, the better you get at it.

I came to what I think is a related conclusion fairly recently (https://twitter.com/mightybyte/status/1749513355038220653): One of (if not the) most valuable skills in life is being able to choose that you're going to consider an arbitrary thing fun.

Your good mood skill seems like the interpersonal version of that. It's always fun to see ideas from different areas form a coherent big picture.

This is why I love taking notes in my overly elaborate vim notebook setup. It's a delight, so it adds fun to any mundane task at work.

I have very rarely actually looked at old notes.

Funny you mention that. I do that too, except in my case it's Spacemacs in vim mode. I do go back to them from time to time, but that's mainly because it's an easy ripgrep search of the whole notes directory tree. If I didn't have search and was only using the editor to look things up, I might never refer back to the old notes.

I agree that mood is key but when it come to being around, not necessarily talking to. Sure, that will also influence talking to but I find that being better at crafting conversation that takes the listener for a ride into a story to be the main factor here.

This sounds like one of these things that are trivially true and yet super useful if you embrace it. Do you have any more reading material about this idea?

The book 'feeling good'

I somewhat disagree, I think a large part of it is being genuine.

Nobody loves talking to a genuinely morose person

People only like the genuine people they agree with.

I just had a conversation with someone who disagreed with me on almost every topic. When it was done I thanked them for disagreeing with me civilly.

you're obviously free to believe whatever nonsense you want, but it says more about your lack of social skill than anything approaching a truth.

I go to a D&D group with 2 devout christians, 1 agnostic, 1 atheist, and 1 hindu.

We've all been good friends for probably 15 years at this point. Do you think we all agree?

maybe stop limiting yourself.

You specified that they disagreed with you "civilly", which generally means they behaved in a way you agreed with, even if they had differing opinions on non-behavior topics. People still only like genuine people when the genuineness includes behavior they like.

that's not the definition of the word civilly. words have meanings. Generally speaking, when you find yourself redefining the meaning of words it's a strong indicator that your argument is poor.

My mom had a saying that sums this up: “you are your thoughts, your thoughts expand”

This is pretty cringeworthy IMHO. Using "research shows" arguments to tell that smiling helps seems a bit out of touch with reality.

There's probably a lot of good advice here, but I'd like to add that people have different tastes, and it's just no fun to adapt yourself to make the "averaged" person love you. Better invest in a few quirky people.

I think “who to engage” (what you are talking about) and “how to engage” (the article) are separate things.

You are not gonna make quirky friends either by sitting in the corner scowling either.

Thanks for pointing this out. My problem with the article is that it presupposes (incorrectly in my view) that "who to engage" with is an average person who conforms to fairly primitive statistics.

This approach is common in many of the social sciences, but I think interpreting statistics to say something about the real world requires a little more effort.

If 60% of the people prefer oranges over apples, that does not mean that we should burn all apple trees. If, when choosing a political party during an election, one party gets the largest share, that does not immediately imply that it is the best party, or that most people prefer it. It's tiresome that so many people simply do not see a problem with this, and it is thanks to these kinds of "scientific" nonsense stories that it keeps getting propagated.

Of course, if I had simply said that I'd loved the article and that I met the author smiling over a coffee, I'd probably get more upvotes, but for now, I think my rant has some merit.

Then again, the article does point out a lot of sensible things, and that can be very helpful to some people, so perhaps I should crawl back under my rock.

I appreciate nuance and not aiming for average and I get the examples you are talking about. But I think now you are the one who’s speaking in generalities vs the case at hand :)

Do you think there’s a better way to connect to people than what is described in the article? I think I am fairly in-average in my interests and yet I am pretty sure if someone came and asked me about something vs started telling me shit about themselves, I’d be much more willing to engage the former.

You are welcome to disagree but what’s your alternative advice?

I'm not railing against the advice, I'm against the argumentation. This is not really clear from my previous comments -- I should've stated that context more clearly.

The post suggests that scientific methods are at the basis here, but in essence it is just listing socially accepted norms that are obvious to anyone.

Take for example the illustration on competence and likability. The research might be good, but the diagram itself shows no results, just a definition.

And am I to believe that FBI hostage negotiation is applicable to a friendly conversation I'd like to pick up with my neighbour? It just all makes very little sense.

So, yes, smile, listen, be friendly. But no, do not abuse "science" to support this.

This is all great, but even if you follow all these tips, most people I meet seem to be only interested in talking about themselves. They will answer your questions (sometimes to such an exhausting length that you dread any more follow-up questions), but never ask you any questions back.

I also come across decent conversationalists, of course, but in my observation more than 2/3th of the people I meet only care about talking about themselves and don't care about learning anything about me. I mostly notice this in women, but that may just be my personal experience.

At the end of the day, people mostly want to talk about themselves, and if your goal is to be someone they want to talk to it means you're there to listen.

It's not about communication, or about forming a relationship or a connection or whatever. It is about making them enjoy speaking with you. So they now think you're a "great person". You're not making friends, you're just building sympathy capital to be used later.

I don't agree. One of the reasons people talk about themselves is that doing so is not invasive: you share something (hopefully of interest or importance to you) and expect them to do the same.

You can only ask so many questions like "what are you like doing" or "what was your experience of doing X" before it starts to be weird. My 2c at least.

Honest question: what do you mean by weird?

Like you are trying to pull info from your interlocutor and they are answering out of politeness but have no real intention of letting you to know them.

It feels fine to ask direct questions from time to time to steer the convo but I think the expectation of a pleasant one is that it flows naturally most of the time (meaning the steering is much more subtle).

Many people suck at conversation. This article is something they’d be better off reading.

But it’s weird that almost everyone you meet is like that? That’s not the real world ratio.

I was going to quote a couple specific things in your reply but after re-reading it all resonates.

Completely agree with you. More of my conversations are one-way than not. It's uncomfortable when you get part way through a conversation and realize you've asked nearly every question. And then I question whether I am the boring or less interesting one in the pair.

In my profession, I counter this with a simple phrase: be interested, not interesting. It just works better.

Maybe there's a math behind this. Maybe they enjoy talking about themselves, and don't like talking about you, so are happy to talk as long as its on their terms, but don't really have an interest in a balanced quid-pro-quo.

> Don’t take the cliche advice and “just be yourself.”

> smile slower

> Repeat the last 1-3 words the person just said as a question.

Not to cherry-pick, but this sort of advice is just exhausting. I'm not saying it's ineffective, but I think I'd rather be around people where comfortable, mutually-enjoyable interactions happen organically.

Yeah, I've learned how to be someone people like to talk to, but I still don't often do it because it is exhausting. I learned a lot from my sister-in-law who is great at it and everybody loves talking to her, but she can get into a positive feedback loop where the interaction energizes her to keep it up, whereas for me, my reserves to keep it up deplete after an hour or so. Even she, though, will eventually get tired of doing it and is famous for suddenly disappearing and going to be in a room by herself to recharge. I think a key to her approach is she will sometimes make the story about her and let people pay her back for listening so well, and then just when they are losing interest, she'll flip it back to be about them.

She and I can talk for hours though, because we know how to minimize the tiring part and make it more of a back and forth.

What’s an example of how those interactions happen organically? ;)

> Repeat the last 1-3 words the person just said as a question.

The first time I read about this was in Chris Voss' "Never split the difference", a great book about negotiation. It's called "mirroring" and it actually works really well at getting people to reveal more information without sounding inquisitive or nosy.

Not sure about using it all the time in normal conversation, though.

You fake it till you make it.

But people who fake it by taking cringeworthy advice that make them act like a salesman don't make it because people see through that shit.

If you're implementing TFA advice in such a way that you come across looking/sounding like a salesman then you're doing it wrong.

For some reason all of these types of books/posts/theories frustrate me. I feel like a lot of them are willfully ignorant feel-good advice.

There are just so many more facets to this than they are acknowledging. Like in a real conversation you ask somebody about themselves and they start humblebragging about their vacation, and then you suddenly have to make very real choices (do you start bragging yourself, do you pretend they didn't brag, do you say something completely vanilla like "Sounds like you really enjoyed your vacation", do you call it out with a joke?).

Also I feel very basic things like -- is this person having a sh*t day probably matter 5x as much as smiling and using their name. Also things like their assumptions based on how you dress (e.g. they think you wear preppy clothes) are probably going to matter a lot.

Basically I feel like most of these guides are written by people who couldn't genuinely befriend a construction worker, a banker, and a teacher.

The only book that even touched on any of this type of thing (competitive bragging) that I've read is "Games people play," but I feel like even it wasn't really a practical guide for how to handle these situations.

I completely agree. People and their work are way more complicated and there's no silver bullet.

Blind buying into toxic positivity and seeing people react with their trained fake kindness doesn't mean people actually love talking to you. Some of us have to get to work and these gloves get in the way.

My favorite people to talk to just tell the truth and are reliable and responsible people. Not everyone has the luxury to play these games. That's probably better advice for anyone struggling with overcoming class or cultural divides.

> My favorite people to talk to just tell the truth and are reliable and responsible people.

This is excellent advice, but unlikely to sell well in the "self-help" aisle.

> ...even Games People Play wasn't really a practical guide for how to handle these situations.

I found it a practical guide, in that when I recognise too many of its entries with a particular interlocutor, and attempting to jump out of the games doesn't work, I talk with other people instead.

(a major advantage to living in a non-anglophone society is that here we expect everyone will be respectful with everyone else, but definitely don't expect everyone will be friends with everyone else)

> I found it a practical guide, in that when I recognise too many of its entries with a particular interlocutor, and attempting to jump out of the games doesn't work, I talk with other people instead.

Well what I'd want to know from such a book is:

do we consider every social interaction (including happy conversations) a game? is there some reason why asymmetric games are bad? is it reasonable to have a relationship that only has symmetrical and positive games? are people's preferences for games static or are they flexible? how to switch games gracefully?

It's been a long, long time since I read it (ca.1970s), but IIRC Berne: (a) does not consider every social interaction a game, only the ones following scripts, of which he provides a few examples, (b) does consider that his games can also be played in positive manners (IIRC adult-adult ought to result in a positive conversation), and (c) does at least touch upon switching games.

We probably think of "games" slightly differently than he does; "Scripts People Follow" or "Loops People Never Terminate" might be a more appropriate title for computer geeks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_People_Play_(book)

An example, one of the games he hilights is "Ain't It Awful", which basically has the script of all participants complaining about how nothing is good but making no attempt to discover either (a) why things might be the way they are, or (b) how one might at least ameliorate the awful things.

We might say his players are getting dopamine hits from participating, but not really making any other progress.

Eg:

— Isn't it awful how Lisp has all those parentheses?

— Yeah, and APL is completely unreadable!

— But how about those pointers in C: complete footguns!

— Don't forget the EnterpriseJavaFactoryFactoryManager...

— oh, and wat about JavaScript?

— No, PHP, now that's truly awful!

— etc.

> and then you suddenly have to make very real choices (do you start bragging yourself, do you pretend they didn't brag, do you say something completely vanilla like "Sounds like you really enjoyed your vacation", do you call it out with a joke?).

There's no decision to be made at all, because the option is always to say something vanilla. Why would you even think of any other option?

Sometimes people aren't bragging, they're just excited about something. Could be their first time ever on a real vacation.

> Why would you even think of any other option?

You don't want to seem cold or fake. Vanilla answers all the time will guarantee you get ignored when good things are happening to everyone else.

You don't have to be cold or fake, but a vanilla answer is better than some competition of words.

> There's no decision to be made at all, because the option is always to say something vanilla. Why would you even think of any other option?

I have no idea what you mean by that.

There are plenty of people who are playing the "Who's trendier" game and who will like you more if you say, "oh yeah, Brussels, I was there last year but this year I went to [new trendy spot]." This is because some people genuinely do want to be trendy and do want to hang out with trendy people.

I guarantee that you won't have to compete verbally with anybody on who's more trendy. Silence is golden. Somebody will ask you if you like to travel. And if people aren't interested in you anyway, it's a blessing to let them do the talking.

I feel like you're espousing advice for how you wish the world was rather than the world we actually live in, which I see as unuseful.

I think you and others here don't understand subtle ways. When you're sitting at a table with a braggart or two who are trying to impress by being more trendy or whatever, you can just let them talk. Just one look and a funny eye roll slyly to the other company and you've already beat them. Trying to compete in bragging is foolishness. Nobody's impressed.

Aside from the marketing spam, this article feels like the author took every book in the self-help best sellers category and tried to distill their main takeaways. The ideas are often not wrong per se, but it's like trying to teach someone to play basketball without ever touching a ball. You can talk about the theory and grand ideas all you like, but none of them will make you get it.

"How to win friends and influence people" is the longer form book version of this article that's been around a long time.

Despite the somewhat creepy title, I found it to be a very sincere look at personal communications.

- It's very hard to know what other people are going through so don't assume

- Be genuinely interested in other people, don't just wait for your turn to talk

I loved this book, because I found the overarching themes were "be nice to people and they'll like you and want to work with you" and "here's some genuine ways you can engage with and be nice to people".

It helped me realize how selfish I was in some ways when interacting with others and how little changes (that aren't slimy/creepy) can make me get along better with others.

One of the best for me was finding something, anything, that you can truly complement a person on. Anything from what they are eating for lunch looks great, you like the color of their bicycle, the headphones they are wearing look like the work really well, etc.

People want to be around you because they like you or they want something from you. You aren't going to be able to change your personality, so the only thing that you can change is your disposition. But trying to be something you aren't in order to attract people is going to come across as fake.

> You aren't going to be able to change your personality

You absolutely can change your personality - for the better or for the worse - and it's still going to be you. Pay attention to people and you will see that they change with time. We all can improve and evolve our soul, just as we can do with our body.

You can't change your fundamental body either. You may be able to get fatter or skinnier or in shape or not, but your genetics are far more important than anything you do personally. Also, I don't know what a 'soul' is: can you define it?

Then you have to do some soul searching to find out.

A person who makes bold assertions about something and when asked to clarify only answers in vagaries while alluding to something spiritual. How original and compelling.

You're too angry to get the joke. As for bodily change and personality changes, it happens to all of us with puberty. Enormous changes actually.

It's kind of depressing how humanity gravitates towards "trying to be something you aren't".

In 1788, Adolph Franz Friedrich Ludwig Freiherr Knigge wrote "about getting along with people", which is an actually (even today!) useful work broken down into different sections for different kinds of people, revolving around suggestions for topics which are likely to lead to interesting conversations with them.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the name "Knigge" has been plastered all over various attempts at bog-standard etiquette manuals.

https://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/show/knigge_umgang01...

Personality Isn't Permanent. - see Dr Ben Hardy's book w/ this title

> Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a Wall Street Journal bestseller. To check it out, click here.

Instantly closed this tab. At least they're upfront about it.

I'm always interested in how books become best sellers. Some have been crap. Not just poorly written, because that's just style that I don't like, but poorly thought out.

How many sales does it take to make money off of books? Is it way more attainable than I assume?

I'm going to boil this down a bit:

Approach people. Smile. Be interested in them. Don't be a dick.

A lot of the advice is pretty useless, though. Talk slower? Than what? If people talk too slow, they seem stupid. If they talk too fast, they seem stupid. There's a pretty big middle ground there, though, where people just seem normal.

Instead, How about "don't rush"? If you're over-anxious to get your words out, it'll show and you'll make mistakes, making you seem stupid. Simply go at a sustainable pace for both you and your listener, and you'll be fine.

This seems overly obsessed with how others perceive you and your intelligence. There's nothing wrong with looking stupid, everyone is stupid sometimes.

It seems rather manipulative and insincere. When I'm talking to somebody who practices these techniques, I'm not really talking to them.

Indeed. And it will show sooner or later.

There will be inevitably a point when the perceived warmness and interest is visibly at odds with that person's actions towards you. Or a point when they will fail to maintain the facade.

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