Always Talk to Strangers
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
They sound easy to do, but I found out they are anything but.
Step 0: overcome social anxiety and general awkwardness.
Edit: to make this comment a little less pithy, I will say that I've ordered 'What to Talk About', and it has lessened the looming daemon of small talk...somewhat. (http://www.amazon.com/What-Talk-About-Cocktail-Elevator/dp/1...)
Start by talking to people you have on interest in talking to. Don't approach an attractive member of the opposite sex or a businessperson. Instead, say hello to an elderly person you normally wouldn't look twice at.
Or try to make cashiers laugh. Brighten up people's day. If you just talk consistently, you'll get better. Talking to people is a skill like any other.
So yeah, say something to the cashier. Ask the barista if they changed the chairs. Ask the guy who takes your parking ticket if he knows a good restaurant. You have to make a beginning, trite as it sounds, and no beginning is too small to help.
To learn, you need to be able to try a lot, in a consistent environment, and get feedback. Bars made it difficult to try small things, and they're a complex environment where you can't repeat the same interaction so easily.
Whereas, saying "hi" to a stranger is never that different, in terms of how it goes initially.
Whereas, when talking with people on the street, I don't care how the interaction goes. So that makes me relaxed, and the interaction goes well.
I enjoy it for the sake of it, whereas I don't enjoy clubs unless things go well.
Mods, why was the comment about rejection therapy killed? It's a very popular and highly relevant game. And the poster has 1000+ karma; they don't seem like a spammer.
I couldn't see anything objectionable about the comment.
At it's best, "dead" indicates spam removal, or a shadowban of a spammer. Unfortunately, when it's applied in appropriately, the poster doesn't realize.
In this case, there's a comment that I think was removed incorrectly.
Fun. Systematic. And others can be better just by being around you.
I recommend Sleight of Mouth to start. You can skip Mindlines, I can't tell if sections in that book are bad writing or not.
Machines sure can be funner than humans, but the ammount of trending articles around this theme reveals a few uncomfortable truths about this community. Yikes!
"There's evidence suggesting that negative factors of the neighborhood, things like density of fast food outlets, violence, noise, and poor air quality impact health,” lead researcher Eric Kim, a psychologist in his final year of doctoral work at the University of Michigan, told me. I'd add broken windows. One 2003 study found that “boarded-up housing” predicts high rates of gonorrhea in a neighborhood, as well as premature death due to cancer or complications of diabetes. (And murder.) More recently, researchers from University of Pennsylvania looked at the health detriments associated with vacant land. By their understanding, abandoned buildings lead to isolation and erosion of social relationships, mutual trust, and collective efficacy, which leads to poor physical health.
Kim’s team is focusing on the other side of things: the positive elements of a neighborhood that “might perhaps be protective or even enhancing of health." For a young scientist, Kim is precociously well versed in the language of hedging
So, what gives? I am baffled as to why this is not being discussed in earnest as a piece on research into health factors but is being talked about like it is a criticism of the social climate of HN and the social skills of its members.