The vital art of talking to strangers (2021)

I'm generally in a mood such that someone starting some small talk to me turns around my whole day for the better. Of course, if there is some back and forth etc the effect is stronger..

I would react politely to your children and, if further engaged by you, continue to converse with you politely.

I would also genuinely, deeply, and silently dislike every second of the forced interaction.

99.999% of people might react the same, but that doesn’t mean we all feel the same.

This is pretty on the nose for me. My wife and I moved from a Chicago suburb to Portland about 5 years ago. The amount of effort required just to strike up a convo with strangers (and keep it going) was pretty significant. We especially missed how acceptable giving people "the business" (i.e. harmless joking or razzing to lower someone's guard and make them feel comfortable) was so common where we grew up. You could give someone sh*t for something trivial then end up helping them remodel their basement.

It was isolating for a while until we sort of gave up and accepted that people are just different out here. There's nothing wrong with that, but we're moving back to Chicago (for other reasons). We're looking forward to not having to jump through hoops just to have a meaningful convo with a stranger again.

This matches my personal experience. When I moved from Boston to Austin it was like night and day how different interactions with strangers were. Strangers in Boston kept to themselves and when you approached them it would have an air of “what are you trying to sell me?” in which their feet were already pointed away from you and they were prepared to keep walking.

On the other hand, Texans are far more open to speak with strangers and shoot the shit with people in public. There’s less rush to keep moving and people are far more open to chatting.

My theory is that population density may have an effect on this behavior. Boston is far more dense and when you ride the train or bus everyday people keep to themselves. It’s far more emotionally draining to keep interacting with everyone that you meet so people conserve their energy.

No one is friendly in urban areas because you are getting accosted / hustled so often. If a stranger tries to talk to me I have to give an ocular pat down and risk assessment before engaging beyond a skeptical glance.

The PNW can get to talking eventually but it’s like pulling teeth before it catches.

Maybe a better analogy is starting a lawnmower.

I live in a small mountain town now, and it's unthinkable you would walk past someone on the sidewalk and not say hi.

Walking your dog ( its cute and small) makes a big difference.

The hej thing is common in some Scandinavian countries, but people don't strike up conversations with each other nor do they make new friends easily.

Geographical differences certainly ring true but I think it’s a bit of a generational thing as well?

Can confirm that trains are an amazing place to meet people. I commute on the Amtrak Northeast Regional and have made 3 regular acquaintances with whom I've had long conversations.

Never would have happened on a plane or or on the highway.

Having kids is a great way to lower the barrier. As a parent with autism ('introvert') it is also a great way to overstep my boundaries. Like, I have to, even if I don't want to. My secret weapons are smiling and talking to my kid.

Fwiw I feel the same. I don’t want my kids to learn stranger danger, I want them to know most people are kind and helpful.

I grew up in a small town, with a family who was at church every single Sunday (and if there was a fish fry or social, we were there too).

My dad grew up in the same town, with a similar family situation. And as a result, he knew everyone. He used to drive me absolutely crazy whenever we'd go out because no matter where we went, he'd bump into someone and wind up in a 30 minute chat.

But as an adult I realized it was hugely important for my own social skills to witness and get pulled into those conversations.

I'm an introvert (I take after my mother in this respect), but I think I'm a pretty decent small talker, and since my own kids have started getting bigger I've been trying to make an effort to overcome the friction I feel to opening up to new people so that I can demonstrate some of what my dad did. For the most part I actually enjoy talking with people, but I do really have to push myself to get started with conversations sometimes.

My wife and I actually just forced ourselves to attend a birthday party for a neighbor that we'd been invited to tonight. Our kids landed there ahead of us so our hands were forced. We ended up having a great time and got such a warm greeting from the host (sometimes it can really surprise me how happy a person is to see us, haha).

tl;dr: It's definitely worth the effort to push past the friction sometimes.

Hi! I did. This is what worked for me.

First: Work a job that is socially embedded. Restaurants, grocery stores, front desk retail, anything customer service related. Getting comfortable with people has a weird out-of-order solution where if your discomfort is visible, the interaction will sour; find something that forces a fix to the initial discomfort, like the jobs above. They'll act as a shim that'll let you bypass the initial anxiety.

Second: The emotions you wear on your face are what perpetuates a conversation. If you can find a reason--not act, not fake--to want to talk to someone, to learn about them, they will immediately, unconsciously pick up on it, and return that excitement. Conversely, if you don't trust someone, or think they don't want to talk to you, they wont want to talk to you, and they won't find you trustworthy, either. It's a counterinruitive, ready-fire-aim thing. You don't need to be perfect at this, you just need to be aware of it. People are excellent at vetting intentions.

Third: The idea that there's somewhere you can go that will make socialization easy is a farce. Interaction is "permitted" everywhere, and you can try it anywhere. Go for several short conversations instead of putting all your effort into one. You should be fishing for enthusiasm: if you get no effort back, then it is unwanted. Drop it and try again with someone else.

Literally any event/gathering is a great place to start.

The whole point of bringing groups together is to encourage people to interact. It’s awkward for everyone, but you can make it less awkward for others by just being friendly.. complimenting someone, or even just asking a simple question to get some engagement.

As long as you are respectful, friendly, and not pushy, everyone will respect you back.

Try to find some local gatherings in your own community, maybe a church potluck (they won’t care if you’re not religious, they are just happy you are there) .. maybe a local game shop has some DND evenings, or just find something that aligns with your personal interests.

To improve your nervousness about speaking, toastmasters or a Dale Carnegie class are both good options as well.

Go work retail somewhere that doesn't try to hard-sell people.

Most places will start by giving you some training materials on how to initiate friendly, non-threatening interactions with the customers. These are basically to burn some non-business cycles with the customer to prove that you're not trying to hard-sell them by using aggressive and manipulative techniques on them[1].

There are a lot of open-ended, safe topics you'll use for this. But once you get comfortable with the technique, you'll realize that you could use almost any question. Even rather specific ones like, "What's your favorite sandwich" can start a perfectly fine conversation with someone. Most people like new, unpredictable utterances and as long as you present it as non-threatening it can lead to a fruitful conversation.

Along with this you'll learn to time your speech to provide plenty of spaces where your interlocutor can cut away if they so wish. E.g., if you've told 3 pithy little stories which were each less than 15 seconds, they will feel at ease staying for one more before they go away. If on the other hand they aren't able to predict whether your next story is going to be a fun 10 seconds or an excruciatingly dull 5 minute rabbit hole, things are going to get awkward real quick.

Finally, if you don't listen you won't sell shit so you will have a nice daily scorecard on your progress.

1: It's amazing how well this works. Hard-selling commissions must be so razor thin that the salespeople can't even spend 30 seconds to build normal rapport with another human being. I've literally never had the experience of an employee starting out as a human being and then pivoting to aggressive/manipulative tactics. But maybe all the salespeople who excel at that are employed by big pharma and since I'm not a doctor I don't have contact with them.

Honest Q:

What kind of therapy do you look for for things like this? As someone deeply inverted, prone to "creatively interpreting" things in a negative light, who dwells on imagined sleights, etc. I've thought maybe I need some professional help. But I'm kind of afraid of talking to people about my issues in general so I don't know what kind of therapist would work for me.

Love yourself first.

Love yourself first. If you truly believe that you have value;

that when you open your mouth and speak to others, you brighten their day;

that when other people meet you, they are happier or smarter than they were before they met you;

then it is your natural obligation to talk to other people (don't dehumanize them by calling them strangers), because you are giving them the gift of your own special human light.

I also feel awkward when a situation is new to me, keep repeating talking to strangers until you became used to it, that is how it works, that is how we make horses be calm and not freak out when they see plastic bags.

You can interact with strangers everywhere! In a queue in supermarket, in a football stadium or in a train.

If they don't want to talk you should be able to recognize it instantly.

It's better to learn to meditate, which should reduce the feelings of fear first.

(Working in IT) I love laptop stickers for this. Whenever I'm returning from a conference a quick look around the lounge will reveal plenty of people with laptop stickers that are an easy to to startup a conversation. "Oh you're into $LANG/$TOOL, did you go to $CONF too?".

And in the end, it feels good and fresh. Just like any other (meaningful) skill, decent social skills put forth significant effects on one's awareness of their local surroundings, and with good social skills, invaluable experiences. I've struggled with it for the best half of my life, and later ignored the need to take action and improve. I moved on to finding out the subtle beauty of just pulling up a conversation with a completely new person, of course our perspectives and opinions might differ, and that's where I see the beauty and without it, the world wouldn't have been so dynamic so I think.

I imagine it's because if the conversation is terrible you're still stuck together for potential hours. It's high risk medium reward.

I find a good book or movie makes the plane ride feel shorter. Talking to the person next to me so often ends up in an awkward situation when the conversation becomes tedious and boring, but it would be rude to just stop talking to them and move on to my book.

If I dont start talking to the person, I don’t have that problem.

On the other hand, I’ve seen not an insignificant number of cases where someone overstepped a boundary by forcing a conversation on someone who was clearly not into it. I think it’s ok to try, but given the context, cultural differences, legal requirement to stay in your assigned seat, it might be easy to get confused about consent.

Somehow I feel that changed recently (post-COVID?).

I remember having lots of random conversations with my seatmates on planes, and I’m not the type to talk to strangers myself.

It used to be normal to always ask something along the lines of “where are you headed?” and maybe let that evolve into a chat about shared experiences about cities and places. I still remember some of the fascinating people I met this way and will never see again.

But in the last couple of years all my flights have been purely transactional where not a single casual word is ever exchanged with anyone.

The best conversation I ever had on a plane was with an elderly French couple. They didn't speak English and I know maybe half a dozen words of French. They eventually successfully communicated to me that they're taking a month-long holiday at a sort-of private island where there's these bungalows where you can stay isolated from civilisation. No Internet, no electricity, and you have to fish for your dinner. Groceries are via a guy on a canoe that turns up once a day to sell you whatever you need.

It was fascinating and amazing how with hours with nothing else to occupy us, we overcame boredom by exchanging this story despite the language barrier.

When I was in grad school, I would catch up reading journal papers on the plane and keep to myself, but finally on two separate occasions it sparked lengthy conversation, because the other person was an engineer or a mathematician.

I would suggest it’s simply because flights are often much longer than a subway ride. Making small talk for six, eight, twelve hours isn’t really fun for anyone.

actually it used to be like that in earlier days of airliners. it was a social experience.

but those days also had a darker side, like having a dress code for passengers...

It takes alot to be memorably weird, no unhinged political takes, conspiracy theories, don't start crying, don't talk about your near death experiences.

Anyway what does it matter? Those all happened to me, I suspect they're living their lives indifferent of my opinion.

I very much agree. I would consider myself to be more asocial than average, though certainly not aggressively so. The types of sentiments expressed in this article are usually written by very social people who see conversation as some inherent good. I think you are in the minority of such social butterflies in terms of checking that assumption.

For an example, take this quote:

> But that is not the whole story. In mid-life and beyond people can still experience the joy of a random meeting, however short, which somehow touches a nerve.

What exactly is the joy? Is that joy not something I can obtain more easily via the “traditional” social channels I’ve cultivated over the course of my life thus far? And won’t a social interaction in one of those channels have a much greater chance of lasting positive impact given that person is more likely to be someone I interact with regularly, enabling me to build off that initial interaction over time?

Moreover, what’s the downside of the encounter? I suspect a lot of asocial people like myself strongly dislike the much more common awkwardness and self-doubt that accompany a social interaction that goes poorly. Is enduring a lot of that really worth the few instances where you feel a fleeting sense of connection?

Putting effort into that social interaction also means I will have less energy to put into other pursuits that mean more to me: my marriage, playing piano, reading, career goals, riding my bike, existing friendships, etc.

I don’t disagree with the article necessarily, but I do think it’s mostly an “ode to random social encounters” more than a serious attempt to make a case for why people not predisposed to doing so should try to have more random social encounters.

The questions you ask in your last two sentences really get at the interesting stuff. But of course they are too nuanced and complex to answer in any comprehensive, generalized way within an easily digestible length.

Try the book The Charisma Myth, it has some great exercises to help you do stuff like talking to strangers. You have to do the exercises though

There is stuff there that can help you get people to talk to you without initiating the conversation yourself

That book changed my life

I often start conversations with random people around. It feels liberating to be able to do so, I recommend it. Now and then I learn something interesting. Oftentimes, I start the conversation but also have the last word. Which feels frustrating. You can't have it all.