Bores

Z-Man discusses how not to be boring.  It's an engrossing topic for me, not only because I don't like to be bored ("conversation rape," one of his commenters calls it), but because I have just enough self-awareness to know I too can natter on pointlessly when I'm uncomfortable and oblivious.

One commenter described his father:
Once I called him on having told a story many, many times before and he seemed genuinely shocked that this wasn’t the first time I’d heard it – this being a story that he’d told me maybe two or three times a week since I was five years old or so. That was when I realized that he wasn’t talking to communicate to me, but for some internal reason, maybe as a form of talk therapy. Whatever the case, it turned out that he was paying even less attention to what he was saying than I was.

6 comments:

Grim said...

In general I find that people love to talk, and will find you endlessly fascinating if you just let them. My go-to conversation ploy is simply to listen to them tell me whatever it is they want to tell me, responding only to encourage them as necessary. No one ever seems bored by this approach.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I dominate most conversations, though I will happily just listen if the others present clearly know more about the topic than I do. Both sides of my family, however, put a premium on being interesting and expressing oneself well. You have to read the conversation partners and what they are hoping to gain from the exchange.

Tom said...

I find boredom to be a kind of mental illness wherein the sufferer has convinced themselves they certainly can't be expected to say or do anything interesting in the situation, but they expect everyone else to say or do something interesting in the situation. It seems quite selfish, when you think about it.

The cure is simple: Be interesting.

douglas said...

Amen, Tom. Amen.

Eric Blair said...

I noticed this a couple of decades ago, coworkers endlessly repeating the same stories over and over again. Taught me to try not to do the same thing.

Lars Walker said...

For the last several years, I have ridden along with a friend, carrying stuff in a van to a big festival in North Dakota. We're both old bores, and we have essentially the same conversation every time we go. It seems to satisfy us both.