One of the things I like about this is that OP is giving people genuine compliments without any particular agenda.
It reminds me of one of my favorite parts of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, where he tells a story about complimenting someone, and a student asks what he was hoping to gain from offering the compliment. Carnegie is incensed:
> I was waiting in line to register a letter in the Post Office at Thirty-Third Street and Eighth Avenue in New York. I noticed that the registry clerk was bored with his job[...] So while he was weighing my envelope, I remarked with enthusiasm: “I certainly wish I had your head of hair.”
> He looked up, half-startled, his face beaming with smiles. “Well, it isn’t as good as it used to be,” he said modestly. I assured him that although it might have lost some of its pristine glory, nevertheless it was still magnificent. He was immensely pleased. We carried on a pleasant little conversation, and the last thing he said to me was: “Many people have admired my hair.”
> I told this story once in public; and a man asked me afterwards: “What did you want to get out of him?”
> What was I trying to get out of him!!! What was I trying to get out of him!!!
> If we are so contemptibly selfish that we can’t radiate a little happiness and pass on a bit of honest appreciation without trying to screw something out of the other person in return—if our souls are no bigger than sour crab apples, we shall meet with the failure we so richly deserve.
> Oh yes, I did want something out of that chap. I wanted something priceless. And I got it. I got the feeling that I had done something for him without his being able to do anything whatever in return for me. That is a feeling that glows and sings in your memory long after the incident is passed.
I avoided this book for a long time. for some reason I got it in my head that it's a sort of red pilled book that teaches you how to manipulate people. I know it's very shallow on my side, but I somehow crystallized this opinion based on a few acquaintances that claimed to read it and instead that they include the name of a person they just met in every sentence because it made that person like them more.
Your comment made me consider reading it. This rant about radiating happiness towards people without expecting something in return gives me a different insight on his reasons for writing the book.
> I avoided this book for a long time. for some reason I got it in my head that it's a sort of red pilled book that teaches you how to manipulate people.
FWIW this book came out in the 1930s, long before "red pilling" was a thing. I've read it before and it's not about manipulating people unless you consider being a genuinely sincere person to be manipulative in some way. It's a good book, if a little outdated, and, if I could summarize it in one glib sentence, its lesson is "If you want people to like you, then be nice to them, be genuine, and show enthusiasm and interest in what they show enthusiasm and interest in."
My read on the book was "humans are really good at telling if you genuinely care about them or not and will respond well to that, so you should genuinely care about the people around you, and good things will result from that overall, especially if you're not super mercenary about it."
Bill & Ted said it most pithily: be excellent to each other.
Serious question - what is your definition of "genuinely care"? The Carnegie example doesn't show "geninuely care" to me. It's nice, I think I should do it. Give people random but geninue complements. It's nice. It costs nothing. It makes both of us feel good. But, is that "genuinely care"?
I ask because I'm bad at conversation. I hear this "genuinely care" and I just, usually, can't get myself to do it. I don't care. I would like to have a nice conversation and I try to care in the moment but the odds are pretty high that 5 minutes after it's over I'll not even know their name and move on with my life. That's not "genuine care" to me.
I’m not so hung up on the semantics. The fact that you’ll likely never meet someone again can render an act of kindness towards them, no matter how small, more meaningful, not less.
Not sure what the downvotes are for on this one. It depends a lot on what "genuine care" is supposed to mean. If you want to interpret that as a subconscious feeling then you're right. Feelings aren't normally controllable and calling them up on demand is pretty much impossible.
That being said, if you go through a bit of game theory and apply it to the real world - the experience of the last few millennia of recorded history is the strategy most likely to get people what they want is lots of communication and setting up win-win deals for everyone. Someone who reliably offers win-win deals has a natural advantage over the more common person who thinks in terms of win-lose deals. Communities that make a habit of setting up win-win deals for their members have an overwhelming advantage over those that don't. If you tap in to that type of thinking it tends to translate into taking a real interest in how other people are going because it is easier to set win-win deals up if you know what their problems and goals are. And a sensible sub-strategy is making sure to be as kind as possible to everyone to get into the habit of thinking empathically and keep channels of communication as open as possible.
So if "genuine care" means you literally feel something... nobody has much use for your feelings, we can't tell what your feelings are anyway and you probably can't call them up on demand. If "genuine care" means you try to figure out what other people want and then help them get it then that's simply good strategy and most people should find their way to it if they think about it for long enough. Some people have to think a bit harder than others and there are a few rare maniacs who really just want to cause pain and suffering. The maniacs are bad news.
1. You don't care about X until you do. Like, you can go for years without worrying cholesterol. And then you can have a reason to care about it and all of a sudden you do. The reason can come from something that forces your hand or just because you take an interest in a subject.
2. Altruism. Think less about care and more just doing without expecting anything back. People notice, especially with selfless conversation.
I agree with you this was not Dale Carnegie's intent when he wrote the book, but alexmuresan probably takes issue because the "red pilling" crowd have used Carnegie's advice to manipulate people.
Personally, salespeople have randomly complimented me and repeated my name over and over, and on the receiving end it weirded me out. So the problem is that in certain situations there is an overarching "what did you want to get out of that person?". Don't be those people.
Strike up conversations because you enjoy people and their stories.
> Part of Cialdini’s large book-buying audience came because, like me, it wanted to learn how to become less often tricked by salesmen and circumstances. However, as an outcome not sought by Cialdini, who is a profoundly ethical man, a huge number of his books were bought by salesmen who wanted to learn how to become more effective in misleading customers.
The inverse is true as well. I read it and thought it was great, but it also put me more on the defense as well. It is kind of sad how I can see relationships going from near symmetric to any kind of assymetry and it shocks me how many times they fall apart because I set limits (and not at all unreasonable limits). Too many many tread water, so i get it but... yeesh.
Yes, the problem is that every scammer and salesman uses these techniques also, and if you've run into a few of them, having a complete stranger approach you with the standard Dale Carnegie playbook immediately sets off alarm bells.
Yes this is obvious if you think about movies where people become friends or romantic partners- they are usually cold or unfriendly to each other in the first meeting which makes their later connection seem more authentic. I cannot imagine a movie post 1950s in which a man uses these tactics and gets the girl or the sale without difficulty. Of course movies are not real life but they do rely on some verasimilitude.
That's because a movie like that would be boring (at least if it took up more than a minimal amount of screen-time). Interesting stories require some form of conflict, and for movies that focus on romance, the conflict will be interpersonal.
Yeah, that's it exactly. Films aren't reality, although they can be a reflection of what we might think how reality should go. Af the end of the day, films are made to capture an audience, not to paint a perfect portrait of the real world.
Also, there are counterexamples to that person's claim, such as the film Before Sunrise, which is an excellent romance film that doesn't involve an arc where the characters are indifferent or dislike each other at first. The films Sideways and even Office Space defy that trope as well.
Selective memory. Plenty of movies do not require conflict before romance. La La Land, Being Again, Silver Linings Playbook, About Time, ... plenty of others.
I don't want to be too generalizing, but I found the book to be matching a lot of American cultural stereotypes (as I have experienced them) and most of it would just seem corny (but not terrible) to most people from European countries (less in the south or UK maybe).
Like, I don't even disagree with what he wrote, but most of the stuff just felt a little out of place and intruding on people who generally want to be left alone or keep it to small talk on a different level.
Someone turned me onto this podcast several months ago and, after a few episodes, my takeaway was they seem to be against every book they review. I couldn't find a single book they actually liked.
Assuming you're not joking, that's the point of the podcast... hence the title "If Books Could Kill". They're reviewing bad and possibly dangerous books.
Did they review the original text of the 1930s book that captures the intent of the writer or the scrubbed latest version which washes away the sexist, racist and problematic text written by the original author?
He was as nice as they can be for a white man living in 1930. Good for fellow white men, not good for anybody female or a different skin tone.
But the book has been changed over time to make it seem like he was always an "pretty alright guy"
I read it as a socially awkward but very bookish very young teen. My one quote summary is “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” I never became Mr. Popular but found it very helpful in trying to understand somethings that were unobtainable for me at the time.
I need to read it again, I think about it a few handful of times a year, many years later.
Inspiration for the red pill (which represents choosing knowledge, however ugly, over pleasant ignorance) would be more like... the apple in the Garden of Eden. Or the Allegory of the Cave maybe. Or Alice in Wonderland (which Morpheus directly mentions in the Matrix)
Redpillers latched onto that red pill imagery because they view themselves as, you know, having the best grasp on reality. Unlike the poor ignorant masses. Or so they believe.
"Redpilled" views do have some things in common with Realpolitik, and The Prince, in the sense that they're kind of nakedly amoral and rather ugly.
I think the red pill is a direct reference to the matrix. Its kind of weird they have such degratory views on sex and gender, given the directors of their favorite movie they cant stop talking about.
For sure, the red pill is a direct reference to the Matrix. I think previous poster was asking if the Matrix took that idea from somewhere.
Its kind of weird they have such degratory views on sex and
gender, given the directors of their favorite movie they
cant stop talking about.
Yeah. I think the connection they see is that the reality Neo chose to confront (a humankind enslaved by machines) was unpleasant, and the redpill gang knows their version of reality is very ugly as well.
Hah. I'm ADHD and I used to be terrible about remembering people's names -- like, their names didn't even register and I couldn't tell you what it was 30 seconds later. It wasn't that I didn't care about the person, it was just that their name would never stick. Anyway, I finally made enough people feel bad and embarrassed myself enough that I started compensating and made a point to remember basically everybody's name that I met. The change was really surprising, people notice that sort of thing and they make an effort to return the same kind of energy. My general attitude about people since then has become a lot more positive because I realized that overall, most people really don't need a whole lot of impetus to show their better side, and it's not like it costs me anything to treat somebody with a little more consideration.
I wish the protocol was to introduce your name about 5-15 minutes into the conversation because then I would have some other information to attach it to. When it's the first piece of information I receive I think my brain just doesn't really know where to put it and it gets lost immediately. The "use their name several times in the first conversation" trick is a good workaround for this.
> I wish the protocol was to introduce your name about 5-15 minutes into the conversation because then I would have some other information to attach it to.
This is exactly what suave people do to get to know strangers outside of professional context. It's a common TV/movie trope. Asking a stranger's name puts them on the defensive.
I have a list in reminders called names so when someone tells me their name as soon as I can use my phone without it being impolite I open it up and add a quick note with the names.
- neighbour watering lawn Jack, wife Gemma, daughter Jane
Then I try to remember it later in the day and confirm with the note. I do that the next couple days and it's locked in and I can delete the note.
I've found that the same works for me when I put forth the tiny bit of time and effort to actually do it.
Just a quick note somewhere (phone is easy-enough, or for a long time I carried a waterproof Field Notes notebook with a Fisher Space Pen and that worked a bit better), to be reviewed later.
Maybe that review happens an hour from now. Maybe it happens in a week, or a month. Or maybe all of these. Refreshers are good.
I don't even have to write much, if anything, about the person; the mere act of taking down the names usually helps a ton with my ability to recall the context later.
If I can remember when and where I took that note (which I can often do very easily), then the rest of the details fill themselves in quite nicely.
(I don't erase the notes, so as to let them remain useful to me later. I don't care if that creeps anyone out; my intentions are pure and the problem I'm trying to solve is very real. Its creep-value is really no worse than the contact lists that I've transferred between cell phones, pocket computers, and now pocket supercomputers for nearly a quarter of a century.)
The creep-value of keeping your lists is zero. It's no different to a journal or the options you gave.
I just delete the ones from mine after a while since they aren't needed and makes it more likely to lose focus on the new ones I'm still actively remembering.
Do try to follow the advice of my sibling comments, but its also okay to find out you are simply really bad at remembering names. I think I'm in the bottom 10% percent in that regard. The only way I can somewhat manage to remember the names of the people I would like to is to use Anki (spaced repetition) on a semi-daily bases. This comes down to what others would consider a crazy amount of work, but at least it is somewhat successful. It frustrating for the long tail of people I might not meet again, but where it still would be really helpful to know their name. Where I really fail is situations that don't allow me to write down names shortly after they were used, which is often the case in introduction rounds. Trying to constantly repeat all names in my head means I'm missing on the other stuff people say.
As you point out, in some cases it's better to just accept that you're not good with names if the effort of trying to deal with it is affecting your other interaction with people. A former neighbour of mine was so bad at names and faces that she wouldn't recognise you in the street and walk right past you, making it seem like she was blanking you. Once I experienced that I realised that simply not being able to remember someone's name wasn't really such a killer, a lot of the time you can cover it up. Also, while you may feel bad about it, it's possible the other person has barely even noticed it, or if they have will forget about it 30 seconds later.
For me it just required being "consciously conscious" (if that makes sense), motivated by the thought of the inevitable embarrassment if I didn't remember their name.
I started out by anticipating that somebody would tell me their name at some point and repeating it in my head a few times when I heard it in the conversation. It helps to round off the conversation with "thanks $NAME, pleasure meeting you." so the name is something that gets used and isn't a bit of stale trivia. After the exchange I'd consciously go through what their name was and what they said, trying to attach associations to it. You've got to give them some space in your head. It was kind of a ritual I'd do, like how before I go out I do the "wallet, keys, phone" thing. Now I just do it automatically because of all the repetition.
Honestly I think the biggest things are:
- remembering to make the effort
- the anticipation of hearing it, and
- using of the name
Along with the sibling comments I'd mention that being afraid to forget someone's name doesn't help you remember it. Be accepting of the limits of your memory and don't be afraid to ask again. If you're concerned they may be offended then being open about ADHD is always a fair mitigating tactic.
Make up a mnemonic that makes fun of them in a really horrible way and don't tell them it. The more offensive, the better it will stick in your brain because it's so bad.
Deliberately reuse their name in that first conversation and trust you can recall it. It takes discipline and practice I.e at the end of the day, picture the new people you met and repeat their names when you get home. That works about 80% for me
Mine is to associate them with a famous person or character of the same name, and make a point of refreshing their name in my mind soon after meeting, and then more later. it’s not perfect but name retention went through the roof for me.
I remember the book saying something like "a person's name is the most beautiful sound in the world to them." The book may say to say their name back to them (I don't remember right now), but that's not what I took away from it. It reminded me of when people would make fun of my name (first and/or last) or bring up someone famous who has the same first ("Donald Duck") or last name ("are you related Joan Rivers?"), or someone famous who sounds like my first and last name put together (Doc Rivers), and I never thought it was funny. When I see people make fun of other people's names, the recipient never seemed to enjoy it either.
My full first name is Joshua, but when I was a kid everyone would just call me Josh. That was until 5th grade, when another Josh joined my class, and whose last name just happened to come right before mine in the roll call. I loathed that he "stole" my name and (in my head) made me sound like the repeat, so from that point on I decided that I would be Joshua because it sounded "fancier" to me. Years later, my choir teacher would sing that old "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho" song whenever he passed me in the hallways, which always made me laugh.
I've got a life long friend who's full first name is Josh, derived from the Japanese name Yosh. People often try to call him Joshua and it annoys the hell out of him.
You’re for sure right about the name thing. It’s so hard to resist commenting on names for a lot of people, I think, due to the extreme asymmetry of novelty. When you meet someone named Michael Jackson, that’s such novel information to you: “there’s a guy right here in front of me who is named the same thing as a famous musician!” Meanwhile, from Michael’s perspective, they’ve been named Michael Jackson and getting comments and jokes about it near-daily for 35 years - and it’s really a boring non-story - they’re named after their grandfather, their parents didn’t care about the other Michael Jackson one way or the other, and they themselves also neither like or hate MJ.
This is like when you're working retail and the scanner glitches or the barcode isn't registered and the customer says "I guess that one's free then!" and you have to say "ha ha, very droll sir" as if you didn't hear that same joke yesterday.
I had a friend named Michael Jackson who went by a different first name. I didn't even know until several years later when he showed a group of us his drivers license and accidentally outed himself.
Yeah, you also have to remember that someone has heard every possible joke about their name and their appearance a million times.
I do think Dale Carnegie overemphasizes the importance of saying people's names, and in fact saying people's names in conversation often sounds forced and manipulative, but maybe that's just a cultural shift over the past century.
I've got the same last name as a sitcom character from the 1980s. I used to get so tired of people pointing that out. Luckily nobody really remembers the show anymore, let alone the character.
But, yeah, it usually sets off my spidey sense when somebody keeps using my first name in conversation. It's just seems weirdly unnecessary, so it makes me wonder why they're doing it.
I don’t have any problem with my name, and it feels manipulative and overfamiliar and I assume someone’s trying to Carnegie me into something if they use it.
If I'm trying to remember someone's name, I'll say it at the end of interactions more often than I normally would and make some kind of memory device out of it. If it's someone at a place I frequent, I'll add a location based reminder. It's a little much, but I've found that people, more often than not, do like being called by their names.
Oh, no, please don't. Don't use my name before we are actual friends with actual business in remembering each others names. There's very few things that more strongly put me on alert against a person than them mentioning my name to me.
That would be quite a feat, given that Mr. Carnegie was born in the 1800's and died over 70 years ago.
I'm convinced that 99% of the people who criticize or even just talk about that book have never actually read it, and have zero idea what they're talking about. It's just in that Ayn Rand bucket of books that people talk about, because they see other people getting likes and upvotes for it.
Ayn Rand was a pretty terrible person. But you’re right that there are some interesting ideas in her books. Howard Roark in The Fountainhead is exceedingly interesting as a person living genuinely without much regard for societal norms and expectations. There’s some weird stuff in that book, but Howard Roark is very interesting. A trimmed down version of The Fountainhead would be much better received, I think. (It’s over 700 pages and has some odd and unnecessary scenes where some of Ayn Rand’s less-than-great views probably shine through. It would also just benefit from some good editing.)
Agreed. Although speaking from the memory, the chapter on keeping wife happy is best not taken literally in modern day and age. It dated considerably, considering how women are way independent nowadays, even if at the time it was relevant.
Yeah, that's what I meant by it being outdated. He uses a lot of examples and aphorisms from the 1930s, which sometimes come off as a little bit quaint or folksy almost 100 years later. I'll also mention that the book was written for men "influencing" other men; any reference to women in the book is usually in the context of them being objects that should be managed using the author's techniques.
That said, it also has all the self help faults. It repeats itself a lot, is full of happy anecdotes that repeat the same thing yet again, and could have fit in a chapter.
I find that I don't necessarily mind when a book repeats itself, and a good helping of anecdotes can help a point get across. Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, "I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." Trying to distill a book down to the minimum logically equivalent length is like eating the smallest possible portion of a supplement one time and then wondering why it doesn't do anything for you.
My father gave me this book when I was 12 or 13. It unlocked everything, sort of permission for my teen self to put himself out there. Years later, I've made friends all over the world, some have been in my life for more than 3 decades now, and I continue to make new ones basically by initiating a lot of conversations. I look for something to naturally lean into to start with. For example, I saw a guy in the coffee place with his work badge on so I asked, "coming or going [to work]." Kicked off a 30 min conversation about the economy (he worked at a pawn shop as it turns out and knew a lot about gold, regional poverty, etc). Saw him a couple days later and we picked right back up. The other thing I do is keep it soft focused on them, 100%, until they ask me about me. Nothing kills a conversation faster than someone with a conversational agenda, ie, an go-to opinion. Anyway, I wish more people would start random conversations - it really helps build community.
> The other thing I do is keep it soft focused on them, 100%, until they ask me about me.
This is the big one. People like to talk about themselves, and often use others' stories to segue it into something about themselves.
I realized at some point if you can avoid doing that, and instead commit yourself to investing in a person's story - ask questions, make comments, etc, they'll think the world of you and often won't even realize why.
Some of the examples are going to be corny for a young kid, but none of the core concepts are too challenging. Some fashion of the knowledge has probably already been communicated to children, it is just a codification of social interaction that not everyone has passively absorbed.
It's pretty easy to read (but disclaimer : I read the french translation) but it's still nothing more than a list of useful advices on the topic. So the prerequisite is that you have to be interested by the idea of the book in the first place. But if you are, it's nothing more than a big blog post (a good one).
To be honest, the examples stuck with me. They illustrated tons of different social interaction examples that I have seldom, if never, encountered in my life, but have plenty to learn from.
I was given this book as a shy kid. I've read it multiple times. It really should be titled, "How To be a Decent Human". Show genuine interest in everyone you come across, and everyone's day ends up much better. I'm still bad at remembering names no matter how many tricks I use, but I'm really good at remembering other people's stories and interests. I also learned that so many people have amazing stories to share, and are just waiting for someone to ask.
If being friendly with people is manipulation then I don't really know what to say. I'm more likely to help someone if they are not being a jerk and vice versa.
I was in the same boat as you before I heard enough good things about it that I checked it out. After all, if it was really bad, I would be able to tell as much and stop reading it, nothing lost.
I can confirm it's really good. It's not manipulative at all. The book can large be summed up as "if you want other people to care about you and your desires, you need to care about them and theirs and SHOW them that this is the case: here's how."
> "if you want other people to care about you and your desires, you need to care about them and theirs and SHOW them that this is the case: here's how."
Like other skills it can absolutely be cultivated.
Even if one doesn't "naturally" care about others, it's also true that even from a totally selfish perspective it still kind of pays dividends to be a good person, be concerned with the welfare of the people around you, and build interpersonal connections.
There's limits to that, for sure. There are a number of biological bases for empathy. And being biological, it stands to reason that different people will have different capacities. But, it also certainly feels like a skill.
Here's another angle. A lot of people, perhaps maybe a lot of engineer types, struggle with empathy because the needs and wants of others just feel like a confusing sea of infinite possibilities. But here's a trick. At any given moment, any given human being is probably just trying to fill one of the needs on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Most people like watching movies or reading books. Other people are the main character of their own life, and I think you can learn to enjoy learning about them.
Only if you think of it that way -- making every human interaction purely transactional.
Conversely, there's something I've used as a guiding principle for a while now that isn't quite the same, but in the same direction: to receive help, be helpful.
Both of these also fall under the greater umbrella of "treat others as you would like to be treated".
I take your point, but aren't most social interactions technically manipulative through this lens?
If you wear nice clothes and exercise, then are you just trying to manipulate people into thinking you have taste and are attractive?
If you work hard at your job and are responsive to your boss's requests, then are you just manipulating them into thinking you're a good worker and giving you a raise?
These tools can certainly be misused (see shitty salespeople), but I don't "attempting to convince others that you are cool and likable" is problematic and manipulative.
Just don't fake it. That's the part people have a problem with. I just read it as "if you want people to care about your shit, then it's only fair you care about theirs first."
No. Being nice to people such that they want to like you (of their own free will) is not manipulative.
Being nice so that people might like you is not manipulative. It’s pointing out that if you’re nice to other people, then other people will tend to like you. It’s something we teach to toddlers.
Yeah, I don't think you'll find it a red-pill kind of book at all. I know what you mean about books like The 48 Laws of Power feeling like the world is 100% zero sum, so everything is about dominating or outplaying people.
How to Win Friends and Influence People is very much focused on win-win. There is an agenda to make friends and influence people, as you'd guess from the title, but the strategies are about taking a genuine interest in people and making them feel good.
It's almost 100 years old, so the style is kind of hokey, and only about half the advice resonated with me, but there are 3-4 lessons that had a major impact on me.
I think it's quite clearly the second part of the title. If it was just "How to Win Friends" it might be something more people don't dismiss just based on the title.
"... and Influence People" makes it sound like that's the purpose of befriending someone, i.e. getting them to do what you want, or to do something for you.
It seems to be a rather brilliant piece of marketing to put that phrase in the title. It raises curiosity in a way that a generic "make friends" does not. (The "win" is a subtle move also.)
Once the readers are drawn in, whether from base or nobler instincts, the book can try to influence its readers into being nice.
Only trouble is that it may push away those who are "already nice" enough to feel bad about manipulating people.
Truthfully (IIRC) the book is more about "Influencing People" than "Making Friends." But, it's about doing it in a genuine way.
I think it's puzzling that so many people here attach such a negative connotation to "influencing." I mean, my partner made me really hungry tonight when they cooked dinner and it smelled great. It influenced me. MLK influenced people. Etc. etc.
The book "Getting to Yes" covers similar terrain, from a different angle, but still targeting Win-Win, without sounding as manipulative as "influence people".
BTW, Dale Carnagey changed his name to crease a false association with Andrew Carnegie.
So there is good reason to distrust Dale and his followers.
I'm 100% with the GP - I've avoided reading the book due to the manipulative sound to the title... Ironically I have read The 48 Laws of Power, hah.
I read it though thinking "I'll bulwark myself against manipulators by understanding their tactics" whilst the "Influencing People" book just sounded like manipulative self-interest.
You've changed my mind; I'm going to read it right away.
I was in the same boat for a while, but I gave it a shot several years ago when I was doing a lot of driving every day and was powering through audiobooks. This might sound a little hyperbolic, but it actually ended up changing my life in a lot of little positive ways. For example, I used to work with a guy that got made fun of for some of his interests (nothing harsh or super hurtful, just poking fun). I was always really supportive of what he was into and asked questions about it. I wasn't trying to get anything out of it, I just remembered the book and thought it's nice to be nice. When he got married about a year into us working together, I was the only one from our job that he invited to his wedding.
> This rant about radiating happiness towards people without expecting something in return...
This was one of my main takeaways from the book. I would argue that you do get some things in return: richer relationships with the people you already know, pleasant encounters with people you may not know well, and increased enthusiasm for your own interests compounded by hearing someone else explain how enthusiastic they are about their interests.
If Books Could Kill did an episode on How to Win Friends and Influence People, it's an interesting listen. iirc the book was written by someone documenting what they learned while breaking into high society or some other class they were not a part of. So it's not so much about manipulating people but more about stroking egos and being as agreeable as possible to avoid any conflict. The podcasters make the point that it was written in the 30s when confrontation, being an individual, and sticking up for one's beliefs wasn't really possible while climbing the social ladder.
Huh, having read the book and about Dale Carnegie, I completely disagree with that take. There's plenty of stories where he does the opposite of avoiding conflict and faces it straight on - such as when he just ignores a cop's random order for him to keep his dog on a leash at the park.
I avoided the book after reading it high school and thinking along the same lines. I looked at the suggestions cynically.
A college program required I re-read it. That time, I read it as genuine suggestions of good faith actions. In that light, it was fantastic. Almost 30 years later, I still quote from it.
Your admirable openness to reconsideration reminds me of, "I could be wrong. I often am. Let's examine the facts."
> for some reason I got it in my head that it's a sort of red pilled book that teaches you how to manipulate people.
It's two sides of the same coin. Many techniques in that book are things that both genuinely kind people and manipulators do, the difference is intent. In that sense the idea of the book is a bit of a Rorschach test, although the way the author goes about it makes it pretty clear it wasn't meant to teach manipulation.
When I read the book over a decade ago, it did not feel like a red pilled book, it felt like a guide for well-intentioned people to learn how to express that more effectively. On the spectrum between "people orientation" and "task orientation", I was a task oriented person learning how to navigate personal and professional relationships more like a well-adjusted person would, and I suspect I and everyone around me was happier for it.
Makes me think that anything taken too far can be a bad thing. Pity in its raw form is an incredibly empathetic side of our human nature and can be extraordinary.
However, if pity is made a reward system for the people receiving the empathy, it can be used manipulatively. I believe CS Lewis called it "a passion for pity" (I could be wrong).
The book really helped me put things into perspective as a teenager who was habitually "angry", and "on the less adept at social side of things"[0]. Had a much healthier time growing up afterwards. Honestly, I should re-read it.
[0]: I am not formally neurodivergent, but I wouldn't be surprised if I was mildly so.
I think the association with red pill is probably because men in general read much less than they used to, and the books men do read tend to be nonfiction self-help.
However, How to Win Friends was written in an era where self-help didn’t have those connotations at all.
There is probably some deeper relationship with current reading trends and contemporary winner-takes-all society, but my impression was that the book was more about middle class aspirations e.g. being charming at a dinner party. Not some kind of Machiavellian social maneuvering like 48 laws of power (“crush your enemies completely”).
It's unfortunate that we treat all books like that as suspect. The goal isn't to manipulate people, but to connect with them! Give them what they want for a more mutually beneficial end result.
People are forgetting how to socialize but being social is more or less a straightforward formula. Sometimes people need a guide. It's not evil or manipulative.
It's a very good book, I haven't read it since I was a kid.
The title is unfortunate, and doesn't really reflect the book IMO.
It sounds like a seedy way to manipulate people and get what you want.
I think a more appropriate title would be "Treat people with kindness and decency and your life will probably be better as a result." Or "A manual for interacting with fellow humans".
I need to reread it actually.
Edit: It has been decades since I read it, but that is my recollection of it at least.
I got it in my head that it's a sort of red
pilled book that teaches you how to manipulate
people.
You're not totally wrong. It's been ages since I read it, but there are parts that feel a little transactional but also many that don't, and it never advocates dishonesty or exploitative behavior or anything like that.
(I also view the ability to influence people as independent from morality. It's like learning MMA or hacking or something. They're not inherently "good" or "bad" skills - your morality determines how you'll use them)
Ultimately I think it's great and I recommend it. It's certainly cheap enough! I'm sure there are a zillion copies on eBay for like two bucks.
It's a classic book but as many others have mentioned in comments, a lot of red pillers use this book as a Bible of sorts, so it's gotten a bit of a bad rap.
In my early adulthood I was deep into MLMs and internet marketing and this book was the Bible, but it was a bit tautological because it was assumed that everyone respected and venerated that book, so all the marketing materials (that we had to purchase of course!) referred to the book.
Indeed, the best way to get rich quick is to sell get rich quick schemes.
On another note, an equally good book that is also used for manipulation is How to argue and win every time by late lawyer Gerry Spence. The book does what it says on the tin but it's more on persuasion methods and framing, which of course can be used for nefarious purposes.
> The book does what it says on the tin but it's more on persuasion methods and framing, which of course can be used for nefarious purposes.
An interesting result of reading those books is one starts to recognize when one is being manipulated.
Just the other day a door-to-door salesman appeared at my door, and he tried a number of classic sales techniques on me. He lacked, however, some accouterments that a legitimate salesman would have, so I had to be pretty firm in saying no.
The book has an unfortunate title. It sounds transactional and manipulative. It could just as well have been named something like "How to communicate well with people."
> instead that they include the name of a person they just met in every sentence because it made that person like them more.
I've never read this book but have learned through cultural osmosis that this practice largely originated from it. I always found it rather stilted and ever since discovering where it came from I view it with a degree of suspicion. A contrasting, more generous reading is that the people who read the book and do this are trying to do more of the "win friends" part than "influence people." I'm also notoriously bad with names so I can't really blame somebody for perhaps trying to use mine verbally to commit it to memory :-).
I've seen many people express the same sentiments about this book.
"The title made it seem shady and underhanded and manipulative. But then I read it and it just says to be a genuinely nice person with no agenda. Everyone likes to be friends with that kind of person."
I think that's why people gravitate towards friendly dogs. Dogs have no deception in their intent, and they communicate it physically well before you reach them.
Animals in general are much more honest than people. They might sometimes engage in minor deceptions (although I sometimes wonder how much of that is projection based on our perceptions of their intentions), but they always make it clear where you stand with them. An animal will never pretend to like you to your face if they actually don't. Obviously it can be useful for humans to be able to deceive like this (e.g. maintaining cordial professional relationships with coworkers who you might never choose to spend time with if you didn't work with them), but as someone who struggles to read social cues and gain confidence about what people actually think of me, it can get exhausting.
It is a great book. I disagree though that all modern books on this are derivatives. I haven’t read many, but The Charisma Myth is a great book on human interactions, that I believe is very novel in its content and approach
Maybe a lot of the books do cover some of the same content, but that’s probably because human nature hasn’t changed much since the 30s, when Carnegie published his book
I haven't read the book but I always try to incorporate people's names into many sentences when they are a new acquaintance as it forces me to remember their name.
Read the book. It's good. I have almost finished it and the biggest criticisms you could make of it, IMO, are "this is all just common sense!" or that the techniques, which are all essentially about treating people well and trying to understand their perspectives, could be abused by unscrupulous people.
The idea that the teachings could be misused frankly says more about the cynicism of the book's critics than the actual content of the book.
If you enjoy it, I would recommend picking through a lot of the classic Self Help books. They were popular for a reason! Wayne Dyer is a good read, Tony Robbins books are usually great (whatever you think of the author), even the much maligned Seven Habits is a really great book. There's even some pretty decent male-oriented stuff out there, like Iron John, Fire in the Belly, and "King, Warrior, Magician, Lover". Pyscho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz even inspired a Dali painting.
I think you're right to have been uneasy at the title because it's so capitalist in the framing. "Win" friends sounds capitalist, while "influence people" sounds a lot like the vapid propaganda networks we interact with every day
You may be confusing this book with the 48 Laws of Power which is absolutely a book no one on hackernews should read because we have enough people in the tech industry scheming to get the upper hand on society as is.
"Manipulation" is a negative form of influence. You can influence people positivly and you can influence people negativly. It's possible to alter peoples behaviour by influencing them in a positive way (for example: Leading by example), in fact, this is the job of any good leader.
Changing peoples behaviours isn't always the negative form of manipulation.
"Machiavellian" is probably a better term for a book that describes how to manipulate people (for your own benefit).
I don't think a red pilled book would teach you how to manipulate people. I think it would be an attempt to manipulate you towards a specific (red pilled) view of the world.
This rant about radiating happiness towards people without expecting something in return...
The narrator explicitly says he gets something in return though. I think it's important to understand that seemingly charitable acts are never 100% altruistic, and while that's not necessarily a moral judgement, it is still important to understand people's motivations for doing things.
As long as you’re open to their motivation being “it makes them feel good” or “they like making other people happy.” The cynical view is that everyone is fundamentally deeply selfish.
If you go deep enough, you can convince yourself of that, but you lose what Carnegie talks about. You create your own experience of other people by carrying assumptions like that.
It’s been a while since I read it, but I don’t remember it being particularly preachy about why you’d want to make friends or influence people - whether you were doing so out of some nefarious manipulative reason, or out of the genuine human goodness of your heart - I think it’s more just about how to do so.
And the ‘how’ generally revolves around just being nice to people - being kind, taking care, noticing, being generous and observant and engaging. The whole idea is that you are good to them, which means they’ll be good to you.
All of which I was already intimately familiar with - I actually don’t think I read anything new in that book, it all seemed like pretty standard stuff… but then again there will always be stuff that seems obvious to you, and it a revelation to others.
I certainly think you could do much worse than treating others according to how that book instructs.
Strongly disagree with this sentiment. Influence can have a lot of sources, from institutional authority to simply being persuasive, which is distinct from manipulation.
In this context influence and persuasion are being used interchangeably, but persuasion is the act of winning someone over to your point of view, so they understand the topic as you do. It respects their autonomy and acknowledges that people can change their mind when presented with different perspectives. Oftentimes, being likeable (or at least respectable) is a prerequisite for getting someone to listen to you in the first place, so it's a central pillar to being influential.
Manipulation on the other hand, doesn't respect someone's autonomy. It might involve deception, threats, coercion, etc, but it ultimately aims to make someone do something that they don't want to do.
If you're getting a little kid to eat his dinner for instance, persuasion might appeal to his motivations (e.g. having more energy to run faster), while manipulation might look like saying not eating would make his mom sad (guilt tripping), or that he wouldn't get to play with his favorite toy (threat).
I'd argue that {someone who is good at getting desired outcomes} is going to have a toolbox of carrots, sticks, and other things and I think sometimes you are going to be 100% ethically happy with how a situation went and sometimes you are going to feel some conflict between your values. [1]
I'm not sure where the line between "manipulation" and "persuasion" is exactly but certainly a person's intent and how they think about themselves and other people has something to do with it. There are many feats that I can do today with ease that my evil twin coveted a few years ago and just couldn't do because he had a bad attitude.
I think that’s exactly what they’re saying. Influence doesn’t have to be manipulative, but it sure can be. Here’s the difference:
Influence for influence sake is selfishly motivated. Doing something charitable garners influence. Influence is a side-effect and not the intended goal—unless it is, and then it’s manipulation.
The fact is correct that the word influence is a euphemism for manipulation. The very fact that people are confused about this is case-in-point on the subtlety of the notion.
Surely you can see that your statements contradict each other.
> Influence for influence sake is selfishly motivated.
Hard disagree. It certainly can be, but doesn’t have to be. A person can be a positive influence for no other reason than they feel like it’s a good thing to do. You could influence your coworkers to be better engineers and not gain anything from it.
I mean, we could retreat to the “oh you feel good about it, so it’s still selfish” stance, but that’s uninteresting.
> But if you read a book about influencing people and suddenly start complimenting people’s hair, time for some introspection.
The book's also apparently about winning friends, as well. And the excerpt above seems to be about getting better at being nice to people without an agenda.
I think this is a very subjective matter and depends on how negatively connoted someone's perception of the word 'manipulate' is. By your definition, I would consider 'studying/learning' also a form of manipulation.
The idea is to have genuine compassion without any agenda, actually. Or on a deeper level, just acknowledge people exist, and let them know that their existence is noticed.
> The whole “you could only possibly pretend to care about other people” response to the book is vaguely psychopathic.
I prefer to interpret it charitably: the line between influence and manipulation can be pretty fuzzy, and some people come to a conclusion of, basically, "don't do it at all because it's always selfish."
I think it's a flawed view because it's impossible to go through life not influencing anyone and not wanting anything from anyone, so you may as well try to do it in a way that is generally win-win or at least not win-lose.
I think the most charitable interpretation would be that people expressing that view are deeply self-conscious. They are afraid if they followed the advice in the book, they might be perceived as manipulative and they want to avoid that possibility. They hide from that fear by insisting that it actually must be manipulative.
Outside of that, I can only see less charitable interpretations. e.g. The idea that the only reason someone could ever compliment another person is to manipulate them says either that the person holding the idea literally can’t imagine interacting positively with someone for non-selfish reasons (psychopathy) or that they hold such low opinion of the rest of humanity that they believe no one else could (misanthropy).
This is a very important part of learning how to have real conversations with people.
There is too much bad advice about using tricks or hacks to try to start friendly conversations with people. It’s refreshing to see someone learning that a key to healthy conversation is having selfless motives.
Something surprising about How to Win Friends and Influence People is that it’s not as manipulative as the title suggests. A key theme of the book is that you need to be genuine in your interactions. You can’t pretend to be interested in what other people say, you have to actually approach the conversation with interest.
People will see through hidden agendas and ulterior motives. The bad social advice tries to use too many tricks and hacks to formulate a set of interactions that sound good when you’re reading about them but have the wrong effect when you go into the world and interact with other people with a hidden agenda.
This is why I caution against all of the conversation hacks that are recommended, like coming up with excuses to ask someone for a favor (that you don’t really need) as a way to get them into a conversation or pretending to be interested in their life story when you’re only interested in getting someone to talk to you. Others will recognize when there are hidden agendas. It doesn’t set you up for success.
I once heard "creepiness" defined as "becoming invested in advance in a particular outcome to a social interaction".
In that sense, trying tricks in order to have a "successful conversation" will always fail so long as you are emotionally invested in advance in the conversation being "successful".
It's far better to be genuine and accept that you have only so much control over how things will go.
It's ok to sort of passively want things, everyone does, but the real problem is when you try to try to subtly force an outcome that isn't natural. That's when people get uncomfortable.
If a stranger is light and friendly and asks to hang out, no problem. If they start getting subtly frustrated about your response, your spider sense goes off.
I always try to compliment people if I see they're taking a lot of pride in their work or something they're doing. I was at a conference where the staff each had a coffee/tea/sweets station to maintain. I noticed one woman cleaning and polishing and being super fastidious. I wanted to compliment her, but then I debated with myself if that would be patronizing somehow. Finally, I decided to tell her she had a very nice station, and she just beamed ear-to-ear in response.
Since everyone else is sharing their experiences with this book here is mine:
Reading this books was a huge turning point for me as someone with diagnosed mild Autism. I think a lot of the things in this books are fairly obvious to non neuro-divergent folks. But for me, it was like a manual on how to handle myself in social situations, a thing that was mysterious and frustrating to me before. I wouldn't say I am now some sort of socialite, but I am far from the days of being being excluded from basically every social group I attempted to be part of.
That book is very good. However, for some (including me at some point), it can be a bit advanced
I highly recommend the book The Charisma Myth, it covers a lot of the same topics, including very good exercises, to help understand and develop human interactions in general
Personally, it helped me be able to get into, the situations that the first book assumes the reader is already in, or comfortable with (like talking to strangers)
> ... OP is giving people genuine compliments without any particular agenda.
It takes some effort to be good at doing this, if people aren't used to getting any kind of compliment then it can land as super awkward.
(hint: avoid commenting on peoples physical appearance directly, always clothing, or hair, make-up, jewellery/watches -- or ideally how they handle themselves)
The "trick" is confidence, knowing in yourself that you mean well and, if challenged doubling down with a broad genuine smile, don't try to half-ass the smile because it makes things awkward-er.
The other thing is that compliments can be broad, but criticisms have to be very specific.
Once you get the hang of it you can make peoples days genuinely better effortlessly, by just saying the positive thing that you're thinking.
"How are you today" → "Better, now you're here" -- Isn't cheesy, if you mean it.
It's interesting also to notice cultural differences like when I moved here I started to receive compliments about my clothes shoes and stuff like that and in my country people prefer to do compliments on people's physical appearance or personality.
> "How are you today" → "Better, now you're here" -- Isn't cheesy, if you mean it.
To me that's super creepy. It's like a cheap pickup line. It's only something I'd say to someone I'd been dating a while.
> avoid commenting on peoples physical appearance directly
Gym bros love compliments on their muscles. It has to come across as "bro to bro" and not with a "broad genuine smile" (as a gay guy, you'd come across pretty gay IMHO lol)
>> Once you get the hang of it you can make peoples days genuinely better effortlessly, by just saying the positive thing that you're thinking.
>> "How are you today" → "Better, now you're here" -- Isn't cheesy, if you mean it.
> To me that's super creepy. It's like a cheap pickup line. It's only something I'd say to someone I'd been dating a while.
Really, if the person actually means it? I think that's the key point.
I think that particular line would come off as creepy pickup line if it came from a stranger, who couldn't possibly mean it except in the most superficial way. I don't think it would come off that way if your relationship with the person is such that it's plausibly true and they don't overuse it.
On that last point, if you actually want to do something like this, I feel like you'd have to have familiar and confidence to use hundreds of phrases like that, for different situations. I'm reminded of an anecdote I read about Ronald Reagan: he was apparently known as being good with little quips and jokes. He apparently spent a huge amount of time working on them so he'd have something ready at any given time.
Full disclosure: I'm bad at complements and do none of this stuff.
Are the examples so outdated? I see multiples comments/reviews (here and on the Internet) about the book not being made for modern people/society, but what you pasted looks fine to me.
Sure, there may be cultures where making comments of people out of the blue might not be seen as normal, but almost everywhere I've gone in this world allows for comments like these.
I haven't read it, but I find it hard to believe that good social advice would go out of date. Our brains haven't changed on a fundamental level since then.
If anything, modern social interaction has diverged from what is good for us and what we really want.
Complimenting people was my college party trick. I'd be a little inebriated and I'd just compliment people/say friendly vibey things. "That's a cool hat" or "that song is awesome" or "where did you get that??"
Your comment reminds me of advice I once got as a young person: small talk is an invitation to talk, and if you don't get traction with small talk, you're not ever going to get deep talk. So, hopefully the friendly vibe was a good start to build on!
„We use the unrevised edition because we believe the revised edition (the revisions were done by Carnegie’s relatives after his death) forcefully makes the language of the book gender neutral and politically correct and takes away from the originality of the work.
They even went so far ahead as to make quotes from other people gender neutral and politically correct.
Most of the revised editions available today do not include Parts 5 and 6. Even the included parts see many paragraphs and examples omitted.
In many places, characters in examples who were male have been edited to be female.
It appears that Carnegie’s relatives decided to heavily excise content and highhandedly edit the work to match their own sensibilities and what appears to the webmasters as a feminist agenda.
The unrevised edition as on this website is complete without exclusions and edits.
We believe this text written by Dale Carnegie himself while he was alive without the alterations made by his relatives after his death is more readable, complete, and enjoyable.“
How to Win Friends and Influence People: Unrevised Version
> One of the things I like about this is that OP is giving people genuine compliments without any particular agenda.
IMHO that is as fake as a car salesman. Mature, cultured people will say thank you and think "what a nuisance". I prefer being open about my motives. Smart people appreciate truth over compliments. And if the dumb/immature get offended, good riddance.
I used to be a big fan of HtWFaIP, but eventually I realized it's not healthy.
> Mature, cultured people will say thank you and think "what a nuisance".
It seems like the word you're looking for is "conceited", and it's a great candidate for traits one should attempt to extinguish in themselves.
If your true motives aren't kind and aren't requested, then those are great candidates to be kept inside, especially during random interactions in third-spaces
You misunderstand. You can't claim to speak for all "mature" & "cultured" people. That is, who gets to judge those who don't conform to one specific observed / inferred worldview, aren't "cultured" or "mature" enough? (if it wasn't clear, this question isn't an invitation to debate).
> Let's expand on it a bit. Is the world a mirror to street salespeople? Is the world a mirror to stalkers? To sociopaths?
I've never read that book -- no reason; just mostly prefer fiction, and never got around to it.
The funny thing is that I make a habit of doing what Carnegie describes here, and for the same reasons.
As I've gotten older -- I'm 56 -- I also realize I look like the archetypal middle-aged straight white dude, and my cohort doesn't have a GREAT reputation across the board, so I feel like I should be even MORE careful about the energy I put out into the world. And nothing lifts _my_ mood better than being nice to somebody else.
What's next, do you think parents providing for their children is an agenda, merely so the parents can feel good about that glowing feeling about being a good parent?
Yes it is, and the narrator told us so. There's no need to put words in my mouth; I agree with the narrator that you can want to do a good thing for many reasons. In this case, the narrator tells us why he did what he did.
I'm ctrl+F'ing for "agenda" on the post and getting zero results, sorry. I don't need to "put words in your mouth", you are literally the one who used the word "agenda".
You don't seem to understand what the word "agenda" means in social interactions. It has a negative connotation, it is an ulterior motive, something you are hiding from the other person because they wouldn't like it.
That doesn't apply to normal positive-sum social interactions. Again, see my example about parents and children.
You are misunderstanding the meaning and usage of the word "agenda".
As a society, we have a certain tendency to feel sorry for ourselves. If we have “social anxiety”, we like to give it a quasi-medical diagnosis. We rarely suspect that we may actually have something bad in our intentions. Many forms of anxiety are actually rooted in impure motives, especially when there is another part of us that conflicts with that motive. The conflict may result from a shred of conscience that enters into a tug-of-war with our impure motives. It could be rooted in a cognitive denial of those motives, as denial of truth can manifest in subconscious turbulence and nervous expressions of emotional energy. Perhaps we want to indulge those impure motives, but lack the chutzpah to do so, creating internal tension (the chutzpah would produce its own psychic anguish). Perhaps we’re selfish, but fail to recognize it. These sorts of things cause turmoil in the soul that can create anxiety.
Think of the “nice guy”. “Nice Guys” are some of the biggest assholes around. They’re two-faced schemers. A “Nice Guy’s niceness” is instrumental; he will be “nice” to a woman he finds attractive, because he has already imagined in his head that this will ingratiate him with her. He has already created a ledger in his mind: “if I am nice to this woman, then she is in my debt and now owes me the desired approval in return”. But the moment this woman fails to conform to the expectations of this “Nice Guy” is the moment his comes for his pound of flesh. You see the mask drop and his nastiness surface. The anxiety is rooted, among other things, in a failure to recognize the humanity and rights of this woman. For him, her meaning and her being are totally exhausted by his sexual desire, perhaps because he sees his own meaning exhausted by her approval, hence the apparent magnitude and terrific importance of her judgement. He wants to dominate by force or by manipulation rather than allow a woman to choose to surrender voluntarily, because she has determined this is good.
Magnanimity is one of the high virtues of classical virtue ethics - a sort of crowning culmination of them - and one of the features of magnanimous people is that they are at ease around others. It is well worth returning to this virtue ethics, because it does enlighten us about the nature of moral excellence.
Love is willing the genuine good of the other, unselfishly. There is no fear in someone of perfect love.
Which is why you should only give warranted compliments.
You're right, telling someone bald that they have a great head of hair is not going to work well.
Fortunately, virtually everyone has something you can compliment them about. Even if they're a surly old frumpy shopkeeper, maybe they keep their store super clean and organized. Maybe you're impressed by their loyalty to serving the community for so many decades.
Never say anything that isn't genuine. Fortunately, most people have qualities you can be genuine about.
My approach to self-transformation these days is to take on long term projects (months, years) aimed at changing habits from the outside in and inside out simultaneously.
If I was interested in praising people I would task myself to look at people when I am out in the field and find some kind of praise I could give them. Maybe I give them this praise maybe I don't. Doing this over time I will find it bubbles out of me, the desire to give praise and the words to say comes more and more frequently and quickly and it will come out increasingly. Whether the feeling comes spontaneously or whether you consciously plant a seed and let it grow, it comes across better than if it forced.
Lately I've been practicing deep and rapid synchronization when situations are favorable and I'd say I favor listening and observation over praise except in cases where my feeling is very strong, such as somebody really helped me. There is a long list of language patterns that somebody might read as "somebody is trying to butter me up" and in this mode I avoid them almost entirely. It is important to stay in a "I'm OK, you're OK" [1] frame no matter what happens and to have control of your microexpressions (one wince can set you back permanently) which comes not from an act of suppression but rather going into a situation feeling full and practicing radical acceptance.
I guess I should edit it to just compliments are my biggest red flag, and it's born out of experience. These people are looking for something either now or in the future, and this bullshit false niceness is simply their way of cultivating a network of people that they can use.
I'm sorry that's been your experience. I don't know where you live; and I know this can be a cultural thing.
But in America at least, it's not usually bullshit or false. It's not a means to an end. I will compliment servers and cashiers and receptionist just because it makes everyone friendlier and we all enjoy our brief interaction more than we would otherwise. It would be nonsensical to say I was using them. For what?
I am aware that there are cultures out there where nobody does this and it is viewed highly with suspicion. It just makes me very happy I don't live in one of those places.
I have found three strange and unexpected avenues for interacting with people.
1. Be on a quest. Yes a quest. I was trying to buy an old metal key as a gift for a friend. I wanted to find someone who sold sheep's milk (for making cheese). If you are on a quest it gives a context for an interaction. You both have something to talk about and it you both have an out: the answer. People almost always help you with a quest. And this ties with #2
2. Need help. I am lost. I am trying to get to the airport and I don't have much money. I trying to find a good book store. My car won't start. etc. I don't speak English.
3. Humor. Not telling jokes, just have a sense of humor about yourself, your common situation, the world in general.
I especially like being on a quest. Once I asked someone about the key, they sent me another place, they sent me another place and finally I found one. It was a blast. Everyone was helpful. I ended up telling people how I got there, why I was searching etc.
You've so perfectly explained something that I picked up from my father. He always seemed to have a way to get special treatment from people. I always explained it in a very Australian way; "he's a bit of a character" and figured it was tied to his gift of "telling a yarn".
But reflecting on it now, it's because he was always on a quest.
I did a scavenger hunt (challenge hunt?) in Seattle (hosted by a friend of a friend). Many of the challenges involved interacting with other humans (dance with a stranger, buy someone you don't know a shot, give someone you don't know a rose, etc)
It was so fun. I've never met so many people before. But it struck me how excited everyone was to help out on my quest. Eager, even. I was so nervous to talk to people, but suddenly, having a sheet of paper gave me super powers.
Highly recommend having a quest. People love a quest.
I've seen this a lot with travel youtubers where they want to show genuine interaction with the population rather than generic tourist stuff. So they set arbitrary restrictions like not using maps, or avoiding PT and trying to hitchhike to destinations. Pretty much everyone everywhere is willing to help how they can and have a conversation in the meantime.
Having some obvious goal like "I'm a tourist and I'm lost" immediately cuts past the "Is this person a scammer/beggar?" you normally think when a stranger walks up to you.
There's a video on YT that basically proposes the idea that Ewan McGregor's & Charlie Boorman's "Long Way Round" series has been the last "true" travel documentary made for TV. I thought that was a bit silly initially, but after watching it(the YT video) I can't shake the feeling that I agree with the premise.
Basically - in "Long Way Round" Ewan and Charlie take two motorcycles and they ride them from the UK east, going through Russia and finishing in the States. But even though they have support crew of two cars following them with extra equipment, it doesn't change the fact that back when it was filmed, they didn't have internet connected phones with them. The maps of Syberia were innacurate, they didn't speak any Russian, they were driving through really difficult terrain and you could "feel" that they were far from civilization - contact with family was infrequent,they relied on kindness of strangers a lot because there was no other way to continue. There was a lot of communicating with hand signs and pointing.
Compare that to their later "Long way up" where they rode up through South America - at that point they both had mobile phones with maps and instant translators - they were never lost, and even in the middle of absolute nowhere they would walk up to a local and just use their phone to translate. They had video calls with their families practically every night. Even though they were in some places no less remote than Syberian roads, it didn't feel remote in the same way.
And yes, I know there are YT travellers who try to artificially follow the same kind of philosophy - no translators, no maps, just going in raw so to speak. But the world has changed. Even if they don't use phones, the locals do even in the middle of the amazonian jungle. And it is amazing how connected humanity is, but there is certainly an era that has ended for all of us.
I really recommend this video, whether you have seen Charlie's and Ewan's adventures or not:
I read something a while ago that talked about this. Friendships are solidified mostly by asking for help. It shows the other person that you trust them and people are often honored that you would do so. Even if the request is small.
So being on a quest is a great approach! You often need help and are in a discovery phase where you need to interact with people. Even if the interactions don’t go anywhere most of the time.
there's a famous quote- two things you must not look for: love and death; they will find you when the time comes. so basically just do genuine stuff and it will happen. OP also hints at it when they say it's about doing your hobbies with other people. it's the same with the quest stuff imo. OTOH the PUA-types have the wrong approach because it's the opposite to this. they turn relationships into a goal and look for artificial tricks to make it happen
In my travels, I've found old grandmas as the best people to interact with. In most cultures, those poor old ladies are mostly ignored anyways, so they're always happy to talk to you even if they don't speak your language. Of course they can spot fake a mile away, so be genuine. I was traveling in Italy and had a blast "chatting" with grannies on the streets. Same in Armenia. And Belgium.
I've been talking to so many grandmas these days, and it's mostly them approaching me. It's usually something sweet and makes my day, but sometimes, it's heartbreaking to hear the troubles they've been dealing with alone because there's no family to rely on.
I think talking to the elderly is a great way to learn how society has shaped people's lives over many decades.
I think the quest thing works because it gives you both roles: you are the Quester, they are the Helper. Both of you know what's expected of you. You are supposed to ask questions passionately, they are supposed to answer helpfully. Random gym conversations are hard because your roles are undefined ("How am I supposed to react?"). In general, many shy people do better socially when they can adopt a role. A shy person might become un-shy when they work as a barista, because they have a role ("barista"). And on a grand scale, a celebrity singer might become un-shy on stage, because she has a role ("singer").
Around 15 years ago I took on the challenge to start a conversation with random people to break through this barrier and train this muscle. What I started with was to chit chat with those I had already established an interaction. For example at the Starbucks I would say something to barista. Those interactions were short but broke the ice.
Later I went for random people in the street and that was quite awkward. There was simply not much I could work with (what I thought at the time).
This turned out to become a low stake effort to improve my social anxiety. Helped me build humour around it and eventually become comfortable
Fast forward to today, I can literally talk about anything to anyone. The main pattern I follow is to break the pattern and make a joke, be sarcastic respectfully or give a compliment. No permission just something they don't expect. Almost works all the time. It helps with confidence and also makes you realise its all in your head.
This is such good advice! The expectation at Starbucks is that the exchange with the barista is super short anyway so you really can’t go wrong. Instead of saying “I’ll have the Danish”, try to turn it into a two-sentence exchange initially (eventually you shoot for a 3 sentence exchange with any stranger you interact with), say “which do you think is better, the danish or the croissant”?
For anyone that asks how you are doing, answer honestly! Or with something slightly unexpected or easy for the other person to engage with or laugh at.
“Hi, How are you?”
“Well I woke up this morning and stepped on my dog’s tail by accident. He was not happy with me, but we’re all good now - how about you?”
The issue for me is that I seem to really "page out" parts of my life that aren't relevant to the situation I'm in. If I were to sincerely answer the "how are you" question, I would have to pause for ten or twenty seconds to think about how I am, which obviously doesn't fit the interaction. Any tips on how to avoid this? I'm a chronic over-preparer and I've tried to equip myself with answers to every conceivable question and that's just exhausting, so I've wanted to avoid that.
I think the answer is practice, for a few reasons. One is obvious: conversation is a skill. Just like a novice chess player can spend 5 seconds figuring out which squares the knight can move to while an intermediate player spots a fork to force trading a strong bishop or exposing an overworked queen, exposure to similar situations rewires your brain to work faster in those situations.
Another reason, though, is to me one of the main benefits of social interaction in the first place: The brain rewiring also makes you think about what other people would think, want to hear, say to you, etc, even when they're not around. That sure can give you better answers in conversations, but more importantly, I think this is just genuinely a nice way for the brain to be. In the same way that dogs are happy playing fetch, humans are happy living with other people in mind. Maybe because it feels like not everything is your responsibility, or that you worry less about what you should be doing, or that you look forward to laughing about disasters later... I'm not entirely sure. Whatever it is, it's nicer than the alternative.
I may suggest to answer genuinely about how you are instead of "how is life" — yes, my life is hard because of many ongoing family health issues, but I might still be OK in the moment. Or sleepy from a bad night of sleep, or hungry because I skipped breakfast. Or happy because I got my favourite parking spot. Or had a nice meal....
Say "I'm about to have coffee, so that's good :-) "
Alternately, instead of trying to prepare for every possible answer, you can constrain the possible replies significantly by being the one who asks the question in the first place. "How's your day going?" is only ever going to get some variation of "good" or "bad". You only need to respond with "great to hear that", or "sorrt to hear that, hope it improves soon". That's it.
Great advice but that may not always work in Ireland. The expected answer is “grand” or something similarly neutral and succinct. The asker may not even stop to listen to your answer so you won’t have enough time to provide a decent response.
Your suggestion would work when both people are in the same place for some time, e.g., waiting in line for a coffee, or for a meeting to start or for a lift (elevator) to arrive, etc.
I sometimes go to concerts by myself and like to arrive early to catch the support act. There’s usually a gap of at least half an hour before the main act comes on stage and I make a point of looking around for other people who aren’t on their phone so I can start a conversation. In that situation, I already know we have something in common.
I'm not saying this is you, but i've also ran into a lot of those people, almost always men, often in their late 30s or 40s, going around talking to everyone cracking jokes and thinking they're the live of the party, while everyone else is just silently annoyed by them.
While it is possible to overdo everything and being "too jolly" can come across as insincere, despite being raised in a culture where almost no one talks to strangers I was never annoyed by this. Not even once.
I don't doubt people that are, exist, but I highly doubt it's a high percentage and certainly very far from "everyone else".
I think this is a particular character in a particular context you're thinking about, but—aside from overtly bombastic loud people—if he can't tell that people are annoyed, how can you?
> thinking they're the live of the party, while everyone else is just silently annoyed by them.
Not saying this is you, but my impression is that people who lean into silent annoyance also depend on passive aggression, fueling it with resentment that they aren't as outgoing (or whatever) and deserve the attention instead, and those who are especially anxious and/or neurotic imagine that everyone else shares the apparent negative feelings, effectively acting as they imagine everyone else wants them to act. People have a hard time letting themselves just vibe and roll with it if they think it might make them less appealing by association. Maybe they are the life of the party, since it's not much of one if people can't pump some life into it
> There was simply not much I could work with (what I thought at the time).
This has been my big blocker keeping me from talking to most people. I feel quite adept socially once I get going, but I can usually only get to that point through mutual interests or a solid conversation topic to kick off from.
I seem to usually psyche myself out because most starters feels too fake or unsubstantive. Compliments make sense, but could you elaborate on "break the pattern and make a joke, be sarcastic respectfully"?
I'll share my secret. Rather than trying to initiate a conversation with others, make it easy to initiate a conversation with you.
I started wearing hats outdoors to keep the sun off my balding head (I've had a sunburn up there, and I don't want another one), and the hat I had around to wear was from when I went as Ash Ketchum for Halloween. Or even just looking at my hat and smiling...
Nearly everywhere I go with that hat, I'll get someone saying nice hat, or professing their love for Pokemon, or asking me if I've caught them all.
This provides an opportunity for conversation and a shared interest. I can ask them if they're into the show, the books, the card game, the video games. How did they get started? What Pokemon is their favorite? Who's the best trainer? When did they start liking Jesse and James? Do they like old stuff or new stuff (I've got the OG hat from season 1).
It takes almost no effort to wear a hat and it helps me use my social skills when I'm out and about. And keeps the sun off my face a bit, and is handy for napping at conventions. You don't have to be Ash Ketchum, any character hat will do.
Also, bonus secret. When I'm sleep deprived, I get chatty... You may or may not, but if you do, use it for practice when it happens... and if you say something embarassing, you can always blame the lack of sleep. I was just at First Robotics worlds and the setup is harsh for sleep hygiene, but I had a ton of nice conversations with random robot people. Shared interest, opportunities and sleep deprivation combined. Otoh, much fewer notices of my hat at the convention center than I expected.
Even though typing them out may make them stupid but here are a few examples thinking out loud. Remember the body language is quite important and as you do more you start feeling more comfortable in your skin.
- Waiting for an elevator that never comes with two strangers. What I may say: I guess we'd be camping here tonight. Do you have your tent with you?
- Embarrassing moment: I hit my head lightly to something in front of 5 people: Act funny saying Oh can someone call an ambulance.
- Someone dropping yogurt from their spoon on their shirt and locking eye to eye with me realising I've been watching the moment: I would have an empathetic look and then act with an imaginary spoon picking from my own shirt and eating it.
Basically the kind of mild jokes/acts you would do and say to close people would work on strangers as well
I was in a similar boat, but recently started getting through that barrier. The thing that clicked for me is pretty simple: I was filtering myself and chipping away at that filter made a huge difference.
For example, I was in the elevator with a neighbour and they were carrying a lot of mugs. I said "that's a lot of mugs" and we ended up having a quick conversation.
In my case at least the conversation starters are all there in my head, but I'm discarding them hunting for the "perfect" one which obviously never comes and the moment passes.
> try to talk to someone
> run out of things to talk about
> feel awkward or dumb
is not really a bad outcome, physically speaking.
IMO ost people's anxiety about things X is not "fear of X" but rather "fear of fear" or "fear of embarrassment": they'll avoid something because it could go wrong and then... what? what if it goes wrong? nothing physically bad happens except that you're uncomfortable for a moment. But it's your subsequent reaction to the discomfort that is the actual source of the issue, not the discomfort itself. Which is why a lot of progress on anxiety can be made by focusing on the response: find ways of practicing being in the situation and being uncomfortable to a survivable degree such that you can learn to not be averse to the situation and can thus start adapting to it.
Just talk to them as if they were already your friend. Most of what you talk about with friends isn't just mutual interests and you start conversations with them all the time.
"I did the same thing; whoever designed these doors was a sadist." -
"Do you like that bag? I've been meaning to get a new one, I'm so tired of this one." -
"Now see, if we were as good looking/rich/smart as him we could have figured that out." -
"Is that thing broken again? I'm telling you, we're in the wrong business man." -
"Nothing to do with talent, it's a money and equipment problem, we're awesome at this." -
I've used each one of these in the past week with complete strangers, in neutral-to-unfamiliar surroundings, in passing, and the most hostile reaction I've gotten is "hahaha, I know right?" :)
> The main pattern I follow is to break the pattern and make a joke, be sarcastic respectfully or give a compliment
I'm having to learn this about online dating too. My online dates traditionally don't go anywhere because typically they've been about just exchanging information, which is frankly boring to both parties.
You have to (gently) riff and tease a bit or it's not going to go anywhere. If you're talking about your jobs, nothing is going to happen. Establishing that rapport is everything.
> If you're talking about your jobs, nothing is going to happen.
That reminds me of when I first moved out of California and away from the tech scene after being immersed in it for some 10-odd years. People just don't talk about their jobs! They'd much rather talk about their interests, hobbies, friends and family, ... literally anything else. Their job is just not an important part of their identity. Was quite the change in perspective and honestly and took some getting used to.
I had a similar challenge but more dating oriented (not fully though). I'm not at your level, but I want to be. Happily married nowadays, so it'd be a pure social challenge this time.
Being able and willing to talk to strangers unlocks the eventuality that you will one day start chatting with a person who also does that and it will be like the small talk singularity. Once a man approached me and complemented my bicycle, and I engaged with him, and since we were both waiting at the same breakfast counter without anyone else, we sat down at a table and had breakfast together, and an hour later I could have counted him as a friend. Uncommon, but exhilarating possibility.
Happened to me out on a group training run five years ago. She and I are now engaged and will be getting married in July.
When I still had a personal Reddit account, I would be on the dating and relationship subs and promote the idea to do something every week where you see the same people. even better do two or three such things every week. That's what I did, and I quickly went from zero local friends to dozens.
The gym is a fine place to do that but only if you're doing classes where there's an expectation that people will be socializing. I made some of my best friends in such gym classes including my current best friend. She indirectly introduced me to my fiancé because she suggested I join a running club to train.
haha the dudes are of course the best. when I say "I can talk to anyone" it doesn't mean "Everyone will talk back to me". Which is fine and I don't care. For what its worth I'm glad not to have to talk to boring people.
What I want is to have a laugh or an interesting intellectual conversation.
As someone who wants to have meaningful interactions even if they are brief, it's super annoying when I just want to offer a compliment or joke to a stranger and they think I'm trying to talk to them. Are they so selfish that a little chuckle or "thank you" is going to break them?
How does that make someone selfish? I'm sure there are judgements you could make against someone who would prefer to be left alone, I just don't see how "selfish" could be one of them.
For me, one of the main motivations is suspicion of ulterior motives. If it really is just "hey I like your hat okay bye" that's one thing, and is generally harmless. But usually when someone approaches me they want something, either they're selling me something, or asking me to sign something. It's not that the initial comment is necessarily an issue, it's guarding against people pretending to have an innocent interaction as a foot-in-the-door technique.
For every person like you there's 500 dudes who want something from the stranger - their money, their body, etc. People are standoffish because they don't have the context that you do regarding the interaction and it's unclear which way it's going.
That's literally what the world is. It's the amusement park for all of us. Some of us like sharing our joy with others. It's up to you whether you are open to receiving it.
This comment section really enforces the stereotypes everyone has of you guys, just safe-space seeking, maladjusted weaklings who play victim as a badge of honor.
Wonderful! There's a lot of advice online about how essentially evil it is to talk to strangers: They're busy, they have headphones in, they might think you're hitting on them (God forbid; nothing could be more evil than attraction). Ignore it. It often as not boils down to fear and neuroticism from terminally online introverts (and sometimes plain old misanthropists) raised in a hyper-individualist culture and glued to devices sometimes from infancy.
Fair enough if an introvert just wants to be left alone; we should obviously never force our company on anyone (nor do the mentally healthy among us have any desire to do so, because we have empathy). However, people like that will let us know that they don't want to talk when we approach them, either directly or via body language and the nature of their replies. For many others, they're starving for social interaction, and it might make their day for you to reach out. This is what makes outreach worth it, in the end, despite the risk.
I find it so bitterly ironic that the people whose opinions we read the most of - the terminally online Redditors and tweeters - are exactly the kind of people we should not be listening to.
Like you alluded to, the terminally online people who post the most tend to be those with neuroticism, isolation, severe anxiety, etc. There's a famous Reddit post about this I can't seem to find - "Everyone Online Is Insane" or something.
I really think this is why the past decade+ of American culture, politics, and society has been so off-the-wall insane. The Overton Window - another overused Redditism - of society has shifted towards the opinions of the neurotic and anxious. Those are the people whose words fill the comment sections and posts that we all read, which then infuse our minds to expect these thoughts as the baseline/median opinion of society.
> Doesn't matter who you ask on this site. The incel, the rad fem, the regular liberal, the happily married person, the casanova; they will all tell you some variety to stay in your own lane and shut up. They will all use different language, but the meanings will always be the same: they live a life of constant loneliness and have found kinship with others who agree that to ever do something to counter that loneliness is beyond abhorrent behaviour.
Yes, this is a theory I've been thinking about too.
Explains the rise of various political leaders very well.
I find it funny that even the people who comment on the "Everyone Online Is Insane" post sound obsessive or outside the norm.
I find it messes with my mental health when I read too many comments. In the real world I normally find people to be nice and kind. But then I go online and the world is totally different - I have to keep in perspective that its just a small outsized fraction.
> I find it funny that even the people who comment on the "Everyone Online Is Insane" post sound obsessive or outside the norm.
Well, yeah. I agree with the statement that "everyone online is insane", while also recognizing that I myself am online a lot, and think and behave differently from societal norms.
I think that's part of what is needed. There's absolutely nothing wrong with thinking and behaving differently from other people. What's abnormal is when people become absorbed in the internet, to the point that they fail to recognize that people in real life, people outside their Internet echo chambers, think and behave very differently.
What's great about neurotic online personalities is that they're all contained within the little box on your lap or in your pocket. You turn it off and they all go away...
They disappear to you, but not to all of the other people who you share a society with who are still staring at their little boxes. And, for better or worse, you still have to live in a world with and share elections with those people too.
I agree, completely, that it's good to get offline. But the pervasive societal effects of extremely online psychology can't be solved simply by opting oneself out of the game.
One great failure of the Internet was taking the lonely crazies and putting them in the position of building their own community online. Unable to moderate their thoughts by interacting with normal people, now feeding off one another's neuroticism, and spreading it.
It's true but then again, for most things, the correct answer is somewhere there, amongst the BS, so if you have a good BS detector and want some ideas, you could do worse. You can't outsource the part where you see for yourself if stuff works, and form your own opinions.
Redditors want you to cut contact with all your loved ones so you can spend more time on reddit, telling people to cut contact with their loved ones. It's like a cult.
> I really think this is why the past decade+ of American culture, politics, and society has been so off-the-wall insane. The Overton Window - another overused Redditism - of society has shifted towards the opinions of the neurotic and anxious. Those are the people whose words fill the comment sections and posts that we all read, which then infuse our minds to expect these thoughts as the baseline/median opinion of society.
Why should anyone entertain this theory? You’re a comment box.
Edit: Thirty years ago us online freaks would just interact with other online freaks. Because normal people had real hobbies.
But now that we are all doomscrollers: why would normal people be interested in the comment boxes of online freaks? They’ve got YouTube shorts and whatever to watch.
That things like 4Chan has had an outsized effect is a different matter. It’s all mediated through twenty layers. It’s not normal people reading 4Chan and other freaks directly.
> they might think you're hitting on them (God forbid; nothing could be more evil than attraction)
You can find legions of people, particularly women, who do not want to be hit on unless they already find the other person attractive. Being hit on by an unattractive person may even quality for them as something akin to danger, already along the spectrum towards stalking or assault. Has nothing to do with being terminally online and has been reported since long before there was ever an internet.
> For many others, they're starving for social interaction
HN is an international forum, and while people are reporting increased loneliness in many countries, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want attention from strangers. Where I live, a total stranger talking to you in public is annoying; it is strongly associated with foreigners who haven’t learned yet how to behave acceptably within the local culture. What people might be starving for are serious, long-term social bonds, of the kind that used to be common through large extended families, the parish church, team sports, and school friends who stay put and don’t move away. A mere friendly stranger in public could lead to such real bonds only rarely, so rarely that it’s not even worth considering.
I am a woman, height is on the shorter side. I want to add my thoughts around this phenomena.
Oftentimes, a stranger coming up to you on the street spells danger, it has nothing to do with how attractive or unattractive they are.
It's hard to explain if you've never been in a woman's shoes, but you feel like prey. A chance conversation can quickly turn into a decades-long stalking event, one never knows. Unwanted attention for women can feel really dangerous, I have often been catcalled/followed when not with my husband (which is infuriating as an adult woman), and have been followed/catcalled on the street from the moment I turned 14, which you can imagine makes strangers coming up to on the street feel loaded.
> You can find legions of people, particularly women, who do not want to be hit on unless they already find the other person attractive.
Tough luck, cupcake. Often you don’t know if she is into you til you approach. Often they are shy. If you keep overthinking this and afraid of being cringe, being filmed or being judged, then your genes will die out and your bloodline will end. But hey, at least you never made anyone awkward and lived a “safe” life. This will sit right with you at deathbed I’m sure.
> Being hit on by an unattractive person may even quality for them as something akin to danger, already along the spectrum towards stalking or assault.
Just trying to initiate a conversation with someone simply is not stalking nor assault, even if it is perceived that way. Their "perception" is mistaken in this case.
> HN is an international forum, and while people are reporting increased loneliness in many countries, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want attention from strangers. Where I live, a total stranger talking to you in public is annoying; it is strongly associated with foreigners who haven’t learned yet how to behave acceptably within the local culture.
I don't know what country you are from, but it is highly probable that even in your culture, public conversations significantly decreased in the past 30 years. Which means that the amount of interactions was higher than it is now, even within the same culture.
> A mere friendly stranger in public could lead to such real bonds only rarely, so rarely that it’s not even worth considering.
The gym example of this article points in the opposite direction, or do you think that gyms in your culture work differently?
It’s their right to decide how they perceive being approached by a stranger. And most of society is going to empathize with them and their feeling of unsafety, not with the stranger approaching them.
> even in your culture, public conversations significantly decreased in the past 30 years
The culture in my country never really had many “public conversations” from one stranger to another. This is something that has been noted by foreign travelers for generations now, at least back to the nineteenth or eighteenth centuries. What has changed are that the substantial family and institutional bonds I mentioned earlier have declined.
> do you think that gyms in your culture work differently?
They definitely do. This has already been mentioned by various people from different countries in this thread.
> It’s their right to decide how they perceive being approached by a stranger.
Okay, I suppose everyone is entitled to their own delusions. But believing that initiating a conversation with a stranger is stalking or assault is just false.
> The culture in my country never really had many “public conversations” from one stranger to another. This is something that has been noted by foreign travelers for generations now, at least back to the nineteenth or eighteenth centuries.
How then do people come to know each other in the first place? Every familiar person has been a stranger at some point.
> They definitely do. This has already been mentioned by various people from different countries in this thread.
I read one of my home country (saying that you would get arrested if you did this) and I assure you it is false.
I have never met anyone on the street who wasn't mentally ill or tried to sell me something. Types like this ignore your brief answers, facial expressions and body language, and continue to yap on. Honestly, I cannot imagine a single situation where a random interaction with a stranger on the street would be a positive experience. No, I do not strive for you to "reach out", on the contrary, I avoid you like a rotting carcass of a pigeon.
Computers are feedback loops that ultimately are trying to take up 100% of 100% of people's consciousness seconds, so it makes sense that the winning/dominant ideologies on the internet are just whichever ones cause you to not spend time on anything except the screen.
In this Northern European country of mine, I’ve got as much of a neutral third party that I can think of: a friend born and raised to adulthood in the Third World. They’ve got more “extrovertism” in them than 99.9% of the natives. Yet this advice from socializing entrepeneurs with One Weird Trick doesn’t seem to hold up. People here are not all hypnotized by their screens and low self-esteem, or whatever, and then lifted up when their poor social-starved selves get attention from a kind stranger. We are just... like that. Not genetic. Not immutable. But it runs deep. Very deep. Deeper than what an “extrovert” all by themselves can penetrate.
So if there is a cultural pathology it takes way more than what socializing entrepeneurs seem to think.
> Fair enough if an introvert just wants to be left alone; we should obviously never force our company on anyone (nor do the mentally healthy among us have any desire to do so, because we have empathy). However, people like that will let us know that they don't want to talk when we approach them, either directly or via body language and the nature of their replies. For many others, they're starving for social interaction, and it might make their day for you to reach out. This is what makes outreach worth it, in the end, despite the risk.
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> However, people like that will let us know that they don't want to talk when we approach them, either directly or via body language and the nature of their replies. For many others, they're starving for social interaction, and it might make their day for you to reach out. This is what makes outreach worth it, in the end, despite the risk.
Nope.
Normal people—not freaks like me—in my culture will fume in private. Yes: any slight by a stranger will be relegated to complaints to your friends. Much more likely than sending any bad vibes. We’re cowards like that.
I’m reminded of some anecdote about Westerners being struck by how helpful Japanese people are. (This is from memory and may be wrong.) The context is that they are tourists. Well, apparently Japanese people have very strict social norms about being polite and helpful. This is amazing for tourists: they get all of the social upsides while not having to pay anything in return (because they are oblivious to it).
I will happily stop and chat with you if you demonstrate that it is worth the time and interruption (if I was lost in thought, that will take at least 5-10 minutes to get back to).
If not, I will not let you know. I will just fume, blame and judge you for some time after.
"Hey sorry, I've got some things on my mind right now and can't really talk. Have a nice day though".
That takes less than 10 seconds to say, let's you protect your time and peace of mind, and as a bonus there's no need for fuming, blaming, and judging that the other person won't ever even know about.
The people likely to talk to strangers unprompted are also likely to ignore those kind of messages. Anything that can lead to further conversation can be used (like "oh, what's worrying you?") so actually politely nodding and smiling without giving any footing to further conversation works better than being assertive.
I don’t think it’s false, much less obviously false. On one hand I have my personal experience about it, on the other you can see there’s only a small range in the “I want a conversation” scale where they want it enough to ignore the nonverbal signs that the person doesn’t want to talk but not enough to ignore the verbal ones.
This is 100% completely on you, then. If you don't inform people you're being interrupted or that what they are doing is bothering you, they have no data to telling them to stop, and any energy you spend on silently judging them or being frustrated is only harming yourself.
No, it's on you. You can stop before you even begin by simply not interrupt and bother people for no reason. You're creating a problem and then blame me for not stopping it.
"According to Reddit” - so many lives have been ruined listening to what gremlins on social media have to say.
It’s simple. If you want, approach. It’s not dangerous, you won’t get cancer. If they don’t want to talk, you will stop talking with them and talk with someone else.
"I am deeply afraid of irritating someone or being in awkward situations." - anyone who thinks like this is suffering from abused dog syndrome and unironically has lost at life.
Also, why is he talking about “friends” and “strangers”? We all know he means “women". And there is LITERALLY no problem politely engaging conversation with a strange woman at the gym even if she has earpods on. It’s not a crime, just be normal. You are forgetting that other people are shy too and often want someone to take initiative since in 2026 nobody does.
My life quality increased immensely when I realized most of Reddit is bots and the parts written by real humans are usually written by the type of person that you really shouldn’t take any advice from
Not even a big "browser". This realization hit me after missing some uni events after reading negative comments on town subreddit, then discovering that I actually know one of the commenters in real life and he is just a plain idiot and it was an obvious mistake to not go. When there is no objective criteria, relying on personal judgement or plain chance is just a better way to go instead of overthinking based on stranger advice.
If I may toss out another recommendation: Volunteering is one of the best ways I have found to meet people.
A food pantry, house of worship, the library, a community theater, a political group, an environmental service group, local writers group, homeless shelter, women's center, whatever - there are so many things to choose from.
I found several advantages to making friends this way:
1. no/low stress because you are doing them a favor showing up. Any volunteer-based organization NEEDS people. YOU are people. They NEED you. Don't be stressed because you might not know what's going on. They will be GLAD to see you.
2. Volunteer onboarding processes force other humans to be nice to you and get to know you in order to place you in a service group or provide you an assignment. The people that most organizations have doing this are outgoing and friendly. I'm generalizing, but having served with a bunch of volunteer organizations, I have found this to be the rule. I was often one of them.
3. If you are volunteering for something that you care about / believe in / are passionate for, then you INSTANTLY know that you are meeting people with something in common. This gives you both something to talk about or bond over.
Source: I met my wife and many friends volunteering in different organizations.
I was at a Gurudwara (Sikh house of Worship) yesterday for a wake and everyone who enters the cafeteria perform shevas, that is, you take a turn serving everyone else food. It was very nice to do.
If you want to build a relationship with someone, try asking them for a small favor rather than offering one first* (or, for example, making random small talk about the weather). Most people love to help and feel useful. If you're new to the gym or want to learn a new exercise, you can simply ask for help. It's something we'naturally do if we weren't so afraid of approaching strangers.
I have heard this repeated across books and podcasts for years but I’ve only seen it fail in person.
Maybe it might not fail if the “favor” isn’t really a favor at all but instead something almost completely effortless like asking for the time or directions to the bathroom.
However when someone is at the gym and another stranger asks them to stop and do a favor that takes time out of their gym visit it’s just annoying, not a friendship starter.
Respectfully, I think you're looking at this from a bad angle. You wouldn't go up to someone in the middle of a set, wearing headphones, and ask them to stop what they're doing to help you. Instead, you find someone who's finishing a set/exercise and politely say something like "hey, I'd like to try this exercise and you seem to know it well, would you mind taking a moment to give me a hand?".
I've personally done this twice this year (I genuinely wanted to learn, I'm not using it as a strategy) and it worked very well. I suppose culture plays a role but I'm in one of those countries where people don't usually socialize with strangers and it still works.
I’m typing this comment from the gym, actually. I’m on the friendlier end of the spectrum and really don’t mind helping out when someone could use some actual help. Giving a quick spot or a quick exchange of advice is common.
What I don’t enjoy is when someone ropes me into doing something for them when it becomes clear that they had other intentions for the request. It’s the ulterior motive part that can have the opposite of the intended effect.
When you realize someone asked the favor not really because they needed it but because they thought it would be an opening to get you into conversation, you start wondering what their real motive is. In this case it may be benign enough, but it’s not a great way to start a conversation
Yeah that's fair and I see it the same way. For example, when I visit the US and a waiter/waitress is extremely friendly (even asking about my personal life and complimenting whatever) it's usually clear (in most cases anyway) what they're after. But obviously I'm not talking about those situations, I was instead giving examples of genuine requests for help, not tricking people.
You mean "they're just doing it for tips", but it's not quite that straightforward.
Obviously tips are a factor, but it's common to see overtly friendly service in the US even for untipped positions (cashiers at Trader Joe's is one example that comes to mind). Being friendly in service positions in the US is just part of the culture. It's not universal of course, it depends on the specific business, but it is very common.
Totally agree, if someone have other intentions for the request, it will make the other person feel like it's dishonest so the conversation usually doesn't go far.
Easy one: you are about to lift something and need a spot.
"Hi, can I ask you for a spot?" - hard to argue w/premise of ask and many people would be happy to assist you and see you achieve whatever goal you have for that lift.
i don't ever ask for a spot (and use safety bars instead) because i'm trying to leave the gym as quickly as i can and don't want an unknown-length conversation getting in the way
"Hey man, can you spot me?" Is a pretty universal request, and frequently honored. Once you are done with your set, offer to spot them, and while you are both resting after your respective sets, start up some small talk. If small talk works, continue to bigger conversations.
I’m typing this comment from the gym, actually! Spotting someone is common and I’m happy to do it.
That’s not what I was talking about. The part that fails is when someone asks for a favor but then it becomes apparent that they didn’t actually need the favor, they were just trying to find a way to talk to you. Like when someone requests a spot and then you come over and realize the weight they’re lifting is so light that there is no reason they needed a spot other than as a conversation starter.
If you actually need help then asking is fine.
If you don’t need help but you’re coming up with reasons to trick someone into giving you help so you can talk to them, that’s a situation with an ulterior motive. People are good at identifying ulterior motives and it doesn’t set you up for conversational success.
If someone just wants to talk, I don’t recommend playing these mind games. Just learn how to strike up conversation. The honesty will be appreciated and it won’t trigger other people’s ulterior motive detectors.
"If you don’t need help but you’re coming up with reasons to trick someone into giving you help so you can talk to them, that’s a situation with an ulterior motive. People are good at identifying ulterior motives and it doesn’t set you up for conversational success."
Lmao unless you're a female... I've never seen this happen in a gym. And im a religious gym-goer of the past 10 years.
That's literally the point of the comment: It's an unnatural thing to do so we shouldn't be suggesting it as a conversation starter.
I wasn't saying it was normal. I'm trying to explain why it's not normal to do that as a way of discouraging readers from thinking it's a trick they should use to start conversations.
No. Don't start up some small talk right then, unless they are clearly inviting it. Leave them alone, they did what you asked. After a couple of workouts, you know their name, they know your name, you are familiar to each other, then maybe you start asking what they do or getting to know more about them.
At least that's what I do. If someone I don't know at all asks me for a spot and then starts immediately hitting me with a bunch of questions/chitchat I'm suspicious. The last time this happened it turned out to be a guy who fancied himself a powerlifting coach and was looking for new clients.
Depends. I'm an introvert, but lifting is my second passion. I've noticed someone doing a lift I want to get better at and asked them for advice, form check, etc and they're usually excited to share the hobby. The reverse is true too.
> However when someone is at the gym and another stranger asks them to stop and do a favor that takes time out of their gym visit it’s just annoying, not a friendship starter.
Might be the place you live; this is not my experience at all. I ask randos to spot me every week. People love to help out. Sometimes they'll even keep an eye on you in case you have another set and come offering.
I think you’re missing the point. The original advice wasn’t actually about the spot, it was about coming up with a “favor” to ask to trick someone into being friendly.
If you’re just asking for advice or a legitimate assistance and then moving on then there is absolutely no problem with that because it’s honest from beginning to end.
My point is don’t go out of your way to seek favors from people because you think it’s a hack to trick them into being more friendly with you.
It's not 'coming up with a favor'. You're genuinely asking someone for help that they can provide. This one is more challenging with strangers, but with friends and newer relationships where you know the people better, asking them for help is a big deal. I think too many of us don't want to bother people, but it turns out people generally want to help others around them. As Simon Sinek says, don't take away your friend's ability to help you - it's selfish!
I'm not missing the point; you made several. The one I engaged I quoted for you. You can see from the sibling comments that several of us took issue with it.
For what it's worth, I agree with your last position about just being honest. If anything, a finding like this should just move the asking of small favors from a stranger towards the norm.
Personally I would read this as a weak, but noticeable signal of being a person who is okay with taking advantage of others. Most people are too embarrassed to ask complete strangers for actual favours.
That sends a different signal, because you're asking someone to do something you could do yourself but simply choose not to, which is essentially what you described above as "taking advantage of others". However this is quite different from what I described in my comment.
If you see every request for help as someone taking advantage of others, I'd encourage you to reconsider why you view everyone that way. It might also be preventing you from seeking help yourself, out of fear of being seen as a leech.
> If you see every request for help as someone taking advantage of others
Let me rephrase, because there seems to be some kind of misunderstanding here:
To me this advice applied broadly would take the appearance of such a signal, even if weak. The framing of "do it because people like to help" is something which wouldn't even occur to me as motivation to ask for help.
Those examples aren't something a person needs help on, I think that's the difference. I can't spot my own lift. I can't teach myself what a certain machine does if I don't even know what it's called. I can't understand a new lift I haven't seen before without asking the person doing it what it is and a little about it.
Ask people for help where help is actually needed, not to act as your servant cleaning up behind you.
I don't think so. Last week someone asked me if they could use one of my climbing equipment for a moment and I said sure. They asked me in a friendly manner and I had a positive feeling of them afterwards.
I learned about this technique from Owen Wilson’s character in the otherwise exceptionally forgettable movie “The Haunting (1999).” Paradoxically, you are the one doing them a favor by effectively giving them permission to ask for help in the future.
I've learned this by reading Influence by Robert Cialdini.The trick is find something to which they say yes. If they do it their brain kind of tells them: If I did him/her a favor it's because I like him/her.... and liking opens other doors
The Ben Franklin effect is real!
My experience at conferences has improved significantly by ending talks on a personal note and explicitly saying that I have trouble approaching people but very much like being approached and chat about anything. This usually leads to interesting conversations in the breaks.
Please give it a try if you are like me and aimlessly wander the hallways in between sessions otherwise.
I have heard that this is called the Benjamin Franklin effect, and it appears to be an inversion of the principle of reciprocity coined by Robert Cialdini.
It might be psychopathic behavior to make things up just to ask for help, but that's not what I'm saying (and you can see the rest of the thread for reference). What I mean is that one of the many ways relationships are formed is through collaboration, rather than small talk about irrelevant things that 99.9% of the time leads nowhere. Be the first to help, or ask for help when you genuinely need it. There's nothing psychopathic about that, this is as human as it gets - you'll observe the same behavior with certain animals.
I feel, like a lot of 21st century life is trying to do things artificially. Going to the gym, talking to strangers at the gym, ... these are both artifical replacements for human activity that is missing. You go to the gym because your daily routine isn't active enough. You try to form friendships with strangers because your daily routine lacks real and fulfilling interactions with other people.
Also it's kind of odd how nowadays everyone goes to the gym. Growing up as a late-stage millenial, gym goers were a niche subculture. Now it marketed to everyone everywhere as this integral part of modern daily life.
> "Going to the gym, talking to strangers at the gym, ... these are both artifical replacements for human activity that is missing."
As opposed to what, our ancient hunter gatherer lifestyle? Going to the gym and talking to strangers at the gym isn't an "artificial replacement", it's a genuine activity lots of people do.
> "You try to form friendships with strangers because your daily routine lacks real and fulfilling interactions with other people."
How do you think people make friends? They make friends by interacting with people at shared spaces and activities.
everyone is different, even if I'm biking/walking everywhere and working outside, I still need to work myself to exhaustion if I want to get any sleep. I currently train muay thai, but even when I was young and doing yard work for a living I still trained with my friends and played sports. heck, growing up my life was american football training during the day and after school, regular football a couple of times a week with friends, running around for fun, and then doing heavy yard work at home and at neighbor's houses on weekends.
Not that your's isn't valid, some people (like me) have a big surplus of energy that needs to go somewhere and sometimes the best available outlet is lifting weights.
Isn't that a subjective value judgment? That's great that you enjoy gardening and building things with your hands. I don't really enjoy those activities and would rather sit down and read a book or play the piano in my free time. But I want to stay healthy so I exercise my muscles and cardiovascular system in "artificial" ways. What's wrong with that?
> Also it's kind of odd how nowadays everyone goes to the gym. Growing up as a late-stage millenial, gym goers were a niche subculture. Now it marketed to everyone everywhere as this integral part of modern daily life.
GenX here and I feel the same way. To me, "The Gym" has always been a place where bodybuilders and muscle heads go. In my mind, it will always be a niche hobby like autocross racing or horseback riding. And I know that I'm wrong! Everyone and their mom seems to go to The Gym now! But, it's hard to change the culture and learnings that you grew up with.
I think it's because the general public figured out they'll die in their 50s if they don't. Modern life is too easy -- a substantial portion of the population spends their white-collar lives flying a desk, "socializing" via sitting around eating and drinking, hiring people to do their landscaping and housework.. hell, you don't even need to walk to get food anymore, both restaurant meals and groceries are delivered. Sure, you might get out to a hike every weekend but that's simply not enough. For health it's pretty much a non-negotiable to go do some strenuous activity every other day, and going to the gym is the path of least resistance to getting that done.
I think about this a lot too. There always seems to be a fitness trend involving classes like aerobics, yoga, pilates, Taibo, Zumba. But if we're talking about weight training, it is definitely having a moment now.
I wonder if all the instructional content on Youtube makes training with weights and weight machines more accessible than ever. I was intimidated by weights and figured it would be boring. A guy I knew was talking about his weight training and I asked if he plans things out with friends/workout buddies and he said he learns about it on YouTube. So when I finally pushed myself to try weights, I found a video. It was a petite woman (I'm a dude) and I thought, ok she looks better than I do and this routine is a nice start. And I went from there, in my forties.
My funniest theory is that dating has been getting more competitive and strength-training is good for confidence.
> For health it's pretty much a non-negotiable to go do some strenuous activity every other day, and going to the gym is the path of least resistance to getting that done
You are right, but the reason it's so prevalent is also because it is better for capitalism. Going to the gym isn't just a 1-off activity, it's an entire lifestyle & it doesn't necessarily come cheap. You need a membership, specialized gear, lessons, switch your consumption habits to high protein foods ... etc
You might be overthinking this, although I understand how it can appear that way for someone on the outside looking in. Your local gym probably costs less than your Netflix subscription, if you don't already have a free gym in your apartment building. You don't really need anything else other than looking up some routines on reddit.
Most people at a gym are not the fitness-focused people you're thinking of. Most are just white collar workers who need some exercise. A typical American diet already has an embarrassing surplus of protein, there's very little gear that your average person is going to need (active clothes can just be shorts and t-shirt, maybe swim trunks, and a pair of shoes), and IMO most people don't need a trainer for more than a couple of sessions to show them the ropes.
Yeah I think this is everywhere in society now. For example, you used to have to ask others for directions, which naturally leads in to conversation about where your going.
Now you look like a bit odd if you ask for directions since everyone has a smart phone now. So you have to go create artificial scenarios to socialize.
Compared to a life rhythm that was intrinsically social: recurring gatherings of your community (which used to mean proximity, not hobby) at a building, being invited to others' houses, a social expectation to be social and host things, recurring interaction with the same people due to a smaller circle. Contrast: today we're expected to leave a group of people to go to school, leave those people to move to a job, leave those people for hobbies and romance, and to never let those circle overlap.
Gym wise: compared to life being heavy, and relatively full of physical effort. (Even just working on a car/wood/metal/house/farm with hand tools for example). Cycling to work has done wonders to bridge this gap for me. I think also the current beauty/attraction aesthetic is hard to approach without dedicated weight training. At the top end of lean muscle mass modern life just isn't heavy enough to stimulate enough muscle growth, and in preferred proportions, unless you're willing to do tons and tons of reps which is exceedingly painful compared to banging out 5-15 of a rep range appropriate weight.
Also it's kind of odd how nowadays everyone goes to the gym. Growing up as a late-stage millenial, gym goers were a niche subculture. Now it marketed to everyone everywhere as this integral part of modern daily life.
Aerobics classes have been a thing for decades. Pumping Iron came out in 1977. When I was in college (UVA, 95-99), there were several good gyms, plus they built a fancy new one about mid-way through my degree.
I suspect you just happened to be in a time/place where gym use was lower than average.
For me going to the gym (actually YMCA) is just a way to express agency in a society that increasingly is trying to rob me of that. I may be gatekept out of various other things, because I'm not attractive enough, not high income enough, not smart enough, not young enough, etc etc. But as now, nobody can stop me from going to work out.
crossfit became popular as a side effect of "bootcamp" style workouts in the 2000s-2010s, like the Spartan Run, Tough Mudder, Rucking, etc.
mark rippetoe, creator of Starting Strength, was heavily involved in crossfit. between that and him franchising his Starting Strength practice, powerlifting became more widely practiced. once Instagram started building lifestyle brands around this (gymshark, alphalete, nobull, darcsport, etc.), it was a lock.
This stuff comes in waves and every generation thinks that it's unique.
Adidas was originally a pro fitness brand like Gymshark is now.
Gymshark will become athleisure just like Adidas, it's just a matter of time.
Crossfit is just the name for HIIT training that's pumped as a new branded workout. Note that already it's now Hyrox. It will be something else in a few years.
Boomers and Gen X are riddled with diseases associated with a sedentary lifestyle and poor nutrition/diet. I would like to think the generations are learning from the mistakes of their predecessors. A lot of science has come out about the benefits of resistance training as well, along with the normalization of women doing resistance training in large part due to CrossFit
Indeed, it's the underlying principle of "division of labor".
Karl Marx' coined the term "Alienation" for describing most of the negative societal/human consequences of this principle, leading to isolation of humans "from themselves" (their natural will to construct something whole meaningful, not just complete a task in a process, but also isolation between humans themselves)
Good for you, OP! Climbing gyms are especially good for making friends because you are working on problems with people. My gym has a weekly meet up for people looking for belay partners as well as classes where folks talk. Crossfit might also do the trick, as might a running club. Good luck!
The other thing with climbing gyms, especially bouldering is that you only spend maybe 20% of the time climbing. With 80% time off, that's a lot of opportunities for socializing.
You don't get that with the high intensity training like Crossfit where you spend maybe 70% of the time working out and 30% of the time dying.
And socialisation happens naturally. You're waiting and lots of other people are doing the same. You are working on problems and can exchange tips or complements or cheer people on. It's inherently social.
The gym is not inherently social unless you are actively spotting / alternating uses of a single machine. You either join that group of gym rats (who in my experience spend 80% of their time talking) or you put your headphones on and crack on solo.
I'll second climbing gyms. My entire core group of friends in my city (that weren't already friends prior to my moving here) are people I met from the climbing gym or yoga classes at the climbing gym.
Its a great space to meet new people, there are inherent breaks in the activity, shared problems to work on, and its a non-competitive space. Everyone just wants everyone else to send hard.
+1 from me. I always find it very challenging to speak to strangers, but not at the Boulder gym. There's just so many opportunities to start a natural conversation:
- new climbers asks you for advise
- you can ask a new climber if they'd like some technique tips
- you finally top your project and someone commends you for it
- someone tops your project and you ask them for advise
- you're trying to top a boulder on a new set and are solving it with others
- you're _constantly_ in the gym so staff starts talking to you
I relate a lot OP's situation but every time I think about trying to talk to someone else I just get worried that if it does go "bad" (i.e. very awkward) then it will become to mentally hard to stay at the gym for the rest of the session or even come back and since its a place I actually like being in I end up never trying anything in fear of ruining a place I like. I don't know if anyone else feels like that but I just felt like leaving this comment.
As long as you don't bring up politics, religion, or money, you would be hard-pressed to make it so bad you wouldn't be able to stay or even come back. If things are SUPER awkward, just move to the other side of the gym or go to the bathroom for a little bit (~5-10m or so) then feel free to return, just don't talk to that person again other than a simple "hi" if warranted.
It’s probably mostly your social anxiety speaking there. If you go in not expecting anything in return it won’t get that awkward just go alright I’ll let you get back to it and go back to doing your thing.
I had like 20 years of social anxiety and it’s actually very anti-climactic when you can have a normal short conversation with a stranger. Not dramatic and no one’s traumatized
I had the same issue! I was nervous/awkward around the people who didn't want to talk to me. I can't say if it will be the same for you but after a week of me seeing them, them seeing me, and us doing our thing, I got used it and lowkey forgot about it. I don't think it's as big of a deal as we think
It’s a similar thing for me at coffee-shops that I frequent quite often and where I often see recurring faces. In a way it’s natural, “making contact”, so to speak, would only help transform those third spaces into potential-friends spaces, which might be good for some, but which might also seem less desirable for others.
I used to rock climb in gyms a lot. I stopped going because I found the people there incredibly irritating (didn't matter on the gym). The things that irritated me:
1) People would immediately jump on the route I was on after seeing I struggled. Cool flex.
2) Unsolicited advice. Thanks, but I'm here minding my own business
I generally have a hard time connecting with people like OP but found that I was able to find good climbing partners outside as opposed to in the gym.
I now do crossfit and while I know it's not for everyone, it's a decent community. I still don't talk to folks in the gym, I don't want to but I like that we're all in it together and pushing ourselves pretty hard. I feel connected in that way.
I would really not like a stranger tapping me on the shoulder in the gym. That's my "alone time". That's just me though.
You know the old adage about if you meet one jerk in a day, it's them, but if everyone you meet is a jerk...anyway I'm glad you like CrossFit, if climbing weren't my thing, I'd probably do something in that category instead :)
I can see why people would be irritated by 1 and 2 and they happen to me too, but I have just reframed how I think about them.
If someone jumps on something I'm struggling with, I take it as an opportunity to really pay attention to what they're doing and try to learn. They might just be way stronger, but they probably also have some better technique ideas.
For #2, I just take it as a slightly awkward attempt to reach out and socialize. Advice isn't harmful. At worst it's a mild spoiler (oh well), or just wrong (then ignore it). At best it's a great chance to learn something.
I'm awkward and it's rare for me to start a conversation, so I just take someone else talking to me as an opportunity to connect without having to make the awkward first step, and try to spend a minute or two (at least) talking with the person.
I'm lucky enough that I live in a city that has a newbie-friendly group that climbs every week and goes for dinner and board games afterwards.
I consider myself an introvert, but after going for a while, I got to figure out who are regulars, and they recognise me as a new regular too, at which point they're more open to socialising more, even outside the weekly meetups.
Even when I'm bouldering alone, I've had random people cheer for me when I'm about to send, or show me the beta for a route I'm struggling with, or ask for help with a problem. It just provides a very natural conversation starter, at which point you can pivot to other topics, provided they seem open to talking more.
I've always had an easy time talking to strangers and striking up conversations. I think this line is the key one:
> But over time, I came to accept that it’s ok if they didn’t want to talk to me. That’s just one of the things you have to expect when you do something like this.
People are complex! They have a lot going on. You almost never get someone responding with the same attention you are giving. That's just how it is.
What he is doing is developing a practice of friendliness. This won't develop close friendships - close friendships are what happen after you're successfully friendly to people who are good fit. But it will set you up to do well in semi-public spaces like the gym or your friends' party where you don't know anyone. It's an extremely good skill to practice and, unlike what I would have said at twenty, it does not reflect a lack of depth. Understanding that not everyone wants to have a deep conversation at every moment is maturity - doubly so if you can recognize it in yourself.
I have always been good at this and I am pretty introverted. You don't want to force conversations, just start by saying 'What's up?"'. Keep doing it over and over. The is all proved our in social psychology and proximity theory which in a nutshell means you are more likely to get to know people you see more often. You just need to let people know you see them and over time raise the bar.
The goal is to meet people with shared interests, regularly.
You may like to work out, but unless you enjoy talking and thinking about working out, the gym isn't the right place!
You may like to hike, but you may not enjoy talking and thinking about hiking. You may still find friends in the hiking group, because as you spend time together you discover shared interests. But you may also discover that you have very little in common with the people who like hiking.
That's why it's so easy to make friends in University:
You spend a lot of time together AND you have a shared interest: The major you all chose!
On the other hand, if you're into ... trains... you need to find places where people go that like to talk and think about trains! That's not always easy!
Recently I went to the grocery store and as I entered the alcohol section, I saw a guy stacking the shelves. His hand slipped and the beer can jumped out but he showed impressive reflexes and caught it after couple of fumbles. There was no one else but him and me in the aisle.
I enthusiastically pointed out, "I saw that! That was amazing, great reflexes!" and added that sometimes no one sees these but I will definitely remember it. He was beaming and while I was checking out my stuff, I saw him excitedly pointing towards the aisle and me while chatting with a cashier. Where I am at, it is not the usual to throw loud and vocal compliments at strangers - so I guess he wasn't used to it.
I usually don't compliment people this enthusiastically but I guess the mood and time was right and I felt as good giving the compliment as he must have felt receiving it.
I think a big part of this is that men don't typically receive genuine compliments that often, especially from strangers or acquaintances. When it (rarely) does happen I feel like it can have a significant impact on their mood.
I can definitely relate. What's funny is I've always been really social and open to talking to strangers, plus I come from a culture where this is accepted and encouraged (Brazil).
However, I've been working remotely for 7 years now and recently became a solo founder, and I realized I'm having a fair amount of social anxiety. At the previous two companies, I was working remotely but still had people online to chat to, and would meet in person once in a while. Now as a solo founder I've just been working from home and I noticed that when I was leaving the house to buy groceries or work out that was my "break time" and I somehow just wanted to be more alone so I always had my headphones on.
That meant that I became someone who's running away from social interaction the more I actually needed it. And that when placed in a social situation I'm suddenly anxious whereas before this all came very naturally to me (I've also spoken in public very often etc).
How I'm coping:
- Got a WeWork membership
- Leaving the house without headphones
- Striking up conversation with uber drivers, cashiers, etc
- Making an effort to go to events (even flying somewhere at my own expense to speak at a small event for the first time in years)
On headphones: I recently got a set of Aftershokz headphones to use as sleep headphones that worked with my custom earplugs plugged in.
They work amazingly for that purpose, but I was not at all prepared for how much more social these would (re-)make me.
Listening to music helps me relax. If I could, I'd have something on at all times. (Jazz in the morning, KEXP in the afternoon, classical at night.) With these, I can talk to people and hear them crystal clearly while listening to whatever I have on. I don't need to compromise like I did (and do) while wearing AirPods (even in transparency mode). This has made me more receptive to striking up conversation.
On coworking: couldn't agree more. Being around other people has been great for my mental health, even if I'm not talking to them. I'm also the kind of person that needs work and home life to be physically separate and needs a commute to make work feel like work. Taking the bus into work is scratching that itch well.
Remote work is absolutely brutal to a cohesive functioning society. I know people are going to slam me for saying it but is honestly true. People forgot how to interact with each other because the forcing function that gets everybody mixed together into the same pot got taken away. And if you don’t take some fairly extreme steps to counter it, you’ll be completely alone and isolated, subject to algorithmically chosen feeds that are completely unique to you and detached from the community around you.
It’s really quite dystopian and anti-human if you ask me. We’ve already lost so much shared mediums—nobody watches the same shows, reads the same media, etc. which in isolation is completely fine. But something has to be shared with other real physical humans and it has to be more than just occasional grocery store visits, run-ins at the park, etc.
I dunno quite how to articulate it very well though. It’s just remote work has a nasty side effect of making humans even more isolated from people not like themselves. It makes us all increasingly divided and “othered”. And that isn’t good for anybody.
I agree. I have been fully remote for a bit over 2 years, and I myself feel a change. In the early days I had a managerial role so I felt the need to visit office and deal with employees, colleagues and customers. Office is 5 miles so not too far, I just avoid going as my family health issues may require my intervention. Now that I am an IC, and the health issues are not sorted, my visits have reduced, and I think it is slowly changing me for the worse - in terms of discipline, social interactions and even productivity which you think would be higher from home. Thankfully though I am starting to recognize some of the patterns and working to fix them but you can fix productivity, you can not fix lack of socialization.
I have friends and family, but staring at a computer 8 hours or more a day is corrosive to my mental health.
And when I am in an office, I do interact with people, in meaningless and meaningful ways, whether I am forced to or not.
I know this does not apply to everybody, but I function best with constant low level social interaction. I should have picked a different career, but I didn't have that foresight.
Post College friendships can be hard. Friendships before graduations are almost all completely spontaneous and natural. No one has to _really_ know how to be the initiator. My experience suggests that it doesn’t really get better as you age, either.
My wife and I took on that role after college. Neither of us is particularly outgoing, but we’re not cripplingly shy either.
Meeting new people is about realizing you’re not alone in feeling lonely. When we pick up on positive vibes we just ask for a phone number “can I have your phone number? You seem cool, and I’d love to ___. (Fill in the blank with one of “get a cup of coffee/beer”, “take a walk,” “invite you to a [thing I host].” It’s not significantly different from the dating scene except it’s so much lower stakes. I recommend sticking to same sex or group invites for this reason. Rejections are rare, and almost certainly don’t reflect on you.
Secondly we start things on schedules. Things that happen regularly are super low pressure ways to start friendships: “hey, we cook an elaborate dinner and then hang out and play instruments/sing/watch a movie/hang out at the beach/take a hike once a month/week/whatever, join us!”
This makes it easy to invite anyone without it feeling like a date.
I say all this knowing that none of this is _easy_, but it is a kindness. You’re not alone feeling lonely. With a little bravery you can totally be the person who makes it better for your new group of friends.
> Friendships before graduations are almost all completely spontaneous and natural.
They are mainly from proximity. You see people in class, you live near them, and you're near the same age. It's the same reason in person work would generate friendships/relationships. The challenge in today's remote world is proximity now has to be intentional.
According to Google some 20% of marriages began at work, and some 50% of people say they have a close friend at work. IDK about it being a primary source, but it's definitely an important one. And it makes sense when people are around each other all day.
I've been going to the gym for decades, and to my current one for about a decade. There's a cadre of fairly serious people who have been there for that long or longer who all know each other. Even if we don't necessarily know someone's name, we can usually give a short description, and everyone will know who we're talking about.
The downside is you get sucked into the operational drama. The guy who started the gym lives there and has developed obvious memory problems, while the business partner basically stole the business from underneath him. His now-ex-wife took all of his savings, including an insurance payout from when he was struck by a semi during a traffic accident and was forced to medically retire from being a policeman. I believe most of that money went to frequent Disney trips. The business partner is trying to drive him out by charging him rent to stay there and watch the place, changing the hours so he can't get quiet, and she also stopped paying him altogether.
We usually just commiserate on who and what we can't stand and the degradation of general gym etiquette: people screaming like they're having sex while working out, people sitting on equipment and playing with their phones, people so checked out they take the exact piece of equipment you were on, despite it being a large gym with duplicate machines for most things. These are evergreen discussion topics.
"Korean girl Short I didn't know how to start a conversation with her, so I just asked if she was Korean and she said yes. Then I made her guess what kind of Asian I am. Then I rambled about being Asian in Syracuse before leaving. I initiated one more conversation but now we don't interact"
You bother people every day with your existence. You are one more car in their traffic, 5 minutes more of waiting in their line, you got the last bagel they were craving. Being a bother to people is part of living in a society, it would be impossible to live without ever being a burden or a nuisance to anyone. I wished I had accepted this earlier in life.
The important thing is to realize that this feeling is irrational. People aren't strongly bothered that easily. Quite the contrary, extroverted people tend to be much more popular than average.
You can easily continue this into a conversation, FYI:
"Oh, lol - you did X, and I knew another Canadian who did X, so I thought that might be a Canadian thing. Where are you from then?"
I find that most people don't reach out to previous friends if they haven't been contacted in a while. For whatever reason, I don't have that internal programming. Whenever I remember, I will ping my friends or old coworkers going back 20+ years and go out for lunch, and it's always a great time. It's best to not have too much pride over it, life is too short in my opinion.
Yeah this is what I like to do. I don’t like to talk to strangers (maybe I should) but I much prefer striking up conversations with old acquaintances, even if we hadn’t talked in years. It somehow felt easier and more satisfying for me to pick up an old acquaintanceship than to try to make new friends.
And I almost never get a no when I make the effort. One of the people I spend the most time with as an adult is one of my childhood friends who we just randomly went for beers once after not seeing in 15 years and now meet up every month or two since we still had the same chemistry as we did as kids
> I asked him a question, he answered and left. I guess he didn't want to talk
If you have anxiety about talking to strangers, just remember that 99% of the time when someone doesn't really want to talk, this happens. Not really that scary after all
My fear is I’m socially awkward, I might do or say something I genuinely didn’t know was awkward, and that person will make a TikTok video of me and ruin my life. I’ve seen videos from people posting about “creeps at the gym” and it’s just a guy looking in the direction of the girl taking the video, and it seems like just looking in the general direction of someone for too long could make you a public example of a creep, and that’s basically my nightmare.
And people might say “well if you know you didn’t do anything wrong so you shouldn’t be worried” but I’ve gotten into trouble many times for things I knew weren’t wrong but you can’t rationally argue with herd mentality when a group of people decide something is a faux pas.
Luckily people don't film in my gym, but watching Joey Swoll [1] I've seen plenty of idiots (often young women) who try to make someone in the background of their video look bad. It's always completely obvious that the person in the background (who probably doesn't want to be filmed) is not staring or being a creep, even though heavy zoom and slow-motion is used to "prove" something. Ridiculous.
You’re basically so petrified of bricking prod and getting fired that you refuse to even start on your first ticket. The catastrophic outcome is low probability and not worth fretting over.
Going out and risking embarrassment is the price of admission for leaving the house. If you do say something silly, you have the opportunity to learn from it and grow a little bit.
Those TikTok videos are usually fake or bait. 99% of people do not think you’re weird or creepy for existing.
This reminds me of a college dorm friend who always seemed to be on a date with someone new.
His philosophy was simple: “It’s the law of large numbers. If you ask enough people out, and don’t fear rejection, you’re eventually going to get a yes. And along the way, you build the confidence and skill to ask better.”
I think picking up people at the bar is easier than making friends at the gym - what you want is to join a crossfit gym, or something that has a stronger community culture to it. Not the gym.
But I hear that with Gen Z and Alpha they dont really go to bars but they do tend to go to the gym, and so the gym is becoming a more social space. So maybe OP is on the right track?
I think what matters most is that they get out and socialize.
If there is alcohol involved with that, it's a personal choice that I don't think deserves shame unless it's consumed in a shameful way. I would have to assume any adult should know their limits, be resilient against peer pressure, etc.
I would actually argue that the fights you have with yourself regarding addictions are just as much of a rite of passage as the fights you have with others while drunk.
If you so strongly wish you could eliminate negative experiences, you'll eventually have to ask yourself "compared to what?" and realize such a treadmill of misery is your true source of regret, not your actions or the consequences.
I have a ton of "gym friends." And this is a commercial gym. We know each other's names, will help out with spots, have small conversations. None of those have yet led to hanging out outside the gym, but if you go to the gym at the same time every day, you're bound to at least start to recognize people, and it's really easy to say, hey I've seen you around a lot, my name is...
i think this can also depend on location. I live in a military town and have been a powerlifter for several years, i routinely have men come up to ask about my routine. a handful of times its turned into real friendships.
There's a pub in my city where the staff greet you when you walk in and actively encourage you to sit at a table that's already occupied. If you come in alone you'll probably end up sitting at a two person table where inevitably there will be a stranger right across from you, with a couple similar tables right next to it. Of course if you want to be alone you can go sit in a corner somewhere.
Needless to say everyone starts talking to each other after a drink or two. This bar is enormously popular. I've never seen it not be packed. It's an incredibly successful strategy for them. With all the complaints about the death of third spaces, I'm baffled that more places don't do this. I see no reason a cafe couldn't do it as well.
All this to say I think it's a great loss that younger people aren't going to bars as much. I wouldn't say they're the best way to form deep connections, but I have zero fear of ever lacking random social interactions, because I know I can just go to a reasonably busy pub in the evening, sit at the bar, and sooner or later either I'll start a conversation or someone else will. It's also a great way to get good at handling opinions that are different from yours - if you have a thin skin or live in a bubble, being subjected to drunk people from every walk of life
will rectify those issues quickly lol.
Bars are a common place, but do you really want to meet the type of person who hangs out in a bar? Sure if you only want a one night stand what they do with the rest of their life doesn't matter. However if you want a relationship you probably don't want to start with a high odds of finding a borderline alcoholic.
You have some rather uncommon prejudice towards people who go to bars. Unless of course your culture is significantly different from mine.
But where I am from:
- bars are 'a third place' where people hang regularly without getting wasted
- bars serve dozens of different non-alcoholic drinks
- most people in the bar are not "looking for a one night stand" but for some socializing, fun, and a chance to meet interesting people
But as I said, maybe your part of the world has bars that attract different clientele.
You don't need to get drunk regularly to be a near alcoholic.
There are a lot of "regulars" in most who need to "get a life". I won't object to those who are visiting once in a while, but there are far more bars everywhere I've been than could exist if people "had a life", my general observation is 5-10% of the population is a regular.
Not all bars have the same "type" of people. Also if you're looking for camaraderie or friendship, it's a pretty good place to have talks of all kind - the silly ones are the best!
Or join something that's inherently a group activity. For me, it's singing in a choir. Everybody goes there to do something together with other folk, which lowers the barrier.
Being an introvert myself and perfectly fine when being alone, this is so hard to read. Possibly it's just me but making new friends is quite overrated, and the whole thing OP does feels forced and artificial at many levels. Genuine connection should be built on mutual deep interests, and small talks at random places rarely reveal them. I'd be disappointed if someone starts a conversation with me artificially because I'm part of their hidden social experiment.
> Genuine connection should be built on mutual deep interests
That's backwards. You can't find friends with "mutual deep interests" without talking to strangers. You have to first find out somehow whether there are mutual interests in the first place.
I realized with the people where I really care about leaving a good impression or hoping to become friends with, it's really hard and scary to do any kind of interaction. If I on the other hand have no desire for a friendship with someone but a chance occurs to chat, I talk to them like I know them for decades and am fully relaxed and don't really have any kind of anexiety.
Seems that the more you want something, the more you are able to sabotage yourself getting it.
I want to congratulate the author for getting out of his comfort zone to tackle a hard problem. But being able to make friends at a gym is not a universal experience.
I joined a gym partially to get fit and partially to meet people with similar fitness goals. Working out alone just feels sad. I tried to be friendly with people, would smile and say "hi," when I walked past someone. I would ask someone a non-confrontational question about their workout. In months of trying, maybe a handful of people who at least said anything back. Zero conversations. The rest either responded with a blank stare or pretended to not hear me at all. Nobody ever approached me or said hi first the whole time I was there, except sometimes the people behind the counter.
I'm socially deficient but not THAT awkward and have no problem talking to people in other situations. I'm not sure if it was the kind of gym I was at, or just the wrong time of day, or if people in the gym only want attention from those who won the genetic lottery. But I didn't have much success.
Different gyms do have different cultures and probably time of day matters too. Absolute worst is right after work it’s so packed and everyone’s still kind of stressed and looking to get done and head out on to the next chore
I'd highly suggest joining a Brazilian jiu jitsu gym. They tend to be filled with other computer nerds (although not only) and people are very friendly in a genuine way.
BJJ is very social because you can't train alone. It also mostly weeds out assholes because no one wants to train with jerks (usually there's a single gym in an area that ends up with all the jerks lol). The other thing that quickly forms relationships is that you're trusting other people not to hurt you and vice versa. Giving and receiving this trust tends to cause relationships to build quickly.
And yes, many gyms are filled with nerds. Once you get past the basics, it's very much a thinking sport.
Imo talking to strangers at the gym is hard. I made friends there just by saying 'Hi', waving to them when we started to see each other working out often enough. Then once you're using the same equipment or get dressed in the locker room you have a conversation about whatever and there you go.
Anyway, the fastest way I made friends outside of school was at a language course, where you have to speak a lot about something. You can switch partners during the course, so you can talk to other people. Another thing is sports clubs, it works out the same as the gym.
So the answer is, I guess, just going to gatherings where people learn new things with an instructor.
100% this. As you say, language courses need content so a lot of it is talking about your life/opinions. Super easy to make friends after a few weeks of that if you make a tiny bit of effort
FYI, it was probably just a regular women's weightlifting barbell. They are somewhat lighter, and have a thinner grip. Maybe she's serious about her weightlifting training.
I just assume any guy trying to make small talk with me at the gym is trying to hit on me, which I am correct about maybe 80% of the time. I know because I am a gay guy so I know how this kind of thing goes. Not that I have a problem with it, I am always happy to talk to any strangers if they want to, for pretty much any reason. As a straight-passing guy though, women at the gym never approach me except to ask if I am done using a machine, and I also don’t approach them because I assume they’ll just think I’m trying to hit on them. I’m just unsure how to approach people at the gym while making it immediately clear that I am just looking for a friend/workout buddy and not anything more than that
This is great! Good on you for putting together a plan and taking action.
One thing I noticed when I was doing salsa dancing is that there's a normal distribution for how you "click" with people. With salsa dancing, you change partners frequently so I may have interacted with dozens of people in one night of dancing. I noticed how most people fall in the middle of being fine to dance with and then you get a few outliers where they are either terrible to dance with or are amazing.
It looks like OP found something similar. Out of 35 encounters, he had 5-6 advance to the "prioritization" stage (~14%) and 2 (5%) ended up moving into building a relationship outside of the normal environment you usually interact at. I think that is very relatable. Most people you interact with will be fine to chat with but only a small percentage will be people that you really gel with.
It's in general a very newcomer friendly hobby, which is both important as a newcomer yourself as well as for meeting new people once you are into it. It's naturally collaborative so you have to communicate, not very intense so there's a good amount of chill time, and in the cases where small-talk doesn't turn up interesting topics you can always talk about sailing itself.
For those for whom the gym seems too intimidating to start convos with strangers, another option is to try spotting and signing up to the hobbies where social interaction comes naturally, if not even unavoidably. Things like amateur choir singing (which I do), amateur folk dancing groups, sports clubs where people train in interactive groups (a cross-country ski club in my case), etc. -- these give regularity and allow the persisting social interactions with the same people over longer periods of time to form into true friendships.
I enjoyed this read, the energy, and the detailed positive outlook. However, what am I supposed to take away from "5 weeks / 35 people / no new recurring friends"? Every time I go out I feel this personally, and I never understood why so many people have such thick shells to crack.
> there’s a number of people [at the gym] who want to be left alone and can be irritated if you interrupted their workout to talk.
This one is pretty easy. Look for the people who spend more time yapping than working out. They generally love to meet new people. The opposite case is pretty obvious too. Don't approach someone just as they are preparing to start a set or if they're going hard on a treadmill or bike. Generally, if someone is not talking to anyone and seems locked in, earbuds in, etc. probably leave them alone. But asking for a spot when they're between sets is an easy excuse to at least get their name. Nobody is going to really mind that, and you'll pick up pretty quickly whether they're talkative or not.
Kudos to the author for making friends. I have to say, though, that I'm with the Redditors on this. I go to the gym to focus solely on my workout, and that's it. I'll nod and smile to the other regulars, but conversation is simply not on the menu.
Such a cute read (I mean that in the best way possible). I'm quite a social person and it's really cool to see someone be so systemic about it. But I would not have the balls to just talk to random people in the way you did it, and I really admire that about you!
This was a delightful read. I have a few relationships with people on the autism spectrum who struggle with socializing, despite recognizing the desire to be more social. I can point them to this blog.
Yeah, the weight floor can be hit or miss with regards to striking convos with strangers. Many of the people there want to make friends too, but many just want to focus on their workout.
Two related contexts that I've found to be much more friendly for this:
1. Climbing gyms, for reasons mentioned previously
2. The sauna! Actually very ideal for convos with strangers. Max overlap time is ~15 minutes, people are generally relaxed, no phones to distract and if it doesn't go well either party can always leave.
> activities suggested by r/Syracuse like volleyball ... require you to already have friends.
False! Find a gym with open hours and just show up! I used to do this all the time with my friends, but there were always a few people there on their own. There is always someone a couple players short for their team, so just ask around ("Hey, you need anyone else on your team?") and you'll find some people to play with. Keep coming back week after week and you'll make some friends eventually.
I assume this works equally well for most team sports that can be played casually such as basketball, soccer, and others.
If you want to make friends, water your friend seeds.
Everybody knows a bunch of people by name, and nothing else, from various contexts. You go to matriculation, there's a bunch of people introducing themselves, too many to get to know. You work a job, there's 50 people whose name you know. You go to a party, your friends introduce you to 10 new people, and you don't have time to talk to them all.
The ones you don't talk to much, they are your friend seeds.
You move to a new town, and you know nobody, other than that one guy you never spoke to after the first week of university. Contact that guy.
This came across as a little odd and nerdy, but I'm actually really glad you shared your internal dialogue around this. It gives me more empathy for socially anxious (or just socially inexperienced) folks. Although the way you're starting out is kind of nerdy and overanalyzing, I'm sure these interactions will come naturally if you keep it up. Connecting with people is a very worthwhile effort and it's great that you're doing it.
In particular, the "rejection" will stop feeling awkward. I have random little one-or-two sentence exchanges with people several times per day, and usually it doesn't go beyond that, but I don't experience this as failure or rejection. I only engage further with the people who show (by words, body language, etc.) that they're genuinely interested in a conversation. For me, it's less than half.
The gym is an ok place, but not a great place, for what you're trying to do. Hiking clubs, running clubs, CrossFit gyms, rock-climbing gyms, and volunteer groups are all better options. The baseline level of socialization is very high in these places, whereas if you look around at a gym, most people have their headphones on, and are doing their own workout, so there's few natural opportunities to start a conversation.
Also, try to find people who are social and have lots of friends. If they like you they'll introduce you to their friends, which is a lot easier than starting cold. Don't be afraid to talk to women. Most of the people I know who are really good at connecting people are women.
Someone once came over to tell me I was using a machine wrong and I thanked them, collected my things, and left. Haven't been back to a gym in two years! But to be honest I enjoy body weight exercises and cycling better anyway.
>however, according to Reddit, there’s a number of people who want to be left alone and can be irritated if you interrupted their workout to talk.
My suggestion would be not to read social advice on public websites on the internet, especially on Reddit, because per public internet, everything is not okay/forbidden, everyone should mind their own business, choose the safest and the most inoffensive action in every possible social situation. Public places such as reddit are full of terminally online socially awkward people who are very unrepresentative of people in real life. Also, there are incentives to recommend the safest course possible because then you won't get downvoted by haters. I don't even say to take advice there with a grain of salt. I say it's probably better not to read such stuff because your brain might subconciously internalize that people think like this even though actully, in real physical world, it works differently.
Great timing. I used to see a guy at the gym for a few months, we always go at the same time, and one day he approached me to correct my form, we had a chat and we kept meeting in the gym for a few months after that and until yesterday I mustered the courage to even ask him his name. Literally didn't even know his name for months, so yesterday I asked and got his number to catch up later.
Is kind of sad reading the aftermath "never saw em again" kind of thing or "don't interact"
Shared interest is a main driver and frequency of interaction/seeing each other... like you become friends at school since you see each other everyday kind of thing
Shared interest, I've recently gotten into cars though I still ride the clapped out POS and someone was showing me their Porsche, sat in it, pretty cool.
But I see that person at work. In general work people don't become friends but sometimes... one of em I go over to their house, when I used to drink I'd drink with them. I do find I have to do more message initiation myself to keep things going so idk. One old friend of mine sends me reels almost everyday on instagram random dumb shit idk. Right now though I only have like 5 real friends that I talk to almost everyday. When I was younger 10s/100s but yeah that goes away as you get older. Also doesn't help I moved away to another state so lost all my IRL friends. And real friends I mean one time when I was really in a bad spot my friend loaned me 10 Gs which not trying to say money is friendship but yeah.
In hindsight a lottt of the "don't interact" is more like we say hi when we're near each other but I'm not initiating more conversations. I'm down to talk but I'm letting them start the conversation if they want to. I updated the article to be more clear
I've been going to the gym for the past year after exclusively running in solitude. I am still introverted at the gym .. it's sort of my time. But I do appreciate overhearing the conversations which occur.
It's been nice to hear 60-something retirees chat about their health, quitting alcohol, sorting out the pickleball schedule, and sometimes politics (although honestly much more rare relative to the others listed)
I love the community some folks create in the gym.
Very sweet story. Next, invite that guy and his girlfriend and maybe someone else over to your place, or out to do something. Reciprocation matters a lot.
The burgers look amazing, I'm happy for the author and happy that someone is finally acting on that advice and sticking with it. My sense is that people tend to not see rewards within a very short timespan and give up, and sometimes didn't even care to be there in the first place, so they give that up too, sort of missing the whole authentic part and failing to escape the transaction loop.
Gotta find a few things you enjoy for the long-term that exposes you to people regularly, that you'd be doing anyway, and open yourself up to meeting new people and developing strong connections.
1. Its all in your head.
2. Lead with your heart and instincts- nurture this and the magic happens.
3. Dont take any negative reactions personally- they may be "somewhere" else dealing with shit in their head. But the "wave" you sent them will do its job anyway.
4. The level of creativity that can be applied to this problem is endless! For example.. the idea of them coming to you (harder than going to an existing group/event) but has its benefits.
Experiment that worked for me : I now live in Buenos Aires , and missed playing ultimate frisbee.. so i posted around in various expat groups and craigslist.. "Ultimate Frisbee en Palermo! Beginners wanted - Experts welcomed" link to a youtube explainer vid.
Experiment 2: random street portraits with phone or digital handheld camera - followed up with a "who are you?" existential question (off record)
To me as someone also "deeply afraid of irritating someone or being in awkward situations", it sounds like this project is greatly expanding the surface on which awkward situations can happen? How do you decide if you should wave to the person or ignore them? Isn't it tiring? Don't you wish to be anonymous again?
Meeting and talk to people is a learned behavior. It took me a while in my 20s to get comfortable talking to new people. I'm determined to not let my kids struggle with the isolation that can come with social anxiety. My wife and I are working with my 14 year son to develop those skills. Between a couple books and his therapist (everyone should have one!) he's working through it, and has gone from being one of the shy-est kids to having the confidence to go up to a person and startup a conversation. He has a couple openers he uses to get a conversation going. It's finally clicked how much a small compliment can break the ice with boys and girls. He likes the feeling he gets when he gives someone a compliment and they brighten up.
I was curious to get a sense for the overall "success rate" at a glance, so I uploaded the author's data as a spreadsheet and color-coded the conversations based on length (short=red, medium=yellow, long=green) with the help of Claude:
This is cool. The plan written as algorithm.
Pro-activity is the key. Usually, people like to stay in their comfort zone. This guy was searching for his, and found it.
I wonder, why he did not have any friends from the years of studying. Usually, this is the place friendship forever happen :)
> “Ignored people I knew from class instead of saying hi because I didn’t know for sure if they remembered me even though the class had only 10 people in it”
This amuses me because it’s the exact reverse of my anxiety. I’m pretty bad at remembering the identities of people I may have briefly interacted with a few times in a situation like class or work, so I’m afraid of the “person from class” remembering me and me not remembering them and being offended. Like, “How about that exam last week” and me being like, “uhhh do we have a class together?”
I think it's decent advice, but from my experience, it can take years to make friends that way. I practiced various sports my whole life in the context of sport clubs (martial arts, climbing, snowboarding, swimming...). The way it worked for me is that after months, sometimes years of chitchatting with same people over and over, I barely made any good friends from that context. I did make a bunch of "acquaintances". Definitely better than staying home, but not a silver bullet.
Yes it's very easy to just let things sit at the "acquaintance" level. You know people at the gym, or at work, or at whatever recurring thing that brings you together. But to extend that to friendship, you need to invite them to do something outside of that. Get lunch, come over for dinner, game night, movie, whatever you're into. And then they need to reciprocate at least somewhat evenly. If this doesn't happen it's not really a friendship. And (in my experience) it's very rare for adults to progress beyond the "acquaintance" stage.
Often i sit around a coffee shop where i work frequently as a remote employee, and I think to myself, "there could be another person here that i have the capacity to be really good friends with but i will probably never know it." And I think about how that's probably true of other people in that coffee shop.
The engineer in me wants to believe some technological solution to finding and connecting with potentially great friends is out there, waiting to be uncovered. But of course, an engineer would say that.
> there could be another person here that i have the capacity to be really good friends with but i will probably never know it.
I often have the same thoughts. There are many lonely people eager to make friends.
I used to live in NYC where I didn't know anyone. And I remember one evening at the coffee shop in Barnes and Noble, there were only two other people there, and we started to chat. Even though we had very different backgrounds, we started to hang out and became good friends (but lost contact since then unfortunately).
Sometimes it doesn't take much, just exchanging a few words. Forcing oneself to be a bit more social, without expecting anything, is probably a good habit.
The unstated bit is that you have an incidental excuse to talk to them (compared to cold approaching in other contexts) but you still need to talk to them. Everything depends on you making the effort.
Compared to a gym, the class setting almost forces you to talk to people. I wouldn't see myself talking to people in a gym, but in a snowboarding club or martial arts class, or a group hike, it's difficult not to. Once you exchanged a few words, even for the sake of an exercise, the ice is already broken. At the very least, you'll say hi the next time you see that person.
Instead of a gym another options are joining volunteer groups, a fraternity order (Oddfellow / Rebekahs), a local D&D meetup or local motorcycle club.
Sharing a common interest is the easiest way to make new friends.
Nice! I have been struggling to make friends at my current gym after moving to a new country, people seem way less friendly at just this gym which feels weird. Debating switching gyms because of it.
For socializing i usually go out dancing, long raves are usually good and gay guys are often very happy to talk, probably helps that I take my shirt off. Just need to keep out from the dark room from now on.
I live in a small town and I have noticed that I just have be outside and look available. I may be gardening, washing my car or just hanging, and people will randomly stop to start conversations, or just say "hey".
That reminds me of our grandparents and how they used to just sit on the front porch and someone would see them, start chatting, and maybe come in and have tea. We've lost those moments of availability.
Observation: people act like this challenge is unique to the young generation, but it certainly affected me (millennial). It was a long, scary process of getting comfortable talking to people. It's still hard! And I have to re-learn it in different phases of life:
>talking to people at school
>talking to people in college
>talking to girls at bars
>getting over the idea that I don't/shouldn't talk to girls at bars anymore, post-marriage
>talking to other parents, male or female, once becoming a parent
all different lessons, all challenging. all worth the effort.
I spent several years living in Mississippi. As someone who was fairly introverted upon arriving in the Deep South, I had that hammered out me pretty quickly, during every opportunity for social interaction. It's just part of the culture to engage. I think my time in that area was a bit of a mixed bag, but that one change was for the better, and it has led to wealth of relationships since. Most people yearn for some bit of connection, and it's not that difficult to be the catalyst.
You go to the gym to lift. Not to talk. You may talk shortly if it is related to something you need to continue your workout. Apart from that you do not talk. End of story.
I always liked busting through the little social candy shell in the gym. Offering to let people work in on a scarce piece of equipment could lead to chit-chatting about whatever. It's nice! When you have about 3 minutes to rest in between sets there's time to let someone else work and talk a bit.
Wonderful idea to document, share and even have positive outcomes.
The author would probably love this YT channel which is all about helping others come to the same realization as he did: https://www.youtube.com/@socialanimal
Good advice generally. But please, not at the gym. All gyms have a different vibe but mine is almost strictly no talking. We go there to workout, not to chat. Everyone locked in, headphones on, no nonsense. I've been going for years and I can count on one hand the number of conversations I've witnessed.
But the flipside is, I see the same gym crowd at the coffee shop next door and we always have a good chat there. Context matters.
Am I too pessimistic, or did anyone else notice the fact that you got everything you wanted with 'the only other asian guy'. Race matters in friendships more than we realize? I feel if it was a gym full of asian people (or a neighborhood with more asians) it would be way easier for you to socialize and make new friends.
Wow this is a really cool thought! I never thought about whether I or the other Asian guy was biased toward each other. Jtarii is right that I mostly approached him because it's slightly unusual for someone to be Asian at my gym and it would be easy to bond over. I think being the same race can help but it's ultimately up to the people in the friendship. Most of the other Asian people I talked to didn't really initiate more conversations after the first converation, unlike "the other Asian guy"
Good for the author for finding some success. I'd recommend seeking a significant other, somehow that sounds less daunting that making friends past 30. Cool roommates are friend-ajacent and help with loneliness; I had a cool roommate for a while until he moved in with his girlfriend, after which I was deeply lonely until I met my now wife.
I've started the same, but instead of the gym I go to random meetup events. Which feels easier since most of them are exactly for talking to strangers. Also went bars sometimes with people from the group. I have to get more confident about exchanging contact information though, only did that twice.
Gosh, I was guilty on this account just an hour ago.
I just came back from a midday walk in my neighborhood. Headphones on, walking along, when I hear someone call out — I don't quite catch what. I turn around, and there's a neighbor with a kid (not my street, so I don't know her), but she's from my community. At first I thought she was teaching the toddler — maybe 2 years old — how to say hello. So I'm just standing there, nonplussed. She repeats the greeting. I'm still confused about whether she's talking to me or demonstrating for the kid. Finally, a little louder: "I was just saying hello" — except she used the greeting from our community. It finally clicks, I laugh, and say "oh yeah, same to you."
I probably would have handled it differently if I hadn't had headphones in, or if I'd been more present, or just more socially aware from my early days. Still thinking about it and then I saw this thread.
Pro tip: introduce your friends to your other friends. Build a network. Networks get stronger as the number of connections increases, i.e. as more people in that network know each other. People are more excited to hang, bc they know more people, and the hangs are more exciting. And hangs become more frequent, because more people can initiate. And it makes awkward moments less common, too.
This is much more durable, reliable, and (quite frankly) fun than the hub-and-spokes model of friendship, where you just have a bunch of 1-on-1 catchups with people who know you but not each other.
Also, it's somewhat easy to do! In this guy's story, this could be as simple as, "Hey I want to get a few of us from the gym together for dinner sometime. Would you be down?" People are usually more receptive to this than they are to a 1-on-1 invite, too.
I think the important thing here is you weren't just approaching completely cold but people who you've seen a few times before, which then somewhat makes sense. I think if someone approached completely cold in gym it might not come of as well.
> activities suggested by r/Syracuse like volleyball and trivia night require you to already have friends.
Most big cities will have rec leagues that are popular with people in their 20s. Find a league that has a team happy hour after, I live in a transient city and I've made a few friends from people who get placed on my teams.
It absolutely delights me to see someone overcome something that is hard for them. We all have them. When I read about someone succeeding like this, I look at myself and find the next one on the (long!) list and decide to work on it.
One thing I have learned is that there are inviters and invitees for friends groups. Most people kind of just sit around and wait for things to happen. Some other people will make plans and invite people. Taking the initiative and talking to people first is the way to go, and looks like it worked out.
each place has different social dynamics. from my experience, working out at a gym isn't the exactly an easiest way to make friends. I've also frequented gyms in the past but there were moments that I needed to focus alone, otherwise couldn't get the gain I needed. the activity itself can become a social constraint in some cases.
when I've joined a social dance community, I was almost forced to talk and stand close with strangers. It is an emotional rollercoaster; it's all happy when I've met nice people but I've felt helpless when I had to dance/interact with people that I don't like, for whatever that is.
I've also practiced some type of acrobatics/solo dance for years and it is somewhere in between.
I think some type of intimacy heatmap can be made with all these activities.
I don't go to the gym much but that is one place where I would be VERY careful trying to strike up a confirmation and heaven forbid tapping someone on the shoulder.
Good on you for doing that. I did the same thing when I was in college, but in my case, I did it to get better at approaching women.
I made it a goal to talk to at least one woman per day on the train in NYC (hard mode) and say Hi to at least three.
I don't remember how long I kept this up for; I want to say I did this for three months, but it might have been shorter.
Like you, some people wanted nothing to do with me while others were down to chat.
While this made it easier for me to make the first move, it helped me massively at starting and keeping up conversations with anyone about nearly anything. This is probably a large reason why I'm in tech sales these days.
That being said, this didn't change my default personality. I'm still very introverted, very comfortable with hanging out by myself, have trouble not taking rejection personally (though I'm much better at this than I was back then), and, most importantly, absolutely hate talking to people at the gym, almost all of the time!
(My workouts are 90-120 minutes long on most days, which is a huge chunk of time that I'd rather spend coding, working or catching up on HN/Reddit. I immediately think of how much time I'm sacrificing whenever I'm approached at the gym and stonewall. I'm also like this on airplanes. The joys of constantly feeling behind and stressed for time!)
So glad to see such constructive and supportive reception of your stellar initiative. Half expected people to flame this kind of genuine reaching out for connection we can all (I hope) identify with, as somehow selfish. It is not, and this is a wonderful act of persona growth and humanity that should be more normalised. Well done.
This is the nerdiest way to go about this, I love it. Good job OP! If you're interested in old video games or trading card games, see if there are any card or used game shops near you. The people there tend to be cool
This is how social life starts, dont wanna spoil it but its full of wonderful and confusing stuff. If i may i suggest you to try some rejection selftherapy where you walk to random spots u think will say no, who knows maybe u get a few yeses u thought were impossible. As u long as u are good and nice and ur intentions are pure, and if you are willing to correct the mistakes u will make in the future, to learn from them as much as possible, u will come far. Just dont forget to have fun.
I can't stop thinking about the amount of people they engaged with simply never to be seen again. Are gym membership commitments a lot less serious than I remember these days?
> Ignored people I knew from class instead of saying hi because I didn’t know for sure if they remembered me even though the class had only 10 people in it
This one really hits home for me. Many times in my life, I have been on the receiving end of "being ignored" by people I knew. It fucking hurts. The more it happens, the more I withdraw socially.
Last year I was living in a hostel (basically a very cheap hotel) for a few months. About a month in I realized I'd probably be stuck there for a while and started to make myself at home.
I started buying dishes for the shared kitchen. People kept "borrowing" them, so new guests would come, cook something, and have no fork. So I made sure there were always dishes.
The kitchen was a dreadful place. Deathly quiet. This strange tension in the air. Everyone was avoiding eye contact. There was a kind of toxic miasma about the place, and the unspoken agreement was to leave it undisturbed.
I, the heretic: I would greet people! I would greet people who were in the same space as me.
I am told this was considered normal, by our ancestors. In my case, it was partly "it's morally wrong not to greet them", and partly social anxiety around strangers. (In both cases, my autism ;)
So I solved that problem by just saying hello to everyone. I made the tension go away by saying hello.
Two weeks later I had like twelve friends. They started talking to each other, and a whole community formed in the kitchen. It was great.
I thought that was pretty cool. It also got me thinking about how, if I had been able to find a studio apartment or something, I might have ended up with zero friends instead.
In the context of the loneliness epidemic, I have to wonder if the shared kitchen is one answer. More precisely: the absence of a private one. (It sounds harsh, but the alternative... we are currently living through.)
I love this clip from the 90's TV show Northern Exposure on the same subject:
....or you could put whatever silly wording onto it, like some of the Gym-influencers are doing, like "do the Bear of X exercise...." - there are no defined/coined terms for exercises globally.
Reminds me approach that you get in nearly every book on "How to meet girls".
Systematic, efficient.
Played this game myself. And I did it when moved to the US with a limited English and lack of understanding of the local culture and traditions.
After a few years of dedicated practice, moved me from the state that author describes to the complete lack of fear talking to strangers, I can easily make nearly ever conversation warmer, deeper and more relaxed.
------
A couple more comments, based on personal experience:
[1] It works better if place where you meet is your deep comfort zone, a very familiar place
- gym, if you are going there for some time, know where each type of equipment is.
- dance venue that you were going dancing for a while
- art class
- etc
[2] It helps a lot if you are quite proficient in the activity, expertise brings respect, and higher social status by itself, even when you do not talk to anyone.
[a] in the gym ideal technique > strength > looks / size of your muscles.
- Third class in powerlifting, based on Soviet grading system is a threshold, passing which life changes (question of months, maybe a year). You get more respect from men and curiosity from women, and you get more confident, because you got stronger: https://www.sportscategory.info/en/powerlifting
- As your shoulders get broader, fat fat percentage goes down - it improves your appearance -> your confidence -> helps as well.
[b] Dance venue is a great place to meet people and address your fears / issues. Rule of the game - during the class before the social part teacher makes you switch partners => you will be forced to introduce yourself to the partner, this person cannot turn away and will need to reply, introduce themselves.
Later when social part starts - people switch partners every dance =>
- you start with inviting for a dance people whom you already met during the introductory class.
- In 3 hours of social dancing you dance with 20+ people
- As your skill grows (question of weeks-months) and dancing with you is not torture anymore, but quite the opposite - it is enjoyable => you get more relaxed, people want to dance with you => conversations start all the time
- In dancing, as a man you lead, and this transfers to other activities (helped to become a lecturer teacher in University), but you also better lead the conversation. I.e. it is not a random exchange of information anymore, but you can vary it's direction and emotional component.
---
[3] Some places are better than others.
It is good to go to the gym, to get more friends, but not directly. I do not like talking to people in the gym, I suspect that other people as well.
you are recovering between sets, focussing on the audiobook, moving weights - you are always busy with something. I also heard that women do not like talking to men in the gym as they may feel "no in the best form", i.e. for her - talking to men feels comfortable, when she took shower, picked a cloths that fits her, not when she is sweaty, struggling with weights and sees other ladies in the gym who are more fit.
Places like:
- climbing gym <- very social activity where you solve same problems - trying to climb a route. You can just tell someone who struggled to climb a bouldering problem something like: "Nice!", "Good job!", "Well done", and ask for a tip.
Ot if you already climbed it - give a tip yourself. These are natural openers.
If you climb similar level of problem, you will get stack in the gym in the same spots, taking a break between tries - universe will force you to talk and socialize.
- Dance venue, as I mentioned above
- Hikes
- any types of group classes: scuba diving, wine tasting, art classes, etc will do the job quite well
If you want to talk to men at the gym it's easy and no need for awkward scripts. Just ask for a spot. Most guys will feel honoured to be asked as you're showing trust in them. They'll spot you and then just talk about lifting. I met loads of guys this way.
Don't talk to girls you're attracted to, though. They can tell. If they want you to talk to them they'll give you signs. But that's a whole other thing.
The bullet point list in the intro was so relatable. It brought back some still painful memories. I often wish I could go back in time and do some of those things differently. I don't know what I was afraid of, but I missed out on so many connections.
Where should you meet them? I’m gay and have no stake in this, but it does seem like pretty much every space you would meet someone is a no go zone for this.
> Don't talk to girls you're attracted to, though. They can tell. If they want you to talk to them they'll give you signs. But that's a whole other thing.
What if you never receive any "signs", as far as you can tell? Should you never talk to girls?
> Pretended I didn’t know a childhood friend when they said hi because I didn’t know how to act around people I used to know
In high school because people thought I was a snob or something because of my social awkwardness. I love talking to people but absolutely hate initiating conversations. I love looking people in the eye when they're talking and hate looking at people as a I pass, so I usually don't even know who is walking near me. It's kind of crippling (and this is after it's gotten much better over time).
Was interesting to read this post because I've always been an extrovert and have never had trouble making friends. I usually make friends quickly ... and my problem is in the other direction ... I have too many friends and people get mad at me because I don't have the time to keep up with every relationship I've built in 40+ years.
I've been a best man 6 times. A groomsman 20+ times. I'm spread really thin now that I also have kids and a wife and family commitments.
Sometimes I actually crave solitude more than anything else.
Reading this post is almost like reading about another tribe from a distant place, and what it feels like to live their lives.
Is it weird that I'm kind of envious of this guy and his life? Not enough to trade places ... because I'd miss my wife and kids and close friends ... but if I could just like be him for a few weeks and then come back to my life.
This is absolutely bonkers to me. We're not here to be scientifically experimented on or to make you feel better about yourself. The very idea that OP learned about places and activities that people participate in explicitly to be social and, instead, chose to touch people when they're not clearly wanting to chat is just wild.
What do we have to do to discourage you from touching us?
I mean I guess I'm glad that you're trying to resolve your anxiety. Self improvement is good for some people. I just wish it weren't at the expense of others.
dpkirchner was right, I did mention tapping people on the shoulder to get their attention. However I thought about it and I could only remember doing it once; the rest of the time, being in front of them was enough. So I just updated the article and removed the "tapping people on the shoulder" part, if you can't find it
I had a friend years ago that was truly amazing at interacting with people. She could, and did, talk to anyone - a rich guy with a $20K watch or a homeless guy; it didn't matter to her. And, the thing that really stuck with me is she always left the people that she interacted with feeling better. Always. I have numerous memories of her conversing with people and watching their expressions or body language completely change in a matter of minutes.
Anyway, that's the part I've tried to focus on - making at least one person I interact with everyday feel better. It doesn't have to be a major, life-changing interaction, just inject a tiny bit of positivity into someone's life. The main thing I realized was that I had to surrender the fear of being perceived as cheesy, corny, fake or manipulative. I think it's gone well; I hope I've made others feel better, if only for a moment. But honestly, I think it's helped me the most.
I don't think is a viable strategy for building a social life. Gym attracts asocial weirdos (not an insult, I happen to be one). I would consider getting a really hobby or switching jobs. There's a lot of turnover in the food service industry, plenty of chances to meet new people. If you're an unemployed CS grad what do you have to lose? The best thing though would be finding a romantic partner and just devoting yourself to that person, instead of moving from one fleeting friendship to another.
If talking to random strangers worked then people would be doing this more often.
The problem is that it's usually extremely unlikely that you actually have something in common with a random stranger. I mean it's fine if you enjoy popular things and do typical activities AND you like having lots of casual friendships, but if you have a distinct personality or you prefer to build deeper connections, then "send to all" approach doesn't work.
I started being nicer to people and I realized I found myself taking part in conversations that I simply did not enjoy.
Another trick is that people are usually nicer to you if you talk to them after having gone to the same place at the same time for a while. If you smile and waive at them a few times before you go and talk to them, you've built a bit of familiarity by nature of being a "regular" and aren't just cold approaching people you've never seen.
My advice is to go to nature and leave the built environment. You are anxious because you are living in an artificial environment which is not doing you any favors. When you arrive in a calmer place you will find different people and greater peace. Moving leaves, the sound of wind and birds, sunshine on your skin, fresh air, the smell of the earth after rain, distant views: these are things that make us feel happy and safe due to evolutionary affinity. You don't get them on a concrete cliff in an apartment or lifting in a room with commuter phone zombies and 'roid droids.
Or just nicer cities. Most American cities are hostile to human enjoyment. Filled with noisy cars and combustion exhaust.
There are plenty of cities around the world built for people to walk around, without all the noise, stress, and air pollution. Cities and people themselves aren’t noisy.
So thankful that people do this and chronicle this...our society is getting more and more isolated, it feels. This (I FEEL LIKE, could be wrong, I'm kinda a boomer now haha) was more common 'back in the day' and now some people do it as a social experiment.
I can't recommend going doorknocking for a cause you care about, enough. Its maybe a half-day, you'll find most people aren't like the angry commenters on twitter, you'll meet people in your community and it makes you more confident talking to strangers!
Please don't let Reddit warp your perception of reality. It is just a corner of the web full of awkward and negative people (and bots these days). In real life, there is always people socialising at gyms, especially small ones, even received a random compliment a couple of weeks ago by someone I never met.
It's obvious in hindsight but to me its really interesting you can collect data points on the community just by chatting with them. Maybe you could guess, by appearance or behaviour or something, whether most people at the gym are university students, or gym bros, or something else.
But by chatting with them, the world seems a bit bigger. And even if you don't see them again often, or don't chat again, its just nice that you have some level of familiarity and learn new things you wouldn't know unless you chatted with them. And although sometimes you have that awkward uncomfortable short conversation, every once in a while, you make a new friend. That is life, I suppose.
Most of the people in my gym would not thank me for talking to them. They rarely talk to each other unless they know each other outside. It may be a cultural thing.
I don't have much issues talking to people, but I have issues maintaining friendship. I came to the conclusion that my relation to people has been fucked up by sexism and its consequences, probably because I think about it too much.
As a male all my friendship with heterosexual males end up being frustrating and diaappointing. They can behave when you meet them with their partners but whenever you go out with alone they can't help acting like alphassholes making derogatory comments about women they see in the street. In fact even homosexual male oten can't help acting like Neanderthals too. I am not under any illusion that women behave much better when they are in groups but I have had less occasions to hear their comments so keep a more candid view.
I tend to have more interesting experience with women but I always find it skewed. I rarely interact with strangers because I don't want to be that guy they could feel is harassing or mansplaining them.
Two recent examples, funnily both happening while riding my bike:
- oveetook a woman on the road riding a bike with a bent drop bar. As I glanced over and said hello I realized that handlebar was flexing at every pedal stroke and knowing the fatigue limit of aluminium I assumed it was alrady cracked and was staying in one piece only with the help of the bar tape. I wanted to warn her about the risk of riding with a handlebar that could break anytime and would have gladly offered her to fix her bike for free as we were close to home and I have some spare parts in mint state basically waiting to be used. But I was so afraid of mansplaining her that I just ler her go, hoping she would not lose her teeth in the near future.
- last sunday, after a quick stop to take some pictures. When I hoped back on the bike and was progressively accelerating to my cruising speed, two women overtook me. Despite having a friendly hello, I realized later that I was just 2 meters behind and we had more or less the same cruising speed. I was afraid of making them uncomfortable following them as I realizwd one of them glanced several times over her shoulder. In hindsight I should have stopped again foe a minute but I decided to overtake and drop them to save them from that annoyance. They probably thought I was that guy trying to impress them while I was just escaping from an awkward situation.
With non strangers that I know from hobbies or work, I have had great relationships but I have always ended up losing contact. I am even more uncomfortable with those that have a partner as I feel like their is always like a question mark over wether going out with them alone would be seen as trying to date them. I have several ex colleagues that I genuinely wanted to stay in touch that I totally ignored for that very reason after switching job.
Another example is an ex colleague of mine, who was not at the time in a relationship. I had mentionned her to my partner several time as seeing her as a great friend as she had been very kind to me and offered genuine support at a time I was suffering. Since she had moved to another city we always mentionned meeting when we had a chance. Ultimately when planning a road trip with my girlfriend, we envisioned making a stop in that city and my girlfriend asked me if I wanted to message her. But then a few minutes later came THE QUESTION. How does she look? Is she pretty? I knew from that moment that it was a lost case and I just never messaged her and completely lost touch when I closed my social media accounts.
"As a male all my friendship with heterosexual males end up being frustrating and diaappointing. They can behave when you meet them with their partners but whenever you go out with alone they can't help acting like alphassholes making derogatory comments about women they see in the street."
I think you are hanging out with the wrong males. They aren't all like that in my experience. The problem I have had is quite opposite... When they get married, you often barely ever see them again, and then only at dinner parties and functions. I mean good luck to them (most of the ones I know have married decent women, but they spend remarkably little time with their unmarried friends outside the workplace.)
Just ask for a spot when you see someone available.
You humble yourself, you grow as a person by practicing communication, and you get to try to lift a little heavier as you know someone is there to help you when you eventually fail a rep (which is important if you're trying to bulk or get stronger). You thank them after and maybe even give/get a fist bump. That's it. Do this often while being mindful of people and their own workouts. One day, someone will ask YOU for a spot. Oblige.
Asking for a spot is absolutely a frequent and everyday occurrence at pretty much any gym. Most people are actually pretty honored when they are asked to spot someone's PR attempt.
You don't really have to make a ton of small talk unless both parties are open to it, but you'll get to know the regulars who will eventually talk to you.
One of the things I like about this is that OP is giving people genuine compliments without any particular agenda.
It reminds me of one of my favorite parts of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, where he tells a story about complimenting someone, and a student asks what he was hoping to gain from offering the compliment. Carnegie is incensed:
> I was waiting in line to register a letter in the Post Office at Thirty-Third Street and Eighth Avenue in New York. I noticed that the registry clerk was bored with his job[...] So while he was weighing my envelope, I remarked with enthusiasm: “I certainly wish I had your head of hair.”
> He looked up, half-startled, his face beaming with smiles. “Well, it isn’t as good as it used to be,” he said modestly. I assured him that although it might have lost some of its pristine glory, nevertheless it was still magnificent. He was immensely pleased. We carried on a pleasant little conversation, and the last thing he said to me was: “Many people have admired my hair.”
> I told this story once in public; and a man asked me afterwards: “What did you want to get out of him?”
> What was I trying to get out of him!!! What was I trying to get out of him!!!
> If we are so contemptibly selfish that we can’t radiate a little happiness and pass on a bit of honest appreciation without trying to screw something out of the other person in return—if our souls are no bigger than sour crab apples, we shall meet with the failure we so richly deserve.
> Oh yes, I did want something out of that chap. I wanted something priceless. And I got it. I got the feeling that I had done something for him without his being able to do anything whatever in return for me. That is a feeling that glows and sings in your memory long after the incident is passed.
I avoided this book for a long time. for some reason I got it in my head that it's a sort of red pilled book that teaches you how to manipulate people. I know it's very shallow on my side, but I somehow crystallized this opinion based on a few acquaintances that claimed to read it and instead that they include the name of a person they just met in every sentence because it made that person like them more.
Your comment made me consider reading it. This rant about radiating happiness towards people without expecting something in return gives me a different insight on his reasons for writing the book.
I might give it a shot. Thank you
> I avoided this book for a long time. for some reason I got it in my head that it's a sort of red pilled book that teaches you how to manipulate people.
FWIW this book came out in the 1930s, long before "red pilling" was a thing. I've read it before and it's not about manipulating people unless you consider being a genuinely sincere person to be manipulative in some way. It's a good book, if a little outdated, and, if I could summarize it in one glib sentence, its lesson is "If you want people to like you, then be nice to them, be genuine, and show enthusiasm and interest in what they show enthusiasm and interest in."
My read on the book was "humans are really good at telling if you genuinely care about them or not and will respond well to that, so you should genuinely care about the people around you, and good things will result from that overall, especially if you're not super mercenary about it."
Bill & Ted said it most pithily: be excellent to each other.
Serious question - what is your definition of "genuinely care"? The Carnegie example doesn't show "geninuely care" to me. It's nice, I think I should do it. Give people random but geninue complements. It's nice. It costs nothing. It makes both of us feel good. But, is that "genuinely care"?
I ask because I'm bad at conversation. I hear this "genuinely care" and I just, usually, can't get myself to do it. I don't care. I would like to have a nice conversation and I try to care in the moment but the odds are pretty high that 5 minutes after it's over I'll not even know their name and move on with my life. That's not "genuine care" to me.
I’m not so hung up on the semantics. The fact that you’ll likely never meet someone again can render an act of kindness towards them, no matter how small, more meaningful, not less.
Great quote choice!
Then that's a fallacious argument on several levels, e.g. because as the reader I am also a human who can tell, and so on.
How can you make yourself genuinely care about something you don't care about? It sounds as plausible as changing your own sexual orientation.
Not sure what the downvotes are for on this one. It depends a lot on what "genuine care" is supposed to mean. If you want to interpret that as a subconscious feeling then you're right. Feelings aren't normally controllable and calling them up on demand is pretty much impossible.
That being said, if you go through a bit of game theory and apply it to the real world - the experience of the last few millennia of recorded history is the strategy most likely to get people what they want is lots of communication and setting up win-win deals for everyone. Someone who reliably offers win-win deals has a natural advantage over the more common person who thinks in terms of win-lose deals. Communities that make a habit of setting up win-win deals for their members have an overwhelming advantage over those that don't. If you tap in to that type of thinking it tends to translate into taking a real interest in how other people are going because it is easier to set win-win deals up if you know what their problems and goals are. And a sensible sub-strategy is making sure to be as kind as possible to everyone to get into the habit of thinking empathically and keep channels of communication as open as possible.
So if "genuine care" means you literally feel something... nobody has much use for your feelings, we can't tell what your feelings are anyway and you probably can't call them up on demand. If "genuine care" means you try to figure out what other people want and then help them get it then that's simply good strategy and most people should find their way to it if they think about it for long enough. Some people have to think a bit harder than others and there are a few rare maniacs who really just want to cause pain and suffering. The maniacs are bad news.
Maybe just me, but two things -
1. You don't care about X until you do. Like, you can go for years without worrying cholesterol. And then you can have a reason to care about it and all of a sudden you do. The reason can come from something that forces your hand or just because you take an interest in a subject.
2. Altruism. Think less about care and more just doing without expecting anything back. People notice, especially with selfless conversation.
That's pretty close to "be like Keanu Reeves"!
I agree with you this was not Dale Carnegie's intent when he wrote the book, but alexmuresan probably takes issue because the "red pilling" crowd have used Carnegie's advice to manipulate people.
Personally, salespeople have randomly complimented me and repeated my name over and over, and on the receiving end it weirded me out. So the problem is that in certain situations there is an overarching "what did you want to get out of that person?". Don't be those people.
Strike up conversations because you enjoy people and their stories.
> Part of Cialdini’s large book-buying audience came because, like me, it wanted to learn how to become less often tricked by salesmen and circumstances. However, as an outcome not sought by Cialdini, who is a profoundly ethical man, a huge number of his books were bought by salesmen who wanted to learn how to become more effective in misleading customers.
(Poor Charlie's Almanack, Charlie Munger)
The inverse is true as well. I read it and thought it was great, but it also put me more on the defense as well. It is kind of sad how I can see relationships going from near symmetric to any kind of assymetry and it shocks me how many times they fall apart because I set limits (and not at all unreasonable limits). Too many many tread water, so i get it but... yeesh.
Yes, the problem is that every scammer and salesman uses these techniques also, and if you've run into a few of them, having a complete stranger approach you with the standard Dale Carnegie playbook immediately sets off alarm bells.
Yes this is obvious if you think about movies where people become friends or romantic partners- they are usually cold or unfriendly to each other in the first meeting which makes their later connection seem more authentic. I cannot imagine a movie post 1950s in which a man uses these tactics and gets the girl or the sale without difficulty. Of course movies are not real life but they do rely on some verasimilitude.
That's because a movie like that would be boring (at least if it took up more than a minimal amount of screen-time). Interesting stories require some form of conflict, and for movies that focus on romance, the conflict will be interpersonal.
Yeah, that's it exactly. Films aren't reality, although they can be a reflection of what we might think how reality should go. Af the end of the day, films are made to capture an audience, not to paint a perfect portrait of the real world.
Also, there are counterexamples to that person's claim, such as the film Before Sunrise, which is an excellent romance film that doesn't involve an arc where the characters are indifferent or dislike each other at first. The films Sideways and even Office Space defy that trope as well.
Selective memory. Plenty of movies do not require conflict before romance. La La Land, Being Again, Silver Linings Playbook, About Time, ... plenty of others.
Carnegie might not have seen it that way, but Charles Manson did. He admitted that he'd used the book as a manual.
I don't want to be too generalizing, but I found the book to be matching a lot of American cultural stereotypes (as I have experienced them) and most of it would just seem corny (but not terrible) to most people from European countries (less in the south or UK maybe).
Like, I don't even disagree with what he wrote, but most of the stuff just felt a little out of place and intruding on people who generally want to be left alone or keep it to small talk on a different level.
If Books Could Kill (which is notoriously against self-help books) did an episode on Dale Carnegie.
Even they said that he seemed to be a pretty alright guy who was genuinely nice to people in his personal life, not just in his public persona.
Someone turned me onto this podcast several months ago and, after a few episodes, my takeaway was they seem to be against every book they review. I couldn't find a single book they actually liked.
Assuming you're not joking, that's the point of the podcast... hence the title "If Books Could Kill". They're reviewing bad and possibly dangerous books.
Did they review the original text of the 1930s book that captures the intent of the writer or the scrubbed latest version which washes away the sexist, racist and problematic text written by the original author?
He was as nice as they can be for a white man living in 1930. Good for fellow white men, not good for anybody female or a different skin tone.
But the book has been changed over time to make it seem like he was always an "pretty alright guy"
I read it as a socially awkward but very bookish very young teen. My one quote summary is “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” I never became Mr. Popular but found it very helpful in trying to understand somethings that were unobtainable for me at the time.
I need to read it again, I think about it a few handful of times a year, many years later.
> FWIW this book came out in the 1930s, long before "red pilling" was a thing.
but long after The Prince was a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince
I've only heard of the Red Pill in reference to the Matrix. Does it have that idea from "The Prince"?
The Prince is the basic concept of red-pilling. I.e. take the red pill and be exposed to the realities of the world where nice guys finish last.
No literal red-pill as in the Matrix but the ideas that mainstream "red-pilling" espouses are those of The Prince.
No, The Prince is very literal.
Inspiration for the red pill (which represents choosing knowledge, however ugly, over pleasant ignorance) would be more like... the apple in the Garden of Eden. Or the Allegory of the Cave maybe. Or Alice in Wonderland (which Morpheus directly mentions in the Matrix)
Redpillers latched onto that red pill imagery because they view themselves as, you know, having the best grasp on reality. Unlike the poor ignorant masses. Or so they believe.
"Redpilled" views do have some things in common with Realpolitik, and The Prince, in the sense that they're kind of nakedly amoral and rather ugly.
I think the red pill is a direct reference to the matrix. Its kind of weird they have such degratory views on sex and gender, given the directors of their favorite movie they cant stop talking about.
For sure, the red pill is a direct reference to the Matrix. I think previous poster was asking if the Matrix took that idea from somewhere.
Yeah. I think the connection they see is that the reality Neo chose to confront (a humankind enslaved by machines) was unpleasant, and the redpill gang knows their version of reality is very ugly as well.And "Remember their name".
Hah. I'm ADHD and I used to be terrible about remembering people's names -- like, their names didn't even register and I couldn't tell you what it was 30 seconds later. It wasn't that I didn't care about the person, it was just that their name would never stick. Anyway, I finally made enough people feel bad and embarrassed myself enough that I started compensating and made a point to remember basically everybody's name that I met. The change was really surprising, people notice that sort of thing and they make an effort to return the same kind of energy. My general attitude about people since then has become a lot more positive because I realized that overall, most people really don't need a whole lot of impetus to show their better side, and it's not like it costs me anything to treat somebody with a little more consideration.
I wish the protocol was to introduce your name about 5-15 minutes into the conversation because then I would have some other information to attach it to. When it's the first piece of information I receive I think my brain just doesn't really know where to put it and it gets lost immediately. The "use their name several times in the first conversation" trick is a good workaround for this.
> I wish the protocol was to introduce your name about 5-15 minutes into the conversation because then I would have some other information to attach it to.
This is exactly what suave people do to get to know strangers outside of professional context. It's a common TV/movie trope. Asking a stranger's name puts them on the defensive.
As someone with very similar issues with names, how did you start remembering names?
I have a list in reminders called names so when someone tells me their name as soon as I can use my phone without it being impolite I open it up and add a quick note with the names.
- neighbour watering lawn Jack, wife Gemma, daughter Jane
Then I try to remember it later in the day and confirm with the note. I do that the next couple days and it's locked in and I can delete the note.
I've found that the same works for me when I put forth the tiny bit of time and effort to actually do it.
Just a quick note somewhere (phone is easy-enough, or for a long time I carried a waterproof Field Notes notebook with a Fisher Space Pen and that worked a bit better), to be reviewed later.
Maybe that review happens an hour from now. Maybe it happens in a week, or a month. Or maybe all of these. Refreshers are good.
I don't even have to write much, if anything, about the person; the mere act of taking down the names usually helps a ton with my ability to recall the context later.
If I can remember when and where I took that note (which I can often do very easily), then the rest of the details fill themselves in quite nicely.
(I don't erase the notes, so as to let them remain useful to me later. I don't care if that creeps anyone out; my intentions are pure and the problem I'm trying to solve is very real. Its creep-value is really no worse than the contact lists that I've transferred between cell phones, pocket computers, and now pocket supercomputers for nearly a quarter of a century.)
The creep-value of keeping your lists is zero. It's no different to a journal or the options you gave.
I just delete the ones from mine after a while since they aren't needed and makes it more likely to lose focus on the new ones I'm still actively remembering.
exactly this, but with geofenced reminders so that i'm quizzed into remembering them.
Do try to follow the advice of my sibling comments, but its also okay to find out you are simply really bad at remembering names. I think I'm in the bottom 10% percent in that regard. The only way I can somewhat manage to remember the names of the people I would like to is to use Anki (spaced repetition) on a semi-daily bases. This comes down to what others would consider a crazy amount of work, but at least it is somewhat successful. It frustrating for the long tail of people I might not meet again, but where it still would be really helpful to know their name. Where I really fail is situations that don't allow me to write down names shortly after they were used, which is often the case in introduction rounds. Trying to constantly repeat all names in my head means I'm missing on the other stuff people say.
As you point out, in some cases it's better to just accept that you're not good with names if the effort of trying to deal with it is affecting your other interaction with people. A former neighbour of mine was so bad at names and faces that she wouldn't recognise you in the street and walk right past you, making it seem like she was blanking you. Once I experienced that I realised that simply not being able to remember someone's name wasn't really such a killer, a lot of the time you can cover it up. Also, while you may feel bad about it, it's possible the other person has barely even noticed it, or if they have will forget about it 30 seconds later.
For me it just required being "consciously conscious" (if that makes sense), motivated by the thought of the inevitable embarrassment if I didn't remember their name.
I started out by anticipating that somebody would tell me their name at some point and repeating it in my head a few times when I heard it in the conversation. It helps to round off the conversation with "thanks $NAME, pleasure meeting you." so the name is something that gets used and isn't a bit of stale trivia. After the exchange I'd consciously go through what their name was and what they said, trying to attach associations to it. You've got to give them some space in your head. It was kind of a ritual I'd do, like how before I go out I do the "wallet, keys, phone" thing. Now I just do it automatically because of all the repetition.
Honestly I think the biggest things are:
- remembering to make the effort - the anticipation of hearing it, and - using of the name
Along with the sibling comments I'd mention that being afraid to forget someone's name doesn't help you remember it. Be accepting of the limits of your memory and don't be afraid to ask again. If you're concerned they may be offended then being open about ADHD is always a fair mitigating tactic.
Make up a mnemonic that makes fun of them in a really horrible way and don't tell them it. The more offensive, the better it will stick in your brain because it's so bad.
Deliberately reuse their name in that first conversation and trust you can recall it. It takes discipline and practice I.e at the end of the day, picture the new people you met and repeat their names when you get home. That works about 80% for me
A trick I learned is to picture their name written across their forehead (visualize each letter). It works pretty well.
Mine is to associate them with a famous person or character of the same name, and make a point of refreshing their name in my mind soon after meeting, and then more later. it’s not perfect but name retention went through the roof for me.
AR glasses killer app.
Imaginary VR
I remember the book saying something like "a person's name is the most beautiful sound in the world to them." The book may say to say their name back to them (I don't remember right now), but that's not what I took away from it. It reminded me of when people would make fun of my name (first and/or last) or bring up someone famous who has the same first ("Donald Duck") or last name ("are you related Joan Rivers?"), or someone famous who sounds like my first and last name put together (Doc Rivers), and I never thought it was funny. When I see people make fun of other people's names, the recipient never seemed to enjoy it either.
My full first name is Joshua, but when I was a kid everyone would just call me Josh. That was until 5th grade, when another Josh joined my class, and whose last name just happened to come right before mine in the roll call. I loathed that he "stole" my name and (in my head) made me sound like the repeat, so from that point on I decided that I would be Joshua because it sounded "fancier" to me. Years later, my choir teacher would sing that old "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho" song whenever he passed me in the hallways, which always made me laugh.
I've got a life long friend who's full first name is Josh, derived from the Japanese name Yosh. People often try to call him Joshua and it annoys the hell out of him.
You’re for sure right about the name thing. It’s so hard to resist commenting on names for a lot of people, I think, due to the extreme asymmetry of novelty. When you meet someone named Michael Jackson, that’s such novel information to you: “there’s a guy right here in front of me who is named the same thing as a famous musician!” Meanwhile, from Michael’s perspective, they’ve been named Michael Jackson and getting comments and jokes about it near-daily for 35 years - and it’s really a boring non-story - they’re named after their grandfather, their parents didn’t care about the other Michael Jackson one way or the other, and they themselves also neither like or hate MJ.
This is like when you're working retail and the scanner glitches or the barcode isn't registered and the customer says "I guess that one's free then!" and you have to say "ha ha, very droll sir" as if you didn't hear that same joke yesterday.
> you have to say "ha ha, very droll sir"
I completely support the defensive adoption of a sardonic butler-persona for everybody on the other side of a cash-register. :p
They might like to hear "Michael Jackson? Like the guy who wrote the book about scotch??" once in a while
I had a friend named Michael Jackson who went by a different first name. I didn't even know until several years later when he showed a group of us his drivers license and accidentally outed himself.
Like the Michael Bolton character in Office Space.
Michael... Bolton?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhxRAsnizbk
This is 100% what I was thinking of, I considered using that name in my comment actually!!
"Well, you could go by Mike instead of Michael."
"Why should I have to change? He's the one who sucks!"
Yeah, you also have to remember that someone has heard every possible joke about their name and their appearance a million times.
I do think Dale Carnegie overemphasizes the importance of saying people's names, and in fact saying people's names in conversation often sounds forced and manipulative, but maybe that's just a cultural shift over the past century.
I've got the same last name as a sitcom character from the 1980s. I used to get so tired of people pointing that out. Luckily nobody really remembers the show anymore, let alone the character.
But, yeah, it usually sets off my spidey sense when somebody keeps using my first name in conversation. It's just seems weirdly unnecessary, so it makes me wonder why they're doing it.
I don’t have any problem with my name, and it feels manipulative and overfamiliar and I assume someone’s trying to Carnegie me into something if they use it.
Doc Rivers is an awesome name though.
Saying someone's name back to them is also a memory trick to help yourself remember their name for next time.
If I'm trying to remember someone's name, I'll say it at the end of interactions more often than I normally would and make some kind of memory device out of it. If it's someone at a place I frequent, I'll add a location based reminder. It's a little much, but I've found that people, more often than not, do like being called by their names.
Oh, no, please don't. Don't use my name before we are actual friends with actual business in remembering each others names. There's very few things that more strongly put me on alert against a person than them mentioning my name to me.
Mr. Carnegie should update his book with a few sentences about how using LLMs to flatter people is not being genuine.
He would almost certainly disagree.
That would be quite a feat, given that Mr. Carnegie was born in the 1800's and died over 70 years ago.
I'm convinced that 99% of the people who criticize or even just talk about that book have never actually read it, and have zero idea what they're talking about. It's just in that Ayn Rand bucket of books that people talk about, because they see other people getting likes and upvotes for it.
Ayn Rand was a pretty terrible person. But you’re right that there are some interesting ideas in her books. Howard Roark in The Fountainhead is exceedingly interesting as a person living genuinely without much regard for societal norms and expectations. There’s some weird stuff in that book, but Howard Roark is very interesting. A trimmed down version of The Fountainhead would be much better received, I think. (It’s over 700 pages and has some odd and unnecessary scenes where some of Ayn Rand’s less-than-great views probably shine through. It would also just benefit from some good editing.)
Ayn Rand was never the type to submit to heavy editing. There is a better novel hiding in there to be sure.
Agreed. Although speaking from the memory, the chapter on keeping wife happy is best not taken literally in modern day and age. It dated considerably, considering how women are way independent nowadays, even if at the time it was relevant.
I am curious what it was that made you say this.
In general I am of the opinion that a happy woman is a happy woman and that this doesn't look fundamentally different in 2026 than it did in 1926.
I've not read the book, but how can a book about talking to people (if that's what it is) be a "little outdated"?
Some of the stories / aphorisms refer to things that just like, don't exist anymore.
Yeah, that's what I meant by it being outdated. He uses a lot of examples and aphorisms from the 1930s, which sometimes come off as a little bit quaint or folksy almost 100 years later. I'll also mention that the book was written for men "influencing" other men; any reference to women in the book is usually in the context of them being objects that should be managed using the author's techniques.
I'm not sure why this would be downvoted. I hope that people consider treating women like objects to be outdated and problematic.
That said, it also has all the self help faults. It repeats itself a lot, is full of happy anecdotes that repeat the same thing yet again, and could have fit in a chapter.
I find that I don't necessarily mind when a book repeats itself, and a good helping of anecdotes can help a point get across. Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, "I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." Trying to distill a book down to the minimum logically equivalent length is like eating the smallest possible portion of a supplement one time and then wondering why it doesn't do anything for you.
My father gave me this book when I was 12 or 13. It unlocked everything, sort of permission for my teen self to put himself out there. Years later, I've made friends all over the world, some have been in my life for more than 3 decades now, and I continue to make new ones basically by initiating a lot of conversations. I look for something to naturally lean into to start with. For example, I saw a guy in the coffee place with his work badge on so I asked, "coming or going [to work]." Kicked off a 30 min conversation about the economy (he worked at a pawn shop as it turns out and knew a lot about gold, regional poverty, etc). Saw him a couple days later and we picked right back up. The other thing I do is keep it soft focused on them, 100%, until they ask me about me. Nothing kills a conversation faster than someone with a conversational agenda, ie, an go-to opinion. Anyway, I wish more people would start random conversations - it really helps build community.
> The other thing I do is keep it soft focused on them, 100%, until they ask me about me.
This is the big one. People like to talk about themselves, and often use others' stories to segue it into something about themselves.
I realized at some point if you can avoid doing that, and instead commit yourself to investing in a person's story - ask questions, make comments, etc, they'll think the world of you and often won't even realize why.
One of us! I actively avoid talking about myself until asked. (I'm usually not.) Most people love being the center of attention.
Would you say the reading level of the book is easy enough for a young kid? Did you struggle at all in reading it?
Some of the examples are going to be corny for a young kid, but none of the core concepts are too challenging. Some fashion of the knowledge has probably already been communicated to children, it is just a codification of social interaction that not everyone has passively absorbed.
It's pretty easy to read (but disclaimer : I read the french translation) but it's still nothing more than a list of useful advices on the topic. So the prerequisite is that you have to be interested by the idea of the book in the first place. But if you are, it's nothing more than a big blog post (a good one).
Thanks, that's doubly helpful ; I was thinking of gifting the French version and was also concerned the translation might be subpar.
Don't read the original, find a more abridged copy. The original gives too many examples for each point.
To be honest, the examples stuck with me. They illustrated tons of different social interaction examples that I have seldom, if never, encountered in my life, but have plenty to learn from.
I was given this book as a shy kid. I've read it multiple times. It really should be titled, "How To be a Decent Human". Show genuine interest in everyone you come across, and everyone's day ends up much better. I'm still bad at remembering names no matter how many tricks I use, but I'm really good at remembering other people's stories and interests. I also learned that so many people have amazing stories to share, and are just waiting for someone to ask.
If being friendly with people is manipulation then I don't really know what to say. I'm more likely to help someone if they are not being a jerk and vice versa.
> [The book "How to find friends" should actually be called "How To be a Decent Human"]
Well, that's basically the point.
I was in the same boat as you before I heard enough good things about it that I checked it out. After all, if it was really bad, I would be able to tell as much and stop reading it, nothing lost.
I can confirm it's really good. It's not manipulative at all. The book can large be summed up as "if you want other people to care about you and your desires, you need to care about them and theirs and SHOW them that this is the case: here's how."
> "if you want other people to care about you and your desires, you need to care about them and theirs and SHOW them that this is the case: here's how."
Isn't this highly manipulative?
It’s manipulative if you don’t care and pretend you do, especially to achieve a goal of your own.
It’s not manipulative if you cultivate the tendency to actually care about others, and not treat them like NPCs who are only important for your goals.
>if you cultivate the tendency to actually care about others
I suppose this is the question: can caring about others be "cultivated" or is it something we do without being able to affect how much we do it?
Like other skills it can absolutely be cultivated.
Even if one doesn't "naturally" care about others, it's also true that even from a totally selfish perspective it still kind of pays dividends to be a good person, be concerned with the welfare of the people around you, and build interpersonal connections.
There's limits to that, for sure. There are a number of biological bases for empathy. And being biological, it stands to reason that different people will have different capacities. But, it also certainly feels like a skill.
Here's another angle. A lot of people, perhaps maybe a lot of engineer types, struggle with empathy because the needs and wants of others just feel like a confusing sea of infinite possibilities. But here's a trick. At any given moment, any given human being is probably just trying to fill one of the needs on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
I think it can be cultivated.
Most people like watching movies or reading books. Other people are the main character of their own life, and I think you can learn to enjoy learning about them.
Only if you think of it that way -- making every human interaction purely transactional.
Conversely, there's something I've used as a guiding principle for a while now that isn't quite the same, but in the same direction: to receive help, be helpful.
Both of these also fall under the greater umbrella of "treat others as you would like to be treated".
It’s basically “If you want to be liked, you should try to be likable.”
Is the only way to not be manipulative to be a curmudgeonly jerk?
If being pleasant means being manipulative, then indeed everyone should try to be a bit more manipulative.
Yeah. It's only wrong if there's deception involved, or a failure to care about the needs of the other.
I take your point, but aren't most social interactions technically manipulative through this lens?
If you wear nice clothes and exercise, then are you just trying to manipulate people into thinking you have taste and are attractive?
If you work hard at your job and are responsive to your boss's requests, then are you just manipulating them into thinking you're a good worker and giving you a raise?
These tools can certainly be misused (see shitty salespeople), but I don't "attempting to convince others that you are cool and likable" is problematic and manipulative.
Just don't fake it. That's the part people have a problem with. I just read it as "if you want people to care about your shit, then it's only fair you care about theirs first."
No. Being nice to people such that they want to like you (of their own free will) is not manipulative.
Being nice so that people might like you is not manipulative. It’s pointing out that if you’re nice to other people, then other people will tend to like you. It’s something we teach to toddlers.
> Isn't this highly manipulative?
Let's rephrase that.
If you want people to give a f... about you, you need to actually give a f... about them and in a way that comes across. Here's how.
Still manipulative?
Don't be silly.
Influencing somebody is only wrong if you fail to care about their needs in a reciprocal way... the line you quoted specifically addresses that.
And it does not work for the given goal. People will lile telling you about them, but that wont imply they will ve interested in your stuff.
It will be one sided.
Oh, I'm glad!
Yeah, I don't think you'll find it a red-pill kind of book at all. I know what you mean about books like The 48 Laws of Power feeling like the world is 100% zero sum, so everything is about dominating or outplaying people.
How to Win Friends and Influence People is very much focused on win-win. There is an agenda to make friends and influence people, as you'd guess from the title, but the strategies are about taking a genuine interest in people and making them feel good.
It's almost 100 years old, so the style is kind of hokey, and only about half the advice resonated with me, but there are 3-4 lessons that had a major impact on me.
I think it's quite clearly the second part of the title. If it was just "How to Win Friends" it might be something more people don't dismiss just based on the title.
"... and Influence People" makes it sound like that's the purpose of befriending someone, i.e. getting them to do what you want, or to do something for you.
"Influence" is a perfectly neutral term.
Martin Luther King Jr. influenced people. Gandhi influenced people. Mozart influenced people. Your favorite teacher influenced you.
It seems to be a rather brilliant piece of marketing to put that phrase in the title. It raises curiosity in a way that a generic "make friends" does not. (The "win" is a subtle move also.)
Once the readers are drawn in, whether from base or nobler instincts, the book can try to influence its readers into being nice.
Only trouble is that it may push away those who are "already nice" enough to feel bad about manipulating people.
Truthfully (IIRC) the book is more about "Influencing People" than "Making Friends." But, it's about doing it in a genuine way.
I think it's puzzling that so many people here attach such a negative connotation to "influencing." I mean, my partner made me really hungry tonight when they cooked dinner and it smelled great. It influenced me. MLK influenced people. Etc. etc.
The book "Getting to Yes" covers similar terrain, from a different angle, but still targeting Win-Win, without sounding as manipulative as "influence people".
BTW, Dale Carnagey changed his name to crease a false association with Andrew Carnegie.
So there is good reason to distrust Dale and his followers.
I'm 100% with the GP - I've avoided reading the book due to the manipulative sound to the title... Ironically I have read The 48 Laws of Power, hah.
I read it though thinking "I'll bulwark myself against manipulators by understanding their tactics" whilst the "Influencing People" book just sounded like manipulative self-interest.
You've changed my mind; I'm going to read it right away.
I was in the same boat for a while, but I gave it a shot several years ago when I was doing a lot of driving every day and was powering through audiobooks. This might sound a little hyperbolic, but it actually ended up changing my life in a lot of little positive ways. For example, I used to work with a guy that got made fun of for some of his interests (nothing harsh or super hurtful, just poking fun). I was always really supportive of what he was into and asked questions about it. I wasn't trying to get anything out of it, I just remembered the book and thought it's nice to be nice. When he got married about a year into us working together, I was the only one from our job that he invited to his wedding.
> This rant about radiating happiness towards people without expecting something in return...
This was one of my main takeaways from the book. I would argue that you do get some things in return: richer relationships with the people you already know, pleasant encounters with people you may not know well, and increased enthusiasm for your own interests compounded by hearing someone else explain how enthusiastic they are about their interests.
If Books Could Kill did an episode on How to Win Friends and Influence People, it's an interesting listen. iirc the book was written by someone documenting what they learned while breaking into high society or some other class they were not a part of. So it's not so much about manipulating people but more about stroking egos and being as agreeable as possible to avoid any conflict. The podcasters make the point that it was written in the 30s when confrontation, being an individual, and sticking up for one's beliefs wasn't really possible while climbing the social ladder.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-win-friends-and...
Non-apple podcast link (including transcript): https://www.buzzsprout.com/2040953/episodes/17943742
Huh, having read the book and about Dale Carnegie, I completely disagree with that take. There's plenty of stories where he does the opposite of avoiding conflict and faces it straight on - such as when he just ignores a cop's random order for him to keep his dog on a leash at the park.
Cop’s telling someone to follow the law is the opposite of random.
I avoided the book after reading it high school and thinking along the same lines. I looked at the suggestions cynically.
A college program required I re-read it. That time, I read it as genuine suggestions of good faith actions. In that light, it was fantastic. Almost 30 years later, I still quote from it.
Your admirable openness to reconsideration reminds me of, "I could be wrong. I often am. Let's examine the facts."
> that teaches you how to manipulate people
Well, it's called "... and influence people", so I see where you were coming from in your assumption.
> for some reason I got it in my head that it's a sort of red pilled book that teaches you how to manipulate people.
It's two sides of the same coin. Many techniques in that book are things that both genuinely kind people and manipulators do, the difference is intent. In that sense the idea of the book is a bit of a Rorschach test, although the way the author goes about it makes it pretty clear it wasn't meant to teach manipulation.
When I read the book over a decade ago, it did not feel like a red pilled book, it felt like a guide for well-intentioned people to learn how to express that more effectively. On the spectrum between "people orientation" and "task orientation", I was a task oriented person learning how to navigate personal and professional relationships more like a well-adjusted person would, and I suspect I and everyone around me was happier for it.
I really appreciate this share. It's very honest.
Makes me think that anything taken too far can be a bad thing. Pity in its raw form is an incredibly empathetic side of our human nature and can be extraordinary.
However, if pity is made a reward system for the people receiving the empathy, it can be used manipulatively. I believe CS Lewis called it "a passion for pity" (I could be wrong).
The book really helped me put things into perspective as a teenager who was habitually "angry", and "on the less adept at social side of things"[0]. Had a much healthier time growing up afterwards. Honestly, I should re-read it.
[0]: I am not formally neurodivergent, but I wouldn't be surprised if I was mildly so.
As I teen I had the hardest time finding the "there" there.
With my unusual nervous system my expectation was "I know if I tried taking an interest in people all hell would break lose" and it would.
I think Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People [1] covers similar ground and is more complete and more specific.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effecti...
I think the association with red pill is probably because men in general read much less than they used to, and the books men do read tend to be nonfiction self-help.
However, How to Win Friends was written in an era where self-help didn’t have those connotations at all.
There is probably some deeper relationship with current reading trends and contemporary winner-takes-all society, but my impression was that the book was more about middle class aspirations e.g. being charming at a dinner party. Not some kind of Machiavellian social maneuvering like 48 laws of power (“crush your enemies completely”).
It's unfortunate that we treat all books like that as suspect. The goal isn't to manipulate people, but to connect with them! Give them what they want for a more mutually beneficial end result.
People are forgetting how to socialize but being social is more or less a straightforward formula. Sometimes people need a guide. It's not evil or manipulative.
It's a very good book, I haven't read it since I was a kid.
The title is unfortunate, and doesn't really reflect the book IMO.
It sounds like a seedy way to manipulate people and get what you want.
I think a more appropriate title would be "Treat people with kindness and decency and your life will probably be better as a result." Or "A manual for interacting with fellow humans".
I need to reread it actually.
Edit: It has been decades since I read it, but that is my recollection of it at least.
For some reason I thought of the book
"What do you care what other people think?"
which should be read after
"Surely, You're Joking Mr Feynman"
Completely unrelated books about curiosity not people skills, but still lots of fun.
(I also view the ability to influence people as independent from morality. It's like learning MMA or hacking or something. They're not inherently "good" or "bad" skills - your morality determines how you'll use them)
Ultimately I think it's great and I recommend it. It's certainly cheap enough! I'm sure there are a zillion copies on eBay for like two bucks.
It's a classic book but as many others have mentioned in comments, a lot of red pillers use this book as a Bible of sorts, so it's gotten a bit of a bad rap.
In my early adulthood I was deep into MLMs and internet marketing and this book was the Bible, but it was a bit tautological because it was assumed that everyone respected and venerated that book, so all the marketing materials (that we had to purchase of course!) referred to the book.
Indeed, the best way to get rich quick is to sell get rich quick schemes.
On another note, an equally good book that is also used for manipulation is How to argue and win every time by late lawyer Gerry Spence. The book does what it says on the tin but it's more on persuasion methods and framing, which of course can be used for nefarious purposes.
> The book does what it says on the tin but it's more on persuasion methods and framing, which of course can be used for nefarious purposes.
An interesting result of reading those books is one starts to recognize when one is being manipulated.
Just the other day a door-to-door salesman appeared at my door, and he tried a number of classic sales techniques on me. He lacked, however, some accouterments that a legitimate salesman would have, so I had to be pretty firm in saying no.
The book has an unfortunate title. It sounds transactional and manipulative. It could just as well have been named something like "How to communicate well with people."
> instead that they include the name of a person they just met in every sentence because it made that person like them more.
I've never read this book but have learned through cultural osmosis that this practice largely originated from it. I always found it rather stilted and ever since discovering where it came from I view it with a degree of suspicion. A contrasting, more generous reading is that the people who read the book and do this are trying to do more of the "win friends" part than "influence people." I'm also notoriously bad with names so I can't really blame somebody for perhaps trying to use mine verbally to commit it to memory :-).
No, you were correct to avoid it.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-win-friends-and...
I've seen many people express the same sentiments about this book.
"The title made it seem shady and underhanded and manipulative. But then I read it and it just says to be a genuinely nice person with no agenda. Everyone likes to be friends with that kind of person."
I think that's why people gravitate towards friendly dogs. Dogs have no deception in their intent, and they communicate it physically well before you reach them.
Animals in general are much more honest than people. They might sometimes engage in minor deceptions (although I sometimes wonder how much of that is projection based on our perceptions of their intentions), but they always make it clear where you stand with them. An animal will never pretend to like you to your face if they actually don't. Obviously it can be useful for humans to be able to deceive like this (e.g. maintaining cordial professional relationships with coworkers who you might never choose to spend time with if you didn't work with them), but as someone who struggles to read social cues and gain confidence about what people actually think of me, it can get exhausting.
"Focus on becoming a better person" is the chief lesson I took away from it. Easier said than done, but the 7 habits seem like good ones to me.
Same here I got this book as a present and haven't read it because it felt like one of the PUA/Huckster vibe books.
Guess I'm reading it too this weekend.
Same! The name spam phenomenon turned me off, but if it preaches compliments without expectations it must be my kind of book…
It's one of the worst-named books, and it's definitely worth reading. I can't recommend it enough.
That’s the only book you need to read, really. All modern books on this topic are derivatives of it.
It is a great book. I disagree though that all modern books on this are derivatives. I haven’t read many, but The Charisma Myth is a great book on human interactions, that I believe is very novel in its content and approach
Maybe a lot of the books do cover some of the same content, but that’s probably because human nature hasn’t changed much since the 30s, when Carnegie published his book
I haven't read the book but I always try to incorporate people's names into many sentences when they are a new acquaintance as it forces me to remember their name.
> they include the name of a person they just met in every sentence because it made that person like them more
That's stretching the definition of manipulation a bit. That's more like having (or emulating) charisma, which isn't a bad thing.
The book was written well before the internet was invented, but it still warns against exactly that kind of shallow manipulation.
The book may as well be called “how to be a cool person that is well liked and people respect”
See https://www.dailygood.org/story/2216/grief-is-praise-martin-...
Charles Manson claimed that he had read Carnegie's book while in prison in the fifties, and that it gave him some of the tools to manipulate people...
Yes, same here. The title hasn't aged well, I suppose.
Read the book. It's good. I have almost finished it and the biggest criticisms you could make of it, IMO, are "this is all just common sense!" or that the techniques, which are all essentially about treating people well and trying to understand their perspectives, could be abused by unscrupulous people.
The idea that the teachings could be misused frankly says more about the cynicism of the book's critics than the actual content of the book.
I'm curious what "red pilled" means to you.
I would think a "red pilled" book would focus on resisting manipulation, specifically emotional manipulation.
If you enjoy it, I would recommend picking through a lot of the classic Self Help books. They were popular for a reason! Wayne Dyer is a good read, Tony Robbins books are usually great (whatever you think of the author), even the much maligned Seven Habits is a really great book. There's even some pretty decent male-oriented stuff out there, like Iron John, Fire in the Belly, and "King, Warrior, Magician, Lover". Pyscho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz even inspired a Dali painting.
I think you're right to have been uneasy at the title because it's so capitalist in the framing. "Win" friends sounds capitalist, while "influence people" sounds a lot like the vapid propaganda networks we interact with every day
You may be confusing this book with the 48 Laws of Power which is absolutely a book no one on hackernews should read because we have enough people in the tech industry scheming to get the upper hand on society as is.
I read it and you will soon be under my sway! HAHAHAHHAHHAAAA
"Manipulation" is a negative form of influence. You can influence people positivly and you can influence people negativly. It's possible to alter peoples behaviour by influencing them in a positive way (for example: Leading by example), in fact, this is the job of any good leader.
Changing peoples behaviours isn't always the negative form of manipulation.
"Machiavellian" is probably a better term for a book that describes how to manipulate people (for your own benefit).
I don't think a red pilled book would teach you how to manipulate people. I think it would be an attempt to manipulate you towards a specific (red pilled) view of the world.
This rant about radiating happiness towards people without expecting something in return...
The narrator explicitly says he gets something in return though. I think it's important to understand that seemingly charitable acts are never 100% altruistic, and while that's not necessarily a moral judgement, it is still important to understand people's motivations for doing things.
As long as you’re open to their motivation being “it makes them feel good” or “they like making other people happy.” The cynical view is that everyone is fundamentally deeply selfish.
If you go deep enough, you can convince yourself of that, but you lose what Carnegie talks about. You create your own experience of other people by carrying assumptions like that.
It’s been a while since I read it, but I don’t remember it being particularly preachy about why you’d want to make friends or influence people - whether you were doing so out of some nefarious manipulative reason, or out of the genuine human goodness of your heart - I think it’s more just about how to do so.
And the ‘how’ generally revolves around just being nice to people - being kind, taking care, noticing, being generous and observant and engaging. The whole idea is that you are good to them, which means they’ll be good to you.
All of which I was already intimately familiar with - I actually don’t think I read anything new in that book, it all seemed like pretty standard stuff… but then again there will always be stuff that seems obvious to you, and it a revelation to others.
I certainly think you could do much worse than treating others according to how that book instructs.
Well, your instinct is right from the title. “influence” is a euphemism for “manipulate.”
Affecting influence is subtle manipulation. A compliment about someone’s hair is great if you genuinely admire their hair.
But if you read a book about influencing people and suddenly start complimenting people’s hair, time for some introspection.
> "influence is a euphemism for manipulate"
Strongly disagree with this sentiment. Influence can have a lot of sources, from institutional authority to simply being persuasive, which is distinct from manipulation.
In this context influence and persuasion are being used interchangeably, but persuasion is the act of winning someone over to your point of view, so they understand the topic as you do. It respects their autonomy and acknowledges that people can change their mind when presented with different perspectives. Oftentimes, being likeable (or at least respectable) is a prerequisite for getting someone to listen to you in the first place, so it's a central pillar to being influential.
Manipulation on the other hand, doesn't respect someone's autonomy. It might involve deception, threats, coercion, etc, but it ultimately aims to make someone do something that they don't want to do.
If you're getting a little kid to eat his dinner for instance, persuasion might appeal to his motivations (e.g. having more energy to run faster), while manipulation might look like saying not eating would make his mom sad (guilt tripping), or that he wouldn't get to play with his favorite toy (threat).
I'd argue that {someone who is good at getting desired outcomes} is going to have a toolbox of carrots, sticks, and other things and I think sometimes you are going to be 100% ethically happy with how a situation went and sometimes you are going to feel some conflict between your values. [1]
I'm not sure where the line between "manipulation" and "persuasion" is exactly but certainly a person's intent and how they think about themselves and other people has something to do with it. There are many feats that I can do today with ease that my evil twin coveted a few years ago and just couldn't do because he had a bad attitude.
Manipulation is about trickery. Influence does not have to be manipulation. Persuasion through reason is influence.
I think that’s exactly what they’re saying. Influence doesn’t have to be manipulative, but it sure can be. Here’s the difference:
Influence for influence sake is selfishly motivated. Doing something charitable garners influence. Influence is a side-effect and not the intended goal—unless it is, and then it’s manipulation.
The fact is correct that the word influence is a euphemism for manipulation. The very fact that people are confused about this is case-in-point on the subtlety of the notion.
> Influence doesn’t have to be manipulative
> influence is a euphemism for manipulation
Surely you can see that your statements contradict each other.
> Influence for influence sake is selfishly motivated.
Hard disagree. It certainly can be, but doesn’t have to be. A person can be a positive influence for no other reason than they feel like it’s a good thing to do. You could influence your coworkers to be better engineers and not gain anything from it.
I mean, we could retreat to the “oh you feel good about it, so it’s still selfish” stance, but that’s uninteresting.
> But if you read a book about influencing people and suddenly start complimenting people’s hair, time for some introspection.
The book's also apparently about winning friends, as well. And the excerpt above seems to be about getting better at being nice to people without an agenda.
I think this is a very subjective matter and depends on how negatively connoted someone's perception of the word 'manipulate' is. By your definition, I would consider 'studying/learning' also a form of manipulation.
Did I say not to read the book?
I think the idea is to find things true to you to genuinely compliment?
The idea is to have genuine compassion without any agenda, actually. Or on a deeper level, just acknowledge people exist, and let them know that their existence is noticed.
Nothing more, nothing less.
> “influence” is a euphemism for “manipulate.”
This is exactly what he’s talking about.
The premise of the book is essentially, “what if you were a generally nice person who deserved friends”.
The whole “you could only possibly pretend to care about other people” response to the book is vaguely psychopathic.
> The whole “you could only possibly pretend to care about other people” response to the book is vaguely psychopathic.
I prefer to interpret it charitably: the line between influence and manipulation can be pretty fuzzy, and some people come to a conclusion of, basically, "don't do it at all because it's always selfish."
I think it's a flawed view because it's impossible to go through life not influencing anyone and not wanting anything from anyone, so you may as well try to do it in a way that is generally win-win or at least not win-lose.
I think the most charitable interpretation would be that people expressing that view are deeply self-conscious. They are afraid if they followed the advice in the book, they might be perceived as manipulative and they want to avoid that possibility. They hide from that fear by insisting that it actually must be manipulative.
Outside of that, I can only see less charitable interpretations. e.g. The idea that the only reason someone could ever compliment another person is to manipulate them says either that the person holding the idea literally can’t imagine interacting positively with someone for non-selfish reasons (psychopathy) or that they hold such low opinion of the rest of humanity that they believe no one else could (misanthropy).
It's great in its simplicity. In a way, it's kind of a sneaky way to make a wholesome point.
I mean, the title really really implies something potentially dark. But it's just solid, simple stuff through and though.
For me it really hits home that ideas don't have to be new or fresh or amazing to be important. We just need reminders of like, kindergarten ethics.
Almost like don't judge a book by its cover, just like humans
> without any particular agenda.
This is a very important part of learning how to have real conversations with people.
There is too much bad advice about using tricks or hacks to try to start friendly conversations with people. It’s refreshing to see someone learning that a key to healthy conversation is having selfless motives.
Something surprising about How to Win Friends and Influence People is that it’s not as manipulative as the title suggests. A key theme of the book is that you need to be genuine in your interactions. You can’t pretend to be interested in what other people say, you have to actually approach the conversation with interest.
People will see through hidden agendas and ulterior motives. The bad social advice tries to use too many tricks and hacks to formulate a set of interactions that sound good when you’re reading about them but have the wrong effect when you go into the world and interact with other people with a hidden agenda.
This is why I caution against all of the conversation hacks that are recommended, like coming up with excuses to ask someone for a favor (that you don’t really need) as a way to get them into a conversation or pretending to be interested in their life story when you’re only interested in getting someone to talk to you. Others will recognize when there are hidden agendas. It doesn’t set you up for success.
I once heard "creepiness" defined as "becoming invested in advance in a particular outcome to a social interaction".
In that sense, trying tricks in order to have a "successful conversation" will always fail so long as you are emotionally invested in advance in the conversation being "successful".
It's far better to be genuine and accept that you have only so much control over how things will go.
It's ok to sort of passively want things, everyone does, but the real problem is when you try to try to subtly force an outcome that isn't natural. That's when people get uncomfortable.
If a stranger is light and friendly and asks to hang out, no problem. If they start getting subtly frustrated about your response, your spider sense goes off.
I always try to compliment people if I see they're taking a lot of pride in their work or something they're doing. I was at a conference where the staff each had a coffee/tea/sweets station to maintain. I noticed one woman cleaning and polishing and being super fastidious. I wanted to compliment her, but then I debated with myself if that would be patronizing somehow. Finally, I decided to tell her she had a very nice station, and she just beamed ear-to-ear in response.
Since everyone else is sharing their experiences with this book here is mine:
Reading this books was a huge turning point for me as someone with diagnosed mild Autism. I think a lot of the things in this books are fairly obvious to non neuro-divergent folks. But for me, it was like a manual on how to handle myself in social situations, a thing that was mysterious and frustrating to me before. I wouldn't say I am now some sort of socialite, but I am far from the days of being being excluded from basically every social group I attempted to be part of.
Interesting when I read the book I wanted to rename it to "How to win fake friends and manipulate people." Maybe I missed the humble passages.
That book is very good. However, for some (including me at some point), it can be a bit advanced
I highly recommend the book The Charisma Myth, it covers a lot of the same topics, including very good exercises, to help understand and develop human interactions in general
Personally, it helped me be able to get into, the situations that the first book assumes the reader is already in, or comfortable with (like talking to strangers)
This seems to be a cultural problem to me.
There are societies where talking to strangers all over the place is normal, without any hidden agenda.
Or even dancing with random people at the club, many times never to be seen again. Just to give a more intim kind of example.
While in other cultures, seems that unless there is something to gain from the effort, people don't even try.
> ... OP is giving people genuine compliments without any particular agenda.
It takes some effort to be good at doing this, if people aren't used to getting any kind of compliment then it can land as super awkward.
(hint: avoid commenting on peoples physical appearance directly, always clothing, or hair, make-up, jewellery/watches -- or ideally how they handle themselves)
The "trick" is confidence, knowing in yourself that you mean well and, if challenged doubling down with a broad genuine smile, don't try to half-ass the smile because it makes things awkward-er.
The other thing is that compliments can be broad, but criticisms have to be very specific.
Once you get the hang of it you can make peoples days genuinely better effortlessly, by just saying the positive thing that you're thinking.
"How are you today" → "Better, now you're here" -- Isn't cheesy, if you mean it.
It's interesting also to notice cultural differences like when I moved here I started to receive compliments about my clothes shoes and stuff like that and in my country people prefer to do compliments on people's physical appearance or personality.
Funny how different our experiences are
> "How are you today" → "Better, now you're here" -- Isn't cheesy, if you mean it.
To me that's super creepy. It's like a cheap pickup line. It's only something I'd say to someone I'd been dating a while.
> avoid commenting on peoples physical appearance directly
Gym bros love compliments on their muscles. It has to come across as "bro to bro" and not with a "broad genuine smile" (as a gay guy, you'd come across pretty gay IMHO lol)
Hah, fun how that works.
Maybe the trick is not caring if it comes across as creepy.
If you take my genuine happiness to see you as creepy, maybe thats a you problem.
>> Once you get the hang of it you can make peoples days genuinely better effortlessly, by just saying the positive thing that you're thinking.
>> "How are you today" → "Better, now you're here" -- Isn't cheesy, if you mean it.
> To me that's super creepy. It's like a cheap pickup line. It's only something I'd say to someone I'd been dating a while.
Really, if the person actually means it? I think that's the key point.
I think that particular line would come off as creepy pickup line if it came from a stranger, who couldn't possibly mean it except in the most superficial way. I don't think it would come off that way if your relationship with the person is such that it's plausibly true and they don't overuse it.
On that last point, if you actually want to do something like this, I feel like you'd have to have familiar and confidence to use hundreds of phrases like that, for different situations. I'm reminded of an anecdote I read about Ronald Reagan: he was apparently known as being good with little quips and jokes. He apparently spent a huge amount of time working on them so he'd have something ready at any given time.
Full disclosure: I'm bad at complements and do none of this stuff.
Note that this totally depends on 1. how you say it and 2. who you say it to 3. how good looking/ugly you are.
Many gym "bros" are somewhere on the gay spectrum.
Are the examples so outdated? I see multiples comments/reviews (here and on the Internet) about the book not being made for modern people/society, but what you pasted looks fine to me.
Sure, there may be cultures where making comments of people out of the blue might not be seen as normal, but almost everywhere I've gone in this world allows for comments like these.
I haven't read it, but I find it hard to believe that good social advice would go out of date. Our brains haven't changed on a fundamental level since then.
If anything, modern social interaction has diverged from what is good for us and what we really want.
Complimenting people was my college party trick. I'd be a little inebriated and I'd just compliment people/say friendly vibey things. "That's a cool hat" or "that song is awesome" or "where did you get that??"
Your comment reminds me of advice I once got as a young person: small talk is an invitation to talk, and if you don't get traction with small talk, you're not ever going to get deep talk. So, hopefully the friendly vibe was a good start to build on!
Wow - this is the complete opposite tone I had expected from this book, given the title.
I read this book when I was 18 and took it to heart. I love complimenting people. Its such a joy.
Especially if you keep in mind some get a low single digits through their life, so every single one matters.
„We use the unrevised edition because we believe the revised edition (the revisions were done by Carnegie’s relatives after his death) forcefully makes the language of the book gender neutral and politically correct and takes away from the originality of the work. They even went so far ahead as to make quotes from other people gender neutral and politically correct. Most of the revised editions available today do not include Parts 5 and 6. Even the included parts see many paragraphs and examples omitted. In many places, characters in examples who were male have been edited to be female. It appears that Carnegie’s relatives decided to heavily excise content and highhandedly edit the work to match their own sensibilities and what appears to the webmasters as a feminist agenda. The unrevised edition as on this website is complete without exclusions and edits. We believe this text written by Dale Carnegie himself while he was alive without the alterations made by his relatives after his death is more readable, complete, and enjoyable.“
How to Win Friends and Influence People: Unrevised Version
https://socialskillswisdom.com/
Thanks for sharing, I had no idea. Looks like I'll have to go look for the original for a reread.
> One of the things I like about this is that OP is giving people genuine compliments without any particular agenda.
IMHO that is as fake as a car salesman. Mature, cultured people will say thank you and think "what a nuisance". I prefer being open about my motives. Smart people appreciate truth over compliments. And if the dumb/immature get offended, good riddance.
I used to be a big fan of HtWFaIP, but eventually I realized it's not healthy.
> Mature, cultured people will say thank you and think "what a nuisance".
It seems like the word you're looking for is "conceited", and it's a great candidate for traits one should attempt to extinguish in themselves.
If your true motives aren't kind and aren't requested, then those are great candidates to be kept inside, especially during random interactions in third-spaces
That's an interesting take. Care to say more about HtWFaIP being unhealthy?
I would assume, because the title and parts of the book suggest reducing human connections to utility and personal gain.
> Mature, cultured people will say thank you and think "what a nuisance"
I hope you enjoyed the hormonal reward you got when you copy-pasted that amazingly deep proverb.
Let's expand on it a bit. Is the world a mirror to street salespeople? Is the world a mirror to stalkers? To sociopaths?
> amazingly deep proverb
You misunderstand. You can't claim to speak for all "mature" & "cultured" people. That is, who gets to judge those who don't conform to one specific observed / inferred worldview, aren't "cultured" or "mature" enough? (if it wasn't clear, this question isn't an invitation to debate).
> Let's expand on it a bit. Is the world a mirror to street salespeople? Is the world a mirror to stalkers? To sociopaths?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question
I've never read that book -- no reason; just mostly prefer fiction, and never got around to it.
The funny thing is that I make a habit of doing what Carnegie describes here, and for the same reasons.
As I've gotten older -- I'm 56 -- I also realize I look like the archetypal middle-aged straight white dude, and my cohort doesn't have a GREAT reputation across the board, so I feel like I should be even MORE careful about the energy I put out into the world. And nothing lifts _my_ mood better than being nice to somebody else.
One of the things I like about this is that OP is giving people genuine compliments without any particular agenda.
Wanting that priceless glowing and singing feeling is an agenda.
No it's not.
What's next, do you think parents providing for their children is an agenda, merely so the parents can feel good about that glowing feeling about being a good parent?
Yes it is, and the narrator told us so. There's no need to put words in my mouth; I agree with the narrator that you can want to do a good thing for many reasons. In this case, the narrator tells us why he did what he did.
I'm ctrl+F'ing for "agenda" on the post and getting zero results, sorry. I don't need to "put words in your mouth", you are literally the one who used the word "agenda".
You don't seem to understand what the word "agenda" means in social interactions. It has a negative connotation, it is an ulterior motive, something you are hiding from the other person because they wouldn't like it.
That doesn't apply to normal positive-sum social interactions. Again, see my example about parents and children.
You are misunderstanding the meaning and usage of the word "agenda".
Feels good to do good, as they say.
Ahh yes, that wretched agenda of human connection. Who should desire such a thing?
Excellent passage.
As a society, we have a certain tendency to feel sorry for ourselves. If we have “social anxiety”, we like to give it a quasi-medical diagnosis. We rarely suspect that we may actually have something bad in our intentions. Many forms of anxiety are actually rooted in impure motives, especially when there is another part of us that conflicts with that motive. The conflict may result from a shred of conscience that enters into a tug-of-war with our impure motives. It could be rooted in a cognitive denial of those motives, as denial of truth can manifest in subconscious turbulence and nervous expressions of emotional energy. Perhaps we want to indulge those impure motives, but lack the chutzpah to do so, creating internal tension (the chutzpah would produce its own psychic anguish). Perhaps we’re selfish, but fail to recognize it. These sorts of things cause turmoil in the soul that can create anxiety.
Think of the “nice guy”. “Nice Guys” are some of the biggest assholes around. They’re two-faced schemers. A “Nice Guy’s niceness” is instrumental; he will be “nice” to a woman he finds attractive, because he has already imagined in his head that this will ingratiate him with her. He has already created a ledger in his mind: “if I am nice to this woman, then she is in my debt and now owes me the desired approval in return”. But the moment this woman fails to conform to the expectations of this “Nice Guy” is the moment his comes for his pound of flesh. You see the mask drop and his nastiness surface. The anxiety is rooted, among other things, in a failure to recognize the humanity and rights of this woman. For him, her meaning and her being are totally exhausted by his sexual desire, perhaps because he sees his own meaning exhausted by her approval, hence the apparent magnitude and terrific importance of her judgement. He wants to dominate by force or by manipulation rather than allow a woman to choose to surrender voluntarily, because she has determined this is good.
Magnanimity is one of the high virtues of classical virtue ethics - a sort of crowning culmination of them - and one of the features of magnanimous people is that they are at ease around others. It is well worth returning to this virtue ethics, because it does enlighten us about the nature of moral excellence.
Love is willing the genuine good of the other, unselfishly. There is no fear in someone of perfect love.
Unwarranted compliments is my biggest red flag.
Which is why you should only give warranted compliments.
You're right, telling someone bald that they have a great head of hair is not going to work well.
Fortunately, virtually everyone has something you can compliment them about. Even if they're a surly old frumpy shopkeeper, maybe they keep their store super clean and organized. Maybe you're impressed by their loyalty to serving the community for so many decades.
Never say anything that isn't genuine. Fortunately, most people have qualities you can be genuine about.
My approach to self-transformation these days is to take on long term projects (months, years) aimed at changing habits from the outside in and inside out simultaneously.
If I was interested in praising people I would task myself to look at people when I am out in the field and find some kind of praise I could give them. Maybe I give them this praise maybe I don't. Doing this over time I will find it bubbles out of me, the desire to give praise and the words to say comes more and more frequently and quickly and it will come out increasingly. Whether the feeling comes spontaneously or whether you consciously plant a seed and let it grow, it comes across better than if it forced.
Lately I've been practicing deep and rapid synchronization when situations are favorable and I'd say I favor listening and observation over praise except in cases where my feeling is very strong, such as somebody really helped me. There is a long list of language patterns that somebody might read as "somebody is trying to butter me up" and in this mode I avoid them almost entirely. It is important to stay in a "I'm OK, you're OK" [1] frame no matter what happens and to have control of your microexpressions (one wince can set you back permanently) which comes not from an act of suppression but rather going into a situation feeling full and practicing radical acceptance.
[1] see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Berne
I guess I should edit it to just compliments are my biggest red flag, and it's born out of experience. These people are looking for something either now or in the future, and this bullshit false niceness is simply their way of cultivating a network of people that they can use.
I'm sorry that's been your experience. I don't know where you live; and I know this can be a cultural thing.
But in America at least, it's not usually bullshit or false. It's not a means to an end. I will compliment servers and cashiers and receptionist just because it makes everyone friendlier and we all enjoy our brief interaction more than we would otherwise. It would be nonsensical to say I was using them. For what?
I am aware that there are cultures out there where nobody does this and it is viewed highly with suspicion. It just makes me very happy I don't live in one of those places.
I have found three strange and unexpected avenues for interacting with people.
1. Be on a quest. Yes a quest. I was trying to buy an old metal key as a gift for a friend. I wanted to find someone who sold sheep's milk (for making cheese). If you are on a quest it gives a context for an interaction. You both have something to talk about and it you both have an out: the answer. People almost always help you with a quest. And this ties with #2
2. Need help. I am lost. I am trying to get to the airport and I don't have much money. I trying to find a good book store. My car won't start. etc. I don't speak English.
3. Humor. Not telling jokes, just have a sense of humor about yourself, your common situation, the world in general.
I especially like being on a quest. Once I asked someone about the key, they sent me another place, they sent me another place and finally I found one. It was a blast. Everyone was helpful. I ended up telling people how I got there, why I was searching etc.
You've so perfectly explained something that I picked up from my father. He always seemed to have a way to get special treatment from people. I always explained it in a very Australian way; "he's a bit of a character" and figured it was tied to his gift of "telling a yarn".
But reflecting on it now, it's because he was always on a quest.
> 1. Be on a quest. Yes a quest.
This is unbelievably true.
I did a scavenger hunt (challenge hunt?) in Seattle (hosted by a friend of a friend). Many of the challenges involved interacting with other humans (dance with a stranger, buy someone you don't know a shot, give someone you don't know a rose, etc)
It was so fun. I've never met so many people before. But it struck me how excited everyone was to help out on my quest. Eager, even. I was so nervous to talk to people, but suddenly, having a sheet of paper gave me super powers.
Highly recommend having a quest. People love a quest.
in the past, you genuinely needed other people all the time which made this so much easier
I've seen this a lot with travel youtubers where they want to show genuine interaction with the population rather than generic tourist stuff. So they set arbitrary restrictions like not using maps, or avoiding PT and trying to hitchhike to destinations. Pretty much everyone everywhere is willing to help how they can and have a conversation in the meantime.
Having some obvious goal like "I'm a tourist and I'm lost" immediately cuts past the "Is this person a scammer/beggar?" you normally think when a stranger walks up to you.
This reminded me of Ludwig and Michael's recent travels in China where they weren't using any maps or translators. It was a very fun watch.
There's a video on YT that basically proposes the idea that Ewan McGregor's & Charlie Boorman's "Long Way Round" series has been the last "true" travel documentary made for TV. I thought that was a bit silly initially, but after watching it(the YT video) I can't shake the feeling that I agree with the premise.
Basically - in "Long Way Round" Ewan and Charlie take two motorcycles and they ride them from the UK east, going through Russia and finishing in the States. But even though they have support crew of two cars following them with extra equipment, it doesn't change the fact that back when it was filmed, they didn't have internet connected phones with them. The maps of Syberia were innacurate, they didn't speak any Russian, they were driving through really difficult terrain and you could "feel" that they were far from civilization - contact with family was infrequent,they relied on kindness of strangers a lot because there was no other way to continue. There was a lot of communicating with hand signs and pointing.
Compare that to their later "Long way up" where they rode up through South America - at that point they both had mobile phones with maps and instant translators - they were never lost, and even in the middle of absolute nowhere they would walk up to a local and just use their phone to translate. They had video calls with their families practically every night. Even though they were in some places no less remote than Syberian roads, it didn't feel remote in the same way.
And yes, I know there are YT travellers who try to artificially follow the same kind of philosophy - no translators, no maps, just going in raw so to speak. But the world has changed. Even if they don't use phones, the locals do even in the middle of the amazonian jungle. And it is amazing how connected humanity is, but there is certainly an era that has ended for all of us.
I really recommend this video, whether you have seen Charlie's and Ewan's adventures or not:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjV3tkrCYIY
"trying to get to the airport and I don't have much money" is not the quest you want to be faking...
I read something a while ago that talked about this. Friendships are solidified mostly by asking for help. It shows the other person that you trust them and people are often honored that you would do so. Even if the request is small.
So being on a quest is a great approach! You often need help and are in a discovery phase where you need to interact with people. Even if the interactions don’t go anywhere most of the time.
there's a famous quote- two things you must not look for: love and death; they will find you when the time comes. so basically just do genuine stuff and it will happen. OP also hints at it when they say it's about doing your hobbies with other people. it's the same with the quest stuff imo. OTOH the PUA-types have the wrong approach because it's the opposite to this. they turn relationships into a goal and look for artificial tricks to make it happen
In my travels, I've found old grandmas as the best people to interact with. In most cultures, those poor old ladies are mostly ignored anyways, so they're always happy to talk to you even if they don't speak your language. Of course they can spot fake a mile away, so be genuine. I was traveling in Italy and had a blast "chatting" with grannies on the streets. Same in Armenia. And Belgium.
I've been talking to so many grandmas these days, and it's mostly them approaching me. It's usually something sweet and makes my day, but sometimes, it's heartbreaking to hear the troubles they've been dealing with alone because there's no family to rely on.
I think talking to the elderly is a great way to learn how society has shaped people's lives over many decades.
Hah, yes, this! I will absolutely accept their flirting and let them call me a "handsome young man" in return too hah
Unfortunately, Internet + Smartphones have invalidated 2.
"Why don't you just google it yourself?"
I think the quest thing works because it gives you both roles: you are the Quester, they are the Helper. Both of you know what's expected of you. You are supposed to ask questions passionately, they are supposed to answer helpfully. Random gym conversations are hard because your roles are undefined ("How am I supposed to react?"). In general, many shy people do better socially when they can adopt a role. A shy person might become un-shy when they work as a barista, because they have a role ("barista"). And on a grand scale, a celebrity singer might become un-shy on stage, because she has a role ("singer").
Around 15 years ago I took on the challenge to start a conversation with random people to break through this barrier and train this muscle. What I started with was to chit chat with those I had already established an interaction. For example at the Starbucks I would say something to barista. Those interactions were short but broke the ice.
Later I went for random people in the street and that was quite awkward. There was simply not much I could work with (what I thought at the time).
This turned out to become a low stake effort to improve my social anxiety. Helped me build humour around it and eventually become comfortable
Fast forward to today, I can literally talk about anything to anyone. The main pattern I follow is to break the pattern and make a joke, be sarcastic respectfully or give a compliment. No permission just something they don't expect. Almost works all the time. It helps with confidence and also makes you realise its all in your head.
And it is fun indeed
This is such good advice! The expectation at Starbucks is that the exchange with the barista is super short anyway so you really can’t go wrong. Instead of saying “I’ll have the Danish”, try to turn it into a two-sentence exchange initially (eventually you shoot for a 3 sentence exchange with any stranger you interact with), say “which do you think is better, the danish or the croissant”?
For anyone that asks how you are doing, answer honestly! Or with something slightly unexpected or easy for the other person to engage with or laugh at.
“Hi, How are you?”
“Well I woke up this morning and stepped on my dog’s tail by accident. He was not happy with me, but we’re all good now - how about you?”
The issue for me is that I seem to really "page out" parts of my life that aren't relevant to the situation I'm in. If I were to sincerely answer the "how are you" question, I would have to pause for ten or twenty seconds to think about how I am, which obviously doesn't fit the interaction. Any tips on how to avoid this? I'm a chronic over-preparer and I've tried to equip myself with answers to every conceivable question and that's just exhausting, so I've wanted to avoid that.
I think the answer is practice, for a few reasons. One is obvious: conversation is a skill. Just like a novice chess player can spend 5 seconds figuring out which squares the knight can move to while an intermediate player spots a fork to force trading a strong bishop or exposing an overworked queen, exposure to similar situations rewires your brain to work faster in those situations.
Another reason, though, is to me one of the main benefits of social interaction in the first place: The brain rewiring also makes you think about what other people would think, want to hear, say to you, etc, even when they're not around. That sure can give you better answers in conversations, but more importantly, I think this is just genuinely a nice way for the brain to be. In the same way that dogs are happy playing fetch, humans are happy living with other people in mind. Maybe because it feels like not everything is your responsibility, or that you worry less about what you should be doing, or that you look forward to laughing about disasters later... I'm not entirely sure. Whatever it is, it's nicer than the alternative.
I may suggest to answer genuinely about how you are instead of "how is life" — yes, my life is hard because of many ongoing family health issues, but I might still be OK in the moment. Or sleepy from a bad night of sleep, or hungry because I skipped breakfast. Or happy because I got my favourite parking spot. Or had a nice meal....
Say "I'm about to have coffee, so that's good :-) "
Alternately, instead of trying to prepare for every possible answer, you can constrain the possible replies significantly by being the one who asks the question in the first place. "How's your day going?" is only ever going to get some variation of "good" or "bad". You only need to respond with "great to hear that", or "sorrt to hear that, hope it improves soon". That's it.
Great advice but that may not always work in Ireland. The expected answer is “grand” or something similarly neutral and succinct. The asker may not even stop to listen to your answer so you won’t have enough time to provide a decent response.
Your suggestion would work when both people are in the same place for some time, e.g., waiting in line for a coffee, or for a meeting to start or for a lift (elevator) to arrive, etc.
I sometimes go to concerts by myself and like to arrive early to catch the support act. There’s usually a gap of at least half an hour before the main act comes on stage and I make a point of looking around for other people who aren’t on their phone so I can start a conversation. In that situation, I already know we have something in common.
I'm not saying this is you, but i've also ran into a lot of those people, almost always men, often in their late 30s or 40s, going around talking to everyone cracking jokes and thinking they're the live of the party, while everyone else is just silently annoyed by them.
That’s a depressingly negative way to view people who are just trying to break the isolation of modern life.
It is possible to treat someone as worthy of sympathy and still be annoyed.
> while everyone else is just silently annoyed by them
And you know what everyone else is feeling how?
Appreciate this question. For a moment I was almost infected by the commenters miserly attitude
While it is possible to overdo everything and being "too jolly" can come across as insincere, despite being raised in a culture where almost no one talks to strangers I was never annoyed by this. Not even once.
I don't doubt people that are, exist, but I highly doubt it's a high percentage and certainly very far from "everyone else".
I think this is a particular character in a particular context you're thinking about, but—aside from overtly bombastic loud people—if he can't tell that people are annoyed, how can you?
> thinking they're the live of the party, while everyone else is just silently annoyed by them.
Not saying this is you, but my impression is that people who lean into silent annoyance also depend on passive aggression, fueling it with resentment that they aren't as outgoing (or whatever) and deserve the attention instead, and those who are especially anxious and/or neurotic imagine that everyone else shares the apparent negative feelings, effectively acting as they imagine everyone else wants them to act. People have a hard time letting themselves just vibe and roll with it if they think it might make them less appealing by association. Maybe they are the life of the party, since it's not much of one if people can't pump some life into it
It's always a matter of finding the happy medium. Don't be completely drab, don't be goofy, be balanced.
Intelligence is knowing how to talk to anyone. Wisdom is knowing not to.
Humans are social creatures. We need socialization. It also helps keep us sharp mentally.
You also never know what you might experience from talking to someone. You may make a life-long friend. Or learn about something you didn't know.
It doesn't mean blab about things you shouldn't, being insensitive, etc - but isolation is not the answer.
> almost always men
That detail is probably unnecessary.
I've encountered a fair few women like that too. How annoying they are is inversely proportional to how attractive they are, obviously.
> There was simply not much I could work with (what I thought at the time).
This has been my big blocker keeping me from talking to most people. I feel quite adept socially once I get going, but I can usually only get to that point through mutual interests or a solid conversation topic to kick off from.
I seem to usually psyche myself out because most starters feels too fake or unsubstantive. Compliments make sense, but could you elaborate on "break the pattern and make a joke, be sarcastic respectfully"?
I'll share my secret. Rather than trying to initiate a conversation with others, make it easy to initiate a conversation with you.
I started wearing hats outdoors to keep the sun off my balding head (I've had a sunburn up there, and I don't want another one), and the hat I had around to wear was from when I went as Ash Ketchum for Halloween. Or even just looking at my hat and smiling...
Nearly everywhere I go with that hat, I'll get someone saying nice hat, or professing their love for Pokemon, or asking me if I've caught them all.
This provides an opportunity for conversation and a shared interest. I can ask them if they're into the show, the books, the card game, the video games. How did they get started? What Pokemon is their favorite? Who's the best trainer? When did they start liking Jesse and James? Do they like old stuff or new stuff (I've got the OG hat from season 1).
It takes almost no effort to wear a hat and it helps me use my social skills when I'm out and about. And keeps the sun off my face a bit, and is handy for napping at conventions. You don't have to be Ash Ketchum, any character hat will do.
Also, bonus secret. When I'm sleep deprived, I get chatty... You may or may not, but if you do, use it for practice when it happens... and if you say something embarassing, you can always blame the lack of sleep. I was just at First Robotics worlds and the setup is harsh for sleep hygiene, but I had a ton of nice conversations with random robot people. Shared interest, opportunities and sleep deprivation combined. Otoh, much fewer notices of my hat at the convention center than I expected.
Even though typing them out may make them stupid but here are a few examples thinking out loud. Remember the body language is quite important and as you do more you start feeling more comfortable in your skin.
- Waiting for an elevator that never comes with two strangers. What I may say: I guess we'd be camping here tonight. Do you have your tent with you?
- Embarrassing moment: I hit my head lightly to something in front of 5 people: Act funny saying Oh can someone call an ambulance.
- Someone dropping yogurt from their spoon on their shirt and locking eye to eye with me realising I've been watching the moment: I would have an empathetic look and then act with an imaginary spoon picking from my own shirt and eating it.
Basically the kind of mild jokes/acts you would do and say to close people would work on strangers as well
Even written these jokes made me smile, you’re a natural!
I was in a similar boat, but recently started getting through that barrier. The thing that clicked for me is pretty simple: I was filtering myself and chipping away at that filter made a huge difference.
For example, I was in the elevator with a neighbour and they were carrying a lot of mugs. I said "that's a lot of mugs" and we ended up having a quick conversation.
In my case at least the conversation starters are all there in my head, but I'm discarding them hunting for the "perfect" one which obviously never comes and the moment passes.
another thing to keep in mind is that
> try to talk to someone > run out of things to talk about > feel awkward or dumb
is not really a bad outcome, physically speaking.
IMO ost people's anxiety about things X is not "fear of X" but rather "fear of fear" or "fear of embarrassment": they'll avoid something because it could go wrong and then... what? what if it goes wrong? nothing physically bad happens except that you're uncomfortable for a moment. But it's your subsequent reaction to the discomfort that is the actual source of the issue, not the discomfort itself. Which is why a lot of progress on anxiety can be made by focusing on the response: find ways of practicing being in the situation and being uncomfortable to a survivable degree such that you can learn to not be averse to the situation and can thus start adapting to it.
Just talk to them as if they were already your friend. Most of what you talk about with friends isn't just mutual interests and you start conversations with them all the time.
"I did the same thing; whoever designed these doors was a sadist." -
"Do you like that bag? I've been meaning to get a new one, I'm so tired of this one." -
"Now see, if we were as good looking/rich/smart as him we could have figured that out." -
"Is that thing broken again? I'm telling you, we're in the wrong business man." -
"Nothing to do with talent, it's a money and equipment problem, we're awesome at this." -
I've used each one of these in the past week with complete strangers, in neutral-to-unfamiliar surroundings, in passing, and the most hostile reaction I've gotten is "hahaha, I know right?" :)
> The main pattern I follow is to break the pattern and make a joke, be sarcastic respectfully or give a compliment
I'm having to learn this about online dating too. My online dates traditionally don't go anywhere because typically they've been about just exchanging information, which is frankly boring to both parties.
You have to (gently) riff and tease a bit or it's not going to go anywhere. If you're talking about your jobs, nothing is going to happen. Establishing that rapport is everything.
> If you're talking about your jobs, nothing is going to happen.
That reminds me of when I first moved out of California and away from the tech scene after being immersed in it for some 10-odd years. People just don't talk about their jobs! They'd much rather talk about their interests, hobbies, friends and family, ... literally anything else. Their job is just not an important part of their identity. Was quite the change in perspective and honestly and took some getting used to.
I had a similar challenge but more dating oriented (not fully though). I'm not at your level, but I want to be. Happily married nowadays, so it'd be a pure social challenge this time.
Being able and willing to talk to strangers unlocks the eventuality that you will one day start chatting with a person who also does that and it will be like the small talk singularity. Once a man approached me and complemented my bicycle, and I engaged with him, and since we were both waiting at the same breakfast counter without anyone else, we sat down at a table and had breakfast together, and an hour later I could have counted him as a friend. Uncommon, but exhilarating possibility.
Happened to me out on a group training run five years ago. She and I are now engaged and will be getting married in July.
When I still had a personal Reddit account, I would be on the dating and relationship subs and promote the idea to do something every week where you see the same people. even better do two or three such things every week. That's what I did, and I quickly went from zero local friends to dozens.
The gym is a fine place to do that but only if you're doing classes where there's an expectation that people will be socializing. I made some of my best friends in such gym classes including my current best friend. She indirectly introduced me to my fiancé because she suggested I join a running club to train.
> Fast forward to today, I can literally talk about anything to anyone.
Try me!
Though it is a social skill indeed. But there are some people who are always weird, so I don't buy into the "I can talk to anyone" claim.
For me it is easiest to talk to people who are like the dude in the big lebowski. People who rarely upset about anything. The true hipsters.
haha the dudes are of course the best. when I say "I can talk to anyone" it doesn't mean "Everyone will talk back to me". Which is fine and I don't care. For what its worth I'm glad not to have to talk to boring people.
What I want is to have a laugh or an interesting intellectual conversation.
As a stranger - its also super annoying when random people want to talk to you.
That’s fair. You can decline to participate in casual conversations and be annoyed.
Most people don’t mind someone initiating a casual conversation in a non threatening manner. Most will enjoy it, at least sometimes.
I’m happy for the author here, especially that he was able to shrug off these awkward interactions and move on.
As someone who wants to have meaningful interactions even if they are brief, it's super annoying when I just want to offer a compliment or joke to a stranger and they think I'm trying to talk to them. Are they so selfish that a little chuckle or "thank you" is going to break them?
How does that make someone selfish? I'm sure there are judgements you could make against someone who would prefer to be left alone, I just don't see how "selfish" could be one of them.
For me, one of the main motivations is suspicion of ulterior motives. If it really is just "hey I like your hat okay bye" that's one thing, and is generally harmless. But usually when someone approaches me they want something, either they're selling me something, or asking me to sign something. It's not that the initial comment is necessarily an issue, it's guarding against people pretending to have an innocent interaction as a foot-in-the-door technique.
For every person like you there's 500 dudes who want something from the stranger - their money, their body, etc. People are standoffish because they don't have the context that you do regarding the interaction and it's unclear which way it's going.
Or maybe they have one of the millions of reason to not want to talk with the strangers.
World is not your amusement park, people are entitle to NOT wanting to talk to you as much as you feel entitled to talk with everyone.
> World is not your amusement park
That's literally what the world is. It's the amusement park for all of us. Some of us like sharing our joy with others. It's up to you whether you are open to receiving it.
the flasher's fallacy
Consent is still necessary. People's opening line when talking to strangers should indicate whether the other consents or not.
Hey there, Mister!
Why do people think that intruding into somebody's personal space is OK.
They're speaking with people in public, not following them into their homes.
This comment section really enforces the stereotypes everyone has of you guys, just safe-space seeking, maladjusted weaklings who play victim as a badge of honor.
I don't have a stake in this thread, but I am stealing "maladjusted weaklings" (≧▽≦)
Don’t leave your house if you don’t want to interact with people
Wonderful! There's a lot of advice online about how essentially evil it is to talk to strangers: They're busy, they have headphones in, they might think you're hitting on them (God forbid; nothing could be more evil than attraction). Ignore it. It often as not boils down to fear and neuroticism from terminally online introverts (and sometimes plain old misanthropists) raised in a hyper-individualist culture and glued to devices sometimes from infancy.
Fair enough if an introvert just wants to be left alone; we should obviously never force our company on anyone (nor do the mentally healthy among us have any desire to do so, because we have empathy). However, people like that will let us know that they don't want to talk when we approach them, either directly or via body language and the nature of their replies. For many others, they're starving for social interaction, and it might make their day for you to reach out. This is what makes outreach worth it, in the end, despite the risk.
I find it so bitterly ironic that the people whose opinions we read the most of - the terminally online Redditors and tweeters - are exactly the kind of people we should not be listening to.
Like you alluded to, the terminally online people who post the most tend to be those with neuroticism, isolation, severe anxiety, etc. There's a famous Reddit post about this I can't seem to find - "Everyone Online Is Insane" or something.
I really think this is why the past decade+ of American culture, politics, and society has been so off-the-wall insane. The Overton Window - another overused Redditism - of society has shifted towards the opinions of the neurotic and anxious. Those are the people whose words fill the comment sections and posts that we all read, which then infuse our minds to expect these thoughts as the baseline/median opinion of society.
"Every piece of social advice on Reddit is designed to ensure that you die alone"
https://old.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/1kkey4d/every_...
> Doesn't matter who you ask on this site. The incel, the rad fem, the regular liberal, the happily married person, the casanova; they will all tell you some variety to stay in your own lane and shut up. They will all use different language, but the meanings will always be the same: they live a life of constant loneliness and have found kinship with others who agree that to ever do something to counter that loneliness is beyond abhorrent behaviour.
Yes, this is a theory I've been thinking about too.
Explains the rise of various political leaders very well.
I find it funny that even the people who comment on the "Everyone Online Is Insane" post sound obsessive or outside the norm.
I find it messes with my mental health when I read too many comments. In the real world I normally find people to be nice and kind. But then I go online and the world is totally different - I have to keep in perspective that its just a small outsized fraction.
> I find it funny that even the people who comment on the "Everyone Online Is Insane" post sound obsessive or outside the norm.
Well, yeah. I agree with the statement that "everyone online is insane", while also recognizing that I myself am online a lot, and think and behave differently from societal norms.
I think that's part of what is needed. There's absolutely nothing wrong with thinking and behaving differently from other people. What's abnormal is when people become absorbed in the internet, to the point that they fail to recognize that people in real life, people outside their Internet echo chambers, think and behave very differently.
What's great about neurotic online personalities is that they're all contained within the little box on your lap or in your pocket. You turn it off and they all go away...
> You turn it off and they all go away...
They disappear to you, but not to all of the other people who you share a society with who are still staring at their little boxes. And, for better or worse, you still have to live in a world with and share elections with those people too.
I agree, completely, that it's good to get offline. But the pervasive societal effects of extremely online psychology can't be solved simply by opting oneself out of the game.
One great failure of the Internet was taking the lonely crazies and putting them in the position of building their own community online. Unable to moderate their thoughts by interacting with normal people, now feeding off one another's neuroticism, and spreading it.
Post you mentioned (Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People): https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
It's true but then again, for most things, the correct answer is somewhere there, amongst the BS, so if you have a good BS detector and want some ideas, you could do worse. You can't outsource the part where you see for yourself if stuff works, and form your own opinions.
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and misanthropy than reddit.
https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1o87cy4/oc...
Redditors want you to cut contact with all your loved ones so you can spend more time on reddit, telling people to cut contact with their loved ones. It's like a cult.
> I really think this is why the past decade+ of American culture, politics, and society has been so off-the-wall insane. The Overton Window - another overused Redditism - of society has shifted towards the opinions of the neurotic and anxious. Those are the people whose words fill the comment sections and posts that we all read, which then infuse our minds to expect these thoughts as the baseline/median opinion of society.
Why should anyone entertain this theory? You’re a comment box.
Edit: Thirty years ago us online freaks would just interact with other online freaks. Because normal people had real hobbies.
But now that we are all doomscrollers: why would normal people be interested in the comment boxes of online freaks? They’ve got YouTube shorts and whatever to watch.
That things like 4Chan has had an outsized effect is a different matter. It’s all mediated through twenty layers. It’s not normal people reading 4Chan and other freaks directly.
And now those words are infusing the training runs of LLMs as well. The words of the extrovert who's already outside living life aren't written down.
I think this mindset is maybe too close to being just "people that don't think like I do are just crazy" and dismissive of people's actual concerns.
> they might think you're hitting on them (God forbid; nothing could be more evil than attraction)
You can find legions of people, particularly women, who do not want to be hit on unless they already find the other person attractive. Being hit on by an unattractive person may even quality for them as something akin to danger, already along the spectrum towards stalking or assault. Has nothing to do with being terminally online and has been reported since long before there was ever an internet.
> For many others, they're starving for social interaction
HN is an international forum, and while people are reporting increased loneliness in many countries, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want attention from strangers. Where I live, a total stranger talking to you in public is annoying; it is strongly associated with foreigners who haven’t learned yet how to behave acceptably within the local culture. What people might be starving for are serious, long-term social bonds, of the kind that used to be common through large extended families, the parish church, team sports, and school friends who stay put and don’t move away. A mere friendly stranger in public could lead to such real bonds only rarely, so rarely that it’s not even worth considering.
I am a woman, height is on the shorter side. I want to add my thoughts around this phenomena.
Oftentimes, a stranger coming up to you on the street spells danger, it has nothing to do with how attractive or unattractive they are.
It's hard to explain if you've never been in a woman's shoes, but you feel like prey. A chance conversation can quickly turn into a decades-long stalking event, one never knows. Unwanted attention for women can feel really dangerous, I have often been catcalled/followed when not with my husband (which is infuriating as an adult woman), and have been followed/catcalled on the street from the moment I turned 14, which you can imagine makes strangers coming up to on the street feel loaded.
> You can find legions of people, particularly women, who do not want to be hit on unless they already find the other person attractive.
Tough luck, cupcake. Often you don’t know if she is into you til you approach. Often they are shy. If you keep overthinking this and afraid of being cringe, being filmed or being judged, then your genes will die out and your bloodline will end. But hey, at least you never made anyone awkward and lived a “safe” life. This will sit right with you at deathbed I’m sure.
> Being hit on by an unattractive person may even quality for them as something akin to danger, already along the spectrum towards stalking or assault.
Just trying to initiate a conversation with someone simply is not stalking nor assault, even if it is perceived that way. Their "perception" is mistaken in this case.
> HN is an international forum, and while people are reporting increased loneliness in many countries, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want attention from strangers. Where I live, a total stranger talking to you in public is annoying; it is strongly associated with foreigners who haven’t learned yet how to behave acceptably within the local culture.
I don't know what country you are from, but it is highly probable that even in your culture, public conversations significantly decreased in the past 30 years. Which means that the amount of interactions was higher than it is now, even within the same culture.
> A mere friendly stranger in public could lead to such real bonds only rarely, so rarely that it’s not even worth considering.
The gym example of this article points in the opposite direction, or do you think that gyms in your culture work differently?
> Their "perception" is mistaken in this case.
It’s their right to decide how they perceive being approached by a stranger. And most of society is going to empathize with them and their feeling of unsafety, not with the stranger approaching them.
> even in your culture, public conversations significantly decreased in the past 30 years
The culture in my country never really had many “public conversations” from one stranger to another. This is something that has been noted by foreign travelers for generations now, at least back to the nineteenth or eighteenth centuries. What has changed are that the substantial family and institutional bonds I mentioned earlier have declined.
> do you think that gyms in your culture work differently?
They definitely do. This has already been mentioned by various people from different countries in this thread.
> It’s their right to decide how they perceive being approached by a stranger.
Okay, I suppose everyone is entitled to their own delusions. But believing that initiating a conversation with a stranger is stalking or assault is just false.
> The culture in my country never really had many “public conversations” from one stranger to another. This is something that has been noted by foreign travelers for generations now, at least back to the nineteenth or eighteenth centuries.
How then do people come to know each other in the first place? Every familiar person has been a stranger at some point.
> They definitely do. This has already been mentioned by various people from different countries in this thread.
I read one of my home country (saying that you would get arrested if you did this) and I assure you it is false.
I have never met anyone on the street who wasn't mentally ill or tried to sell me something. Types like this ignore your brief answers, facial expressions and body language, and continue to yap on. Honestly, I cannot imagine a single situation where a random interaction with a stranger on the street would be a positive experience. No, I do not strive for you to "reach out", on the contrary, I avoid you like a rotting carcass of a pigeon.
Computers are feedback loops that ultimately are trying to take up 100% of 100% of people's consciousness seconds, so it makes sense that the winning/dominant ideologies on the internet are just whichever ones cause you to not spend time on anything except the screen.
This guy gets it.
In this Northern European country of mine, I’ve got as much of a neutral third party that I can think of: a friend born and raised to adulthood in the Third World. They’ve got more “extrovertism” in them than 99.9% of the natives. Yet this advice from socializing entrepeneurs with One Weird Trick doesn’t seem to hold up. People here are not all hypnotized by their screens and low self-esteem, or whatever, and then lifted up when their poor social-starved selves get attention from a kind stranger. We are just... like that. Not genetic. Not immutable. But it runs deep. Very deep. Deeper than what an “extrovert” all by themselves can penetrate.
So if there is a cultural pathology it takes way more than what socializing entrepeneurs seem to think.
> Fair enough if an introvert just wants to be left alone; we should obviously never force our company on anyone (nor do the mentally healthy among us have any desire to do so, because we have empathy). However, people like that will let us know that they don't want to talk when we approach them, either directly or via body language and the nature of their replies. For many others, they're starving for social interaction, and it might make their day for you to reach out. This is what makes outreach worth it, in the end, despite the risk.
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> However, people like that will let us know that they don't want to talk when we approach them, either directly or via body language and the nature of their replies. For many others, they're starving for social interaction, and it might make their day for you to reach out. This is what makes outreach worth it, in the end, despite the risk.
Nope.
Normal people—not freaks like me—in my culture will fume in private. Yes: any slight by a stranger will be relegated to complaints to your friends. Much more likely than sending any bad vibes. We’re cowards like that.
I’m reminded of some anecdote about Westerners being struck by how helpful Japanese people are. (This is from memory and may be wrong.) The context is that they are tourists. Well, apparently Japanese people have very strict social norms about being polite and helpful. This is amazing for tourists: they get all of the social upsides while not having to pay anything in return (because they are oblivious to it).
I will happily stop and chat with you if you demonstrate that it is worth the time and interruption (if I was lost in thought, that will take at least 5-10 minutes to get back to).
If not, I will not let you know. I will just fume, blame and judge you for some time after.
"Hey sorry, I've got some things on my mind right now and can't really talk. Have a nice day though".
That takes less than 10 seconds to say, let's you protect your time and peace of mind, and as a bonus there's no need for fuming, blaming, and judging that the other person won't ever even know about.
The people likely to talk to strangers unprompted are also likely to ignore those kind of messages. Anything that can lead to further conversation can be used (like "oh, what's worrying you?") so actually politely nodding and smiling without giving any footing to further conversation works better than being assertive.
> The people likely to talk to strangers unprompted are also likely to ignore those kind of messages.
No, that obviously false. They might be more likely, but they are certainly not likely.
I don’t think it’s false, much less obviously false. On one hand I have my personal experience about it, on the other you can see there’s only a small range in the “I want a conversation” scale where they want it enough to ignore the nonverbal signs that the person doesn’t want to talk but not enough to ignore the verbal ones.
This requires social skills many HN users are lacking.
>let's you protect your time and peace of mind
Not even close.
> If not, I will not let you know.
This is 100% completely on you, then. If you don't inform people you're being interrupted or that what they are doing is bothering you, they have no data to telling them to stop, and any energy you spend on silently judging them or being frustrated is only harming yourself.
No, it's on you. You can stop before you even begin by simply not interrupt and bother people for no reason. You're creating a problem and then blame me for not stopping it.
"(God forbid; nothing could be more evil than attraction). " - is it sarcasm?
"According to Reddit” - so many lives have been ruined listening to what gremlins on social media have to say.
It’s simple. If you want, approach. It’s not dangerous, you won’t get cancer. If they don’t want to talk, you will stop talking with them and talk with someone else.
"I am deeply afraid of irritating someone or being in awkward situations." - anyone who thinks like this is suffering from abused dog syndrome and unironically has lost at life.
Also, why is he talking about “friends” and “strangers”? We all know he means “women". And there is LITERALLY no problem politely engaging conversation with a strange woman at the gym even if she has earpods on. It’s not a crime, just be normal. You are forgetting that other people are shy too and often want someone to take initiative since in 2026 nobody does.
My life quality increased immensely when I realized most of Reddit is bots and the parts written by real humans are usually written by the type of person that you really shouldn’t take any advice from
What kind of reddit do you browse? The /r/funny one or the /r/composting one?
Not even a big "browser". This realization hit me after missing some uni events after reading negative comments on town subreddit, then discovering that I actually know one of the commenters in real life and he is just a plain idiot and it was an obvious mistake to not go. When there is no objective criteria, relying on personal judgement or plain chance is just a better way to go instead of overthinking based on stranger advice.
Meeting a few redditors in real life shows you who you're interacting with. It's a very mixed bag.
> Also, why is he talking about “friends” and “strangers”? We all know he means “women".
Does he? It seems like he socialised mainly with men in the documented interactions. Perhaps he really was just lonely in the general sense.
This was excellent.
If I may toss out another recommendation: Volunteering is one of the best ways I have found to meet people.
A food pantry, house of worship, the library, a community theater, a political group, an environmental service group, local writers group, homeless shelter, women's center, whatever - there are so many things to choose from.
I found several advantages to making friends this way:
1. no/low stress because you are doing them a favor showing up. Any volunteer-based organization NEEDS people. YOU are people. They NEED you. Don't be stressed because you might not know what's going on. They will be GLAD to see you.
2. Volunteer onboarding processes force other humans to be nice to you and get to know you in order to place you in a service group or provide you an assignment. The people that most organizations have doing this are outgoing and friendly. I'm generalizing, but having served with a bunch of volunteer organizations, I have found this to be the rule. I was often one of them.
3. If you are volunteering for something that you care about / believe in / are passionate for, then you INSTANTLY know that you are meeting people with something in common. This gives you both something to talk about or bond over.
Source: I met my wife and many friends volunteering in different organizations.
Acts of service.
I was at a Gurudwara (Sikh house of Worship) yesterday for a wake and everyone who enters the cafeteria perform shevas, that is, you take a turn serving everyone else food. It was very nice to do.
If you want to build a relationship with someone, try asking them for a small favor rather than offering one first* (or, for example, making random small talk about the weather). Most people love to help and feel useful. If you're new to the gym or want to learn a new exercise, you can simply ask for help. It's something we'naturally do if we weren't so afraid of approaching strangers.
*just paraphrasing a famous quote
I have heard this repeated across books and podcasts for years but I’ve only seen it fail in person.
Maybe it might not fail if the “favor” isn’t really a favor at all but instead something almost completely effortless like asking for the time or directions to the bathroom.
However when someone is at the gym and another stranger asks them to stop and do a favor that takes time out of their gym visit it’s just annoying, not a friendship starter.
Respectfully, I think you're looking at this from a bad angle. You wouldn't go up to someone in the middle of a set, wearing headphones, and ask them to stop what they're doing to help you. Instead, you find someone who's finishing a set/exercise and politely say something like "hey, I'd like to try this exercise and you seem to know it well, would you mind taking a moment to give me a hand?".
I've personally done this twice this year (I genuinely wanted to learn, I'm not using it as a strategy) and it worked very well. I suppose culture plays a role but I'm in one of those countries where people don't usually socialize with strangers and it still works.
I’m typing this comment from the gym, actually. I’m on the friendlier end of the spectrum and really don’t mind helping out when someone could use some actual help. Giving a quick spot or a quick exchange of advice is common.
What I don’t enjoy is when someone ropes me into doing something for them when it becomes clear that they had other intentions for the request. It’s the ulterior motive part that can have the opposite of the intended effect.
When you realize someone asked the favor not really because they needed it but because they thought it would be an opening to get you into conversation, you start wondering what their real motive is. In this case it may be benign enough, but it’s not a great way to start a conversation
Yeah that's fair and I see it the same way. For example, when I visit the US and a waiter/waitress is extremely friendly (even asking about my personal life and complimenting whatever) it's usually clear (in most cases anyway) what they're after. But obviously I'm not talking about those situations, I was instead giving examples of genuine requests for help, not tricking people.
You mean "they're just doing it for tips", but it's not quite that straightforward.
Obviously tips are a factor, but it's common to see overtly friendly service in the US even for untipped positions (cashiers at Trader Joe's is one example that comes to mind). Being friendly in service positions in the US is just part of the culture. It's not universal of course, it depends on the specific business, but it is very common.
Totally agree, if someone have other intentions for the request, it will make the other person feel like it's dishonest so the conversation usually doesn't go far.
Easy one: you are about to lift something and need a spot.
"Hi, can I ask you for a spot?" - hard to argue w/premise of ask and many people would be happy to assist you and see you achieve whatever goal you have for that lift.
i don't ever ask for a spot (and use safety bars instead) because i'm trying to leave the gym as quickly as i can and don't want an unknown-length conversation getting in the way
To each their own - I think you're missing out.
I do both. But why I like a spotter: someone to coax another rep (or two) out of you. I'll coach them on that point in advance, too.
You need to find a better gym then...
"Hey man, can you spot me?" Is a pretty universal request, and frequently honored. Once you are done with your set, offer to spot them, and while you are both resting after your respective sets, start up some small talk. If small talk works, continue to bigger conversations.
I’m typing this comment from the gym, actually! Spotting someone is common and I’m happy to do it.
That’s not what I was talking about. The part that fails is when someone asks for a favor but then it becomes apparent that they didn’t actually need the favor, they were just trying to find a way to talk to you. Like when someone requests a spot and then you come over and realize the weight they’re lifting is so light that there is no reason they needed a spot other than as a conversation starter.
If you actually need help then asking is fine.
If you don’t need help but you’re coming up with reasons to trick someone into giving you help so you can talk to them, that’s a situation with an ulterior motive. People are good at identifying ulterior motives and it doesn’t set you up for conversational success.
If someone just wants to talk, I don’t recommend playing these mind games. Just learn how to strike up conversation. The honesty will be appreciated and it won’t trigger other people’s ulterior motive detectors.
"If you don’t need help but you’re coming up with reasons to trick someone into giving you help so you can talk to them, that’s a situation with an ulterior motive. People are good at identifying ulterior motives and it doesn’t set you up for conversational success."
Lmao unless you're a female... I've never seen this happen in a gym. And im a religious gym-goer of the past 10 years.
That's literally the point of the comment: It's an unnatural thing to do so we shouldn't be suggesting it as a conversation starter.
I wasn't saying it was normal. I'm trying to explain why it's not normal to do that as a way of discouraging readers from thinking it's a trick they should use to start conversations.
No. Don't start up some small talk right then, unless they are clearly inviting it. Leave them alone, they did what you asked. After a couple of workouts, you know their name, they know your name, you are familiar to each other, then maybe you start asking what they do or getting to know more about them.
At least that's what I do. If someone I don't know at all asks me for a spot and then starts immediately hitting me with a bunch of questions/chitchat I'm suspicious. The last time this happened it turned out to be a guy who fancied himself a powerlifting coach and was looking for new clients.
Depends. I'm an introvert, but lifting is my second passion. I've noticed someone doing a lift I want to get better at and asked them for advice, form check, etc and they're usually excited to share the hobby. The reverse is true too.
: After astrophotography, before cycling
> However when someone is at the gym and another stranger asks them to stop and do a favor that takes time out of their gym visit it’s just annoying, not a friendship starter.
Might be the place you live; this is not my experience at all. I ask randos to spot me every week. People love to help out. Sometimes they'll even keep an eye on you in case you have another set and come offering.
I think you’re missing the point. The original advice wasn’t actually about the spot, it was about coming up with a “favor” to ask to trick someone into being friendly.
If you’re just asking for advice or a legitimate assistance and then moving on then there is absolutely no problem with that because it’s honest from beginning to end.
My point is don’t go out of your way to seek favors from people because you think it’s a hack to trick them into being more friendly with you.
Just be honest.
It's not 'coming up with a favor'. You're genuinely asking someone for help that they can provide. This one is more challenging with strangers, but with friends and newer relationships where you know the people better, asking them for help is a big deal. I think too many of us don't want to bother people, but it turns out people generally want to help others around them. As Simon Sinek says, don't take away your friend's ability to help you - it's selfish!
I'm not missing the point; you made several. The one I engaged I quoted for you. You can see from the sibling comments that several of us took issue with it.
For what it's worth, I agree with your last position about just being honest. If anything, a finding like this should just move the asking of small favors from a stranger towards the norm.
Often I get asked to spot someone while their lift and I don’t mind, maybe you had bad luck.
I was about to say this. Anyone who has spent any time at the gym will have zero problem spotting someone.
> I have heard this repeated across books and podcasts for years but I’ve only seen it fail in person.
Counterpoint: I have seen it succeed in person. Asking for a little help is a great ice breaker.
Yeah, that sounds like really bad advice.
Personally I would read this as a weak, but noticeable signal of being a person who is okay with taking advantage of others. Most people are too embarrassed to ask complete strangers for actual favours.
Your calibration is wildly off. Asking people for a spot is totally normal at any gym with free weights.
Spotting is a different thing, as you're communicating that you're entrusting your safety with that person.
Imagine someone instead asked you to wipe down the equipment for them or help putting the weights back. Different signal altogether.
That sends a different signal, because you're asking someone to do something you could do yourself but simply choose not to, which is essentially what you described above as "taking advantage of others". However this is quite different from what I described in my comment.
If you see every request for help as someone taking advantage of others, I'd encourage you to reconsider why you view everyone that way. It might also be preventing you from seeking help yourself, out of fear of being seen as a leech.
> If you see every request for help as someone taking advantage of others
Let me rephrase, because there seems to be some kind of misunderstanding here:
To me this advice applied broadly would take the appearance of such a signal, even if weak. The framing of "do it because people like to help" is something which wouldn't even occur to me as motivation to ask for help.
Those examples aren't something a person needs help on, I think that's the difference. I can't spot my own lift. I can't teach myself what a certain machine does if I don't even know what it's called. I can't understand a new lift I haven't seen before without asking the person doing it what it is and a little about it.
Ask people for help where help is actually needed, not to act as your servant cleaning up behind you.
The OP of this thread didn't specify the nature of the favours, just gave general advice which I think is not helpful.
I don't think so. Last week someone asked me if they could use one of my climbing equipment for a moment and I said sure. They asked me in a friendly manner and I had a positive feeling of them afterwards.
Jeez. It happens all the time in the normal world.
I learned about this technique from Owen Wilson’s character in the otherwise exceptionally forgettable movie “The Haunting (1999).” Paradoxically, you are the one doing them a favor by effectively giving them permission to ask for help in the future.
I've learned this by reading Influence by Robert Cialdini.The trick is find something to which they say yes. If they do it their brain kind of tells them: If I did him/her a favor it's because I like him/her.... and liking opens other doors
The Ben Franklin effect is real! My experience at conferences has improved significantly by ending talks on a personal note and explicitly saying that I have trouble approaching people but very much like being approached and chat about anything. This usually leads to interesting conversations in the breaks. Please give it a try if you are like me and aimlessly wander the hallways in between sessions otherwise.
This is a Benjamin Franklin hack right?
I have heard that this is called the Benjamin Franklin effect, and it appears to be an inversion of the principle of reciprocity coined by Robert Cialdini.
proper psychopath stuff this. seriously just be nice to people. OP gets it right.
It might be psychopathic behavior to make things up just to ask for help, but that's not what I'm saying (and you can see the rest of the thread for reference). What I mean is that one of the many ways relationships are formed is through collaboration, rather than small talk about irrelevant things that 99.9% of the time leads nowhere. Be the first to help, or ask for help when you genuinely need it. There's nothing psychopathic about that, this is as human as it gets - you'll observe the same behavior with certain animals.
I feel, like a lot of 21st century life is trying to do things artificially. Going to the gym, talking to strangers at the gym, ... these are both artifical replacements for human activity that is missing. You go to the gym because your daily routine isn't active enough. You try to form friendships with strangers because your daily routine lacks real and fulfilling interactions with other people.
Also it's kind of odd how nowadays everyone goes to the gym. Growing up as a late-stage millenial, gym goers were a niche subculture. Now it marketed to everyone everywhere as this integral part of modern daily life.
> "Going to the gym, talking to strangers at the gym, ... these are both artifical replacements for human activity that is missing."
As opposed to what, our ancient hunter gatherer lifestyle? Going to the gym and talking to strangers at the gym isn't an "artificial replacement", it's a genuine activity lots of people do.
> "You try to form friendships with strangers because your daily routine lacks real and fulfilling interactions with other people."
How do you think people make friends? They make friends by interacting with people at shared spaces and activities.
> As opposed to what, our ancient hunter gatherer lifestyle?
Gardening, building things, maintenance, walking to the market etc.
I used to go to the gym but now I have a house and stuff to do it feels insane that I used my muscles to do useless work for so long.
everyone is different, even if I'm biking/walking everywhere and working outside, I still need to work myself to exhaustion if I want to get any sleep. I currently train muay thai, but even when I was young and doing yard work for a living I still trained with my friends and played sports. heck, growing up my life was american football training during the day and after school, regular football a couple of times a week with friends, running around for fun, and then doing heavy yard work at home and at neighbor's houses on weekends.
Not that your's isn't valid, some people (like me) have a big surplus of energy that needs to go somewhere and sometimes the best available outlet is lifting weights.
Isn't that a subjective value judgment? That's great that you enjoy gardening and building things with your hands. I don't really enjoy those activities and would rather sit down and read a book or play the piano in my free time. But I want to stay healthy so I exercise my muscles and cardiovascular system in "artificial" ways. What's wrong with that?
I really don't know what to say, that was such an odd/funny take...
I have a house and stuff, and still go to the gym at 5:30 every morning, as a supplement to my running and cycling.
I guess my cycling is an artificial substitute for riding a horse? ;)
It's an artificial substitute for riding to work or to the supermarket etc.
Why would I ride when I can walk to both. ;)
> Also it's kind of odd how nowadays everyone goes to the gym. Growing up as a late-stage millenial, gym goers were a niche subculture. Now it marketed to everyone everywhere as this integral part of modern daily life.
GenX here and I feel the same way. To me, "The Gym" has always been a place where bodybuilders and muscle heads go. In my mind, it will always be a niche hobby like autocross racing or horseback riding. And I know that I'm wrong! Everyone and their mom seems to go to The Gym now! But, it's hard to change the culture and learnings that you grew up with.
I think it's because the general public figured out they'll die in their 50s if they don't. Modern life is too easy -- a substantial portion of the population spends their white-collar lives flying a desk, "socializing" via sitting around eating and drinking, hiring people to do their landscaping and housework.. hell, you don't even need to walk to get food anymore, both restaurant meals and groceries are delivered. Sure, you might get out to a hike every weekend but that's simply not enough. For health it's pretty much a non-negotiable to go do some strenuous activity every other day, and going to the gym is the path of least resistance to getting that done.
I think about this a lot too. There always seems to be a fitness trend involving classes like aerobics, yoga, pilates, Taibo, Zumba. But if we're talking about weight training, it is definitely having a moment now.
I wonder if all the instructional content on Youtube makes training with weights and weight machines more accessible than ever. I was intimidated by weights and figured it would be boring. A guy I knew was talking about his weight training and I asked if he plans things out with friends/workout buddies and he said he learns about it on YouTube. So when I finally pushed myself to try weights, I found a video. It was a petite woman (I'm a dude) and I thought, ok she looks better than I do and this routine is a nice start. And I went from there, in my forties.
My funniest theory is that dating has been getting more competitive and strength-training is good for confidence.
> For health it's pretty much a non-negotiable to go do some strenuous activity every other day, and going to the gym is the path of least resistance to getting that done
You are right, but the reason it's so prevalent is also because it is better for capitalism. Going to the gym isn't just a 1-off activity, it's an entire lifestyle & it doesn't necessarily come cheap. You need a membership, specialized gear, lessons, switch your consumption habits to high protein foods ... etc
> it's an entire lifestyle
You might be overthinking this, although I understand how it can appear that way for someone on the outside looking in. Your local gym probably costs less than your Netflix subscription, if you don't already have a free gym in your apartment building. You don't really need anything else other than looking up some routines on reddit.
Most people at a gym are not the fitness-focused people you're thinking of. Most are just white collar workers who need some exercise. A typical American diet already has an embarrassing surplus of protein, there's very little gear that your average person is going to need (active clothes can just be shorts and t-shirt, maybe swim trunks, and a pair of shoes), and IMO most people don't need a trainer for more than a couple of sessions to show them the ropes.
Yeah I think this is everywhere in society now. For example, you used to have to ask others for directions, which naturally leads in to conversation about where your going.
Now you look like a bit odd if you ask for directions since everyone has a smart phone now. So you have to go create artificial scenarios to socialize.
> Going to the gym... artificial replacements for human activity that is missing
Compared to what? Even the ancient Greeks and Romans spent a significant amount of time in gymnasiums. Or are you comparing modern times to cavemen?
I'll take a shot at this one:
Compared to a life rhythm that was intrinsically social: recurring gatherings of your community (which used to mean proximity, not hobby) at a building, being invited to others' houses, a social expectation to be social and host things, recurring interaction with the same people due to a smaller circle. Contrast: today we're expected to leave a group of people to go to school, leave those people to move to a job, leave those people for hobbies and romance, and to never let those circle overlap.
Gym wise: compared to life being heavy, and relatively full of physical effort. (Even just working on a car/wood/metal/house/farm with hand tools for example). Cycling to work has done wonders to bridge this gap for me. I think also the current beauty/attraction aesthetic is hard to approach without dedicated weight training. At the top end of lean muscle mass modern life just isn't heavy enough to stimulate enough muscle growth, and in preferred proportions, unless you're willing to do tons and tons of reps which is exceedingly painful compared to banging out 5-15 of a rep range appropriate weight.
Also it's kind of odd how nowadays everyone goes to the gym. Growing up as a late-stage millenial, gym goers were a niche subculture. Now it marketed to everyone everywhere as this integral part of modern daily life.
Aerobics classes have been a thing for decades. Pumping Iron came out in 1977. When I was in college (UVA, 95-99), there were several good gyms, plus they built a fancy new one about mid-way through my degree.
I suspect you just happened to be in a time/place where gym use was lower than average.
For me going to the gym (actually YMCA) is just a way to express agency in a society that increasingly is trying to rob me of that. I may be gatekept out of various other things, because I'm not attractive enough, not high income enough, not smart enough, not young enough, etc etc. But as now, nobody can stop me from going to work out.
crossfit made the gym (and free weights) cool
crossfit became popular as a side effect of "bootcamp" style workouts in the 2000s-2010s, like the Spartan Run, Tough Mudder, Rucking, etc.
mark rippetoe, creator of Starting Strength, was heavily involved in crossfit. between that and him franchising his Starting Strength practice, powerlifting became more widely practiced. once Instagram started building lifestyle brands around this (gymshark, alphalete, nobull, darcsport, etc.), it was a lock.
This stuff comes in waves and every generation thinks that it's unique. Adidas was originally a pro fitness brand like Gymshark is now. Gymshark will become athleisure just like Adidas, it's just a matter of time.
Crossfit is just the name for HIIT training that's pumped as a new branded workout. Note that already it's now Hyrox. It will be something else in a few years.
Boomers and Gen X are riddled with diseases associated with a sedentary lifestyle and poor nutrition/diet. I would like to think the generations are learning from the mistakes of their predecessors. A lot of science has come out about the benefits of resistance training as well, along with the normalization of women doing resistance training in large part due to CrossFit
Indeed, it's the underlying principle of "division of labor".
Karl Marx' coined the term "Alienation" for describing most of the negative societal/human consequences of this principle, leading to isolation of humans "from themselves" (their natural will to construct something whole meaningful, not just complete a task in a process, but also isolation between humans themselves)
Completely wrong in many dimensions.
Source: Karl Marx
If only those treadmills and spinning and repetitive activities could be harnessed to generate electricity or pump water, and really close the loop!
Good for you, OP! Climbing gyms are especially good for making friends because you are working on problems with people. My gym has a weekly meet up for people looking for belay partners as well as classes where folks talk. Crossfit might also do the trick, as might a running club. Good luck!
The other thing with climbing gyms, especially bouldering is that you only spend maybe 20% of the time climbing. With 80% time off, that's a lot of opportunities for socializing.
You don't get that with the high intensity training like Crossfit where you spend maybe 70% of the time working out and 30% of the time dying.
And socialisation happens naturally. You're waiting and lots of other people are doing the same. You are working on problems and can exchange tips or complements or cheer people on. It's inherently social.
The gym is not inherently social unless you are actively spotting / alternating uses of a single machine. You either join that group of gym rats (who in my experience spend 80% of their time talking) or you put your headphones on and crack on solo.
I'll second climbing gyms. My entire core group of friends in my city (that weren't already friends prior to my moving here) are people I met from the climbing gym or yoga classes at the climbing gym.
Its a great space to meet new people, there are inherent breaks in the activity, shared problems to work on, and its a non-competitive space. Everyone just wants everyone else to send hard.
+1 from me. I always find it very challenging to speak to strangers, but not at the Boulder gym. There's just so many opportunities to start a natural conversation:
- new climbers asks you for advise
- you can ask a new climber if they'd like some technique tips
- you finally top your project and someone commends you for it
- someone tops your project and you ask them for advise
- you're trying to top a boulder on a new set and are solving it with others
- you're _constantly_ in the gym so staff starts talking to you
Man, I've been bouldering now at my gym for maybe 18 months and I can count on one hand the number of times I've spoken to someone.
A lot of people on their own have earbuds in too,and clearly don't want to be spoken to.
I had one time where I asked someone for some help, he then went and did the route and shrugged and said it's easy in a really condescending manner.
I love when I'm climbing alone and working on something really hard for me and some random people just start cheering as I get near the top. :)
I relate a lot OP's situation but every time I think about trying to talk to someone else I just get worried that if it does go "bad" (i.e. very awkward) then it will become to mentally hard to stay at the gym for the rest of the session or even come back and since its a place I actually like being in I end up never trying anything in fear of ruining a place I like. I don't know if anyone else feels like that but I just felt like leaving this comment.
As long as you don't bring up politics, religion, or money, you would be hard-pressed to make it so bad you wouldn't be able to stay or even come back. If things are SUPER awkward, just move to the other side of the gym or go to the bathroom for a little bit (~5-10m or so) then feel free to return, just don't talk to that person again other than a simple "hi" if warranted.
It’s probably mostly your social anxiety speaking there. If you go in not expecting anything in return it won’t get that awkward just go alright I’ll let you get back to it and go back to doing your thing.
I had like 20 years of social anxiety and it’s actually very anti-climactic when you can have a normal short conversation with a stranger. Not dramatic and no one’s traumatized
I had the same issue! I was nervous/awkward around the people who didn't want to talk to me. I can't say if it will be the same for you but after a week of me seeing them, them seeing me, and us doing our thing, I got used it and lowkey forgot about it. I don't think it's as big of a deal as we think
It’s a similar thing for me at coffee-shops that I frequent quite often and where I often see recurring faces. In a way it’s natural, “making contact”, so to speak, would only help transform those third spaces into potential-friends spaces, which might be good for some, but which might also seem less desirable for others.
I used to rock climb in gyms a lot. I stopped going because I found the people there incredibly irritating (didn't matter on the gym). The things that irritated me: 1) People would immediately jump on the route I was on after seeing I struggled. Cool flex. 2) Unsolicited advice. Thanks, but I'm here minding my own business
I generally have a hard time connecting with people like OP but found that I was able to find good climbing partners outside as opposed to in the gym.
I now do crossfit and while I know it's not for everyone, it's a decent community. I still don't talk to folks in the gym, I don't want to but I like that we're all in it together and pushing ourselves pretty hard. I feel connected in that way.
I would really not like a stranger tapping me on the shoulder in the gym. That's my "alone time". That's just me though.
You know the old adage about if you meet one jerk in a day, it's them, but if everyone you meet is a jerk...anyway I'm glad you like CrossFit, if climbing weren't my thing, I'd probably do something in that category instead :)
haha not the first time I've been called a jerk. Probably why I like to keep to myself ;)
I can see why people would be irritated by 1 and 2 and they happen to me too, but I have just reframed how I think about them.
If someone jumps on something I'm struggling with, I take it as an opportunity to really pay attention to what they're doing and try to learn. They might just be way stronger, but they probably also have some better technique ideas.
For #2, I just take it as a slightly awkward attempt to reach out and socialize. Advice isn't harmful. At worst it's a mild spoiler (oh well), or just wrong (then ignore it). At best it's a great chance to learn something.
I'm awkward and it's rare for me to start a conversation, so I just take someone else talking to me as an opportunity to connect without having to make the awkward first step, and try to spend a minute or two (at least) talking with the person.
I completely agree with climbing gyms!
I'm lucky enough that I live in a city that has a newbie-friendly group that climbs every week and goes for dinner and board games afterwards.
I consider myself an introvert, but after going for a while, I got to figure out who are regulars, and they recognise me as a new regular too, at which point they're more open to socialising more, even outside the weekly meetups.
Even when I'm bouldering alone, I've had random people cheer for me when I'm about to send, or show me the beta for a route I'm struggling with, or ask for help with a problem. It just provides a very natural conversation starter, at which point you can pivot to other topics, provided they seem open to talking more.
+1 for climbing gyms. In my experience the people there are really open and welcoming. Most are down for a quick chat.
Liverpool (near OP who’s in Syracuse) has a fantastic very friendly climbing gym with Auto Belays; easy to go solo.
I've always had an easy time talking to strangers and striking up conversations. I think this line is the key one:
> But over time, I came to accept that it’s ok if they didn’t want to talk to me. That’s just one of the things you have to expect when you do something like this.
People are complex! They have a lot going on. You almost never get someone responding with the same attention you are giving. That's just how it is.
What he is doing is developing a practice of friendliness. This won't develop close friendships - close friendships are what happen after you're successfully friendly to people who are good fit. But it will set you up to do well in semi-public spaces like the gym or your friends' party where you don't know anyone. It's an extremely good skill to practice and, unlike what I would have said at twenty, it does not reflect a lack of depth. Understanding that not everyone wants to have a deep conversation at every moment is maturity - doubly so if you can recognize it in yourself.
I have always been good at this and I am pretty introverted. You don't want to force conversations, just start by saying 'What's up?"'. Keep doing it over and over. The is all proved our in social psychology and proximity theory which in a nutshell means you are more likely to get to know people you see more often. You just need to let people know you see them and over time raise the bar.
> do your hobby with other people, frequently
I think this advice can be refined.
The goal is to meet people with shared interests, regularly.
You may like to work out, but unless you enjoy talking and thinking about working out, the gym isn't the right place!
You may like to hike, but you may not enjoy talking and thinking about hiking. You may still find friends in the hiking group, because as you spend time together you discover shared interests. But you may also discover that you have very little in common with the people who like hiking.
That's why it's so easy to make friends in University: You spend a lot of time together AND you have a shared interest: The major you all chose!
On the other hand, if you're into ... trains... you need to find places where people go that like to talk and think about trains! That's not always easy!
Recently I went to the grocery store and as I entered the alcohol section, I saw a guy stacking the shelves. His hand slipped and the beer can jumped out but he showed impressive reflexes and caught it after couple of fumbles. There was no one else but him and me in the aisle.
I enthusiastically pointed out, "I saw that! That was amazing, great reflexes!" and added that sometimes no one sees these but I will definitely remember it. He was beaming and while I was checking out my stuff, I saw him excitedly pointing towards the aisle and me while chatting with a cashier. Where I am at, it is not the usual to throw loud and vocal compliments at strangers - so I guess he wasn't used to it.
I usually don't compliment people this enthusiastically but I guess the mood and time was right and I felt as good giving the compliment as he must have felt receiving it.
I think a big part of this is that men don't typically receive genuine compliments that often, especially from strangers or acquaintances. When it (rarely) does happen I feel like it can have a significant impact on their mood.
I can definitely relate. What's funny is I've always been really social and open to talking to strangers, plus I come from a culture where this is accepted and encouraged (Brazil).
However, I've been working remotely for 7 years now and recently became a solo founder, and I realized I'm having a fair amount of social anxiety. At the previous two companies, I was working remotely but still had people online to chat to, and would meet in person once in a while. Now as a solo founder I've just been working from home and I noticed that when I was leaving the house to buy groceries or work out that was my "break time" and I somehow just wanted to be more alone so I always had my headphones on.
That meant that I became someone who's running away from social interaction the more I actually needed it. And that when placed in a social situation I'm suddenly anxious whereas before this all came very naturally to me (I've also spoken in public very often etc).
How I'm coping:
- Got a WeWork membership
- Leaving the house without headphones
- Striking up conversation with uber drivers, cashiers, etc
- Making an effort to go to events (even flying somewhere at my own expense to speak at a small event for the first time in years)
On headphones: I recently got a set of Aftershokz headphones to use as sleep headphones that worked with my custom earplugs plugged in.
They work amazingly for that purpose, but I was not at all prepared for how much more social these would (re-)make me.
Listening to music helps me relax. If I could, I'd have something on at all times. (Jazz in the morning, KEXP in the afternoon, classical at night.) With these, I can talk to people and hear them crystal clearly while listening to whatever I have on. I don't need to compromise like I did (and do) while wearing AirPods (even in transparency mode). This has made me more receptive to striking up conversation.
On coworking: couldn't agree more. Being around other people has been great for my mental health, even if I'm not talking to them. I'm also the kind of person that needs work and home life to be physically separate and needs a commute to make work feel like work. Taking the bus into work is scratching that itch well.
Remote work is absolutely brutal to a cohesive functioning society. I know people are going to slam me for saying it but is honestly true. People forgot how to interact with each other because the forcing function that gets everybody mixed together into the same pot got taken away. And if you don’t take some fairly extreme steps to counter it, you’ll be completely alone and isolated, subject to algorithmically chosen feeds that are completely unique to you and detached from the community around you.
It’s really quite dystopian and anti-human if you ask me. We’ve already lost so much shared mediums—nobody watches the same shows, reads the same media, etc. which in isolation is completely fine. But something has to be shared with other real physical humans and it has to be more than just occasional grocery store visits, run-ins at the park, etc.
I dunno quite how to articulate it very well though. It’s just remote work has a nasty side effect of making humans even more isolated from people not like themselves. It makes us all increasingly divided and “othered”. And that isn’t good for anybody.
I agree. I have been fully remote for a bit over 2 years, and I myself feel a change. In the early days I had a managerial role so I felt the need to visit office and deal with employees, colleagues and customers. Office is 5 miles so not too far, I just avoid going as my family health issues may require my intervention. Now that I am an IC, and the health issues are not sorted, my visits have reduced, and I think it is slowly changing me for the worse - in terms of discipline, social interactions and even productivity which you think would be higher from home. Thankfully though I am starting to recognize some of the patterns and working to fix them but you can fix productivity, you can not fix lack of socialization.
> People forgot how to interact with each other because the forcing function that gets everybody mixed together into the same pot got taken away.
A lot of offices don't force you to interact with each other, much less in meaningful ways.
> And if you don’t take some fairly extreme steps to counter it, you’ll be completely alone and isolated
Are "having more time to meet with friends and family" or "having time to do hobbies with other people" extreme steps?
I have friends and family, but staring at a computer 8 hours or more a day is corrosive to my mental health.
And when I am in an office, I do interact with people, in meaningless and meaningful ways, whether I am forced to or not.
I know this does not apply to everybody, but I function best with constant low level social interaction. I should have picked a different career, but I didn't have that foresight.
you wouldve been downvoted into the seventh layer of hell for saying this three years ago.
Post College friendships can be hard. Friendships before graduations are almost all completely spontaneous and natural. No one has to _really_ know how to be the initiator. My experience suggests that it doesn’t really get better as you age, either.
My wife and I took on that role after college. Neither of us is particularly outgoing, but we’re not cripplingly shy either.
Meeting new people is about realizing you’re not alone in feeling lonely. When we pick up on positive vibes we just ask for a phone number “can I have your phone number? You seem cool, and I’d love to ___. (Fill in the blank with one of “get a cup of coffee/beer”, “take a walk,” “invite you to a [thing I host].” It’s not significantly different from the dating scene except it’s so much lower stakes. I recommend sticking to same sex or group invites for this reason. Rejections are rare, and almost certainly don’t reflect on you.
Secondly we start things on schedules. Things that happen regularly are super low pressure ways to start friendships: “hey, we cook an elaborate dinner and then hang out and play instruments/sing/watch a movie/hang out at the beach/take a hike once a month/week/whatever, join us!”
This makes it easy to invite anyone without it feeling like a date.
I say all this knowing that none of this is _easy_, but it is a kindness. You’re not alone feeling lonely. With a little bravery you can totally be the person who makes it better for your new group of friends.
> Friendships before graduations are almost all completely spontaneous and natural.
They are mainly from proximity. You see people in class, you live near them, and you're near the same age. It's the same reason in person work would generate friendships/relationships. The challenge in today's remote world is proximity now has to be intentional.
I'm not sure how true that is...I'm not clear if the modern workplace has ever been the primary source of relationships.
Places of worship, community spaces like libraries/clubs - sure...but I had to develop these skills years before I moved to remote work.
According to Google some 20% of marriages began at work, and some 50% of people say they have a close friend at work. IDK about it being a primary source, but it's definitely an important one. And it makes sense when people are around each other all day.
I've been going to the gym for decades, and to my current one for about a decade. There's a cadre of fairly serious people who have been there for that long or longer who all know each other. Even if we don't necessarily know someone's name, we can usually give a short description, and everyone will know who we're talking about.
The downside is you get sucked into the operational drama. The guy who started the gym lives there and has developed obvious memory problems, while the business partner basically stole the business from underneath him. His now-ex-wife took all of his savings, including an insurance payout from when he was struck by a semi during a traffic accident and was forced to medically retire from being a policeman. I believe most of that money went to frequent Disney trips. The business partner is trying to drive him out by charging him rent to stay there and watch the place, changing the hours so he can't get quiet, and she also stopped paying him altogether.
We usually just commiserate on who and what we can't stand and the degradation of general gym etiquette: people screaming like they're having sex while working out, people sitting on equipment and playing with their phones, people so checked out they take the exact piece of equipment you were on, despite it being a large gym with duplicate machines for most things. These are evergreen discussion topics.
I loved the writing, in particular this line, but the whole piece was strangely endearing:
I loved it too. I audibly laughed at this one:
"Korean girl Short I didn't know how to start a conversation with her, so I just asked if she was Korean and she said yes. Then I made her guess what kind of Asian I am. Then I rambled about being Asian in Syracuse before leaving. I initiated one more conversation but now we don't interact"
So endearing!
That sounds frightening to someone with social anxiety...
Yeah, that would be the last time I show up to that gym. I'd feel it was my fault. and that I was bothering them.
You bother people every day with your existence. You are one more car in their traffic, 5 minutes more of waiting in their line, you got the last bagel they were craving. Being a bother to people is part of living in a society, it would be impossible to live without ever being a burden or a nuisance to anyone. I wished I had accepted this earlier in life.
The important thing is to realize that this feeling is irrational. People aren't strongly bothered that easily. Quite the contrary, extroverted people tend to be much more popular than average.
You can easily continue this into a conversation, FYI: "Oh, lol - you did X, and I knew another Canadian who did X, so I thought that might be a Canadian thing. Where are you from then?"
I find that most people don't reach out to previous friends if they haven't been contacted in a while. For whatever reason, I don't have that internal programming. Whenever I remember, I will ping my friends or old coworkers going back 20+ years and go out for lunch, and it's always a great time. It's best to not have too much pride over it, life is too short in my opinion.
Yeah this is what I like to do. I don’t like to talk to strangers (maybe I should) but I much prefer striking up conversations with old acquaintances, even if we hadn’t talked in years. It somehow felt easier and more satisfying for me to pick up an old acquaintanceship than to try to make new friends.
And I almost never get a no when I make the effort. One of the people I spend the most time with as an adult is one of my childhood friends who we just randomly went for beers once after not seeing in 15 years and now meet up every month or two since we still had the same chemistry as we did as kids
> I asked him a question, he answered and left. I guess he didn't want to talk
If you have anxiety about talking to strangers, just remember that 99% of the time when someone doesn't really want to talk, this happens. Not really that scary after all
My fear is I’m socially awkward, I might do or say something I genuinely didn’t know was awkward, and that person will make a TikTok video of me and ruin my life. I’ve seen videos from people posting about “creeps at the gym” and it’s just a guy looking in the direction of the girl taking the video, and it seems like just looking in the general direction of someone for too long could make you a public example of a creep, and that’s basically my nightmare.
And people might say “well if you know you didn’t do anything wrong so you shouldn’t be worried” but I’ve gotten into trouble many times for things I knew weren’t wrong but you can’t rationally argue with herd mentality when a group of people decide something is a faux pas.
Luckily people don't film in my gym, but watching Joey Swoll [1] I've seen plenty of idiots (often young women) who try to make someone in the background of their video look bad. It's always completely obvious that the person in the background (who probably doesn't want to be filmed) is not staring or being a creep, even though heavy zoom and slow-motion is used to "prove" something. Ridiculous.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@thejoeyswoll/videos
> ruin my life
What trouble have you gotten in for doing what exactly?
The stupid things you see on TikTok are (nearly?) all fake.
You’re basically so petrified of bricking prod and getting fired that you refuse to even start on your first ticket. The catastrophic outcome is low probability and not worth fretting over.
Going out and risking embarrassment is the price of admission for leaving the house. If you do say something silly, you have the opportunity to learn from it and grow a little bit.
Those TikTok videos are usually fake or bait. 99% of people do not think you’re weird or creepy for existing.
Yup!
Cool article. Love some genuine positivity.
I cna't say I would imitate him. It would feel some awkward to me afterwards when you see the people training again but don't interact anymore lol
This reminds me of a college dorm friend who always seemed to be on a date with someone new.
His philosophy was simple: “It’s the law of large numbers. If you ask enough people out, and don’t fear rejection, you’re eventually going to get a yes. And along the way, you build the confidence and skill to ask better.”
I think picking up people at the bar is easier than making friends at the gym - what you want is to join a crossfit gym, or something that has a stronger community culture to it. Not the gym.
But I hear that with Gen Z and Alpha they dont really go to bars but they do tend to go to the gym, and so the gym is becoming a more social space. So maybe OP is on the right track?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/15/why-gym-plac...
at least in the US, gen alpha wouldn't really be allowed in any bars which is honestly part of the problem
source: I'm on the younger end of gen z and I can't drink yet
> I can't drink yet
being on the older end, I can ASSURE YOU that you do not miss anything if you do not drink/cant drink right now.
Though, it took me some decades to realize this :-(
I think what matters most is that they get out and socialize.
If there is alcohol involved with that, it's a personal choice that I don't think deserves shame unless it's consumed in a shameful way. I would have to assume any adult should know their limits, be resilient against peer pressure, etc.
I would actually argue that the fights you have with yourself regarding addictions are just as much of a rite of passage as the fights you have with others while drunk.
If you so strongly wish you could eliminate negative experiences, you'll eventually have to ask yourself "compared to what?" and realize such a treadmill of misery is your true source of regret, not your actions or the consequences.
I have a ton of "gym friends." And this is a commercial gym. We know each other's names, will help out with spots, have small conversations. None of those have yet led to hanging out outside the gym, but if you go to the gym at the same time every day, you're bound to at least start to recognize people, and it's really easy to say, hey I've seen you around a lot, my name is...
i think this can also depend on location. I live in a military town and have been a powerlifter for several years, i routinely have men come up to ask about my routine. a handful of times its turned into real friendships.
There's a pub in my city where the staff greet you when you walk in and actively encourage you to sit at a table that's already occupied. If you come in alone you'll probably end up sitting at a two person table where inevitably there will be a stranger right across from you, with a couple similar tables right next to it. Of course if you want to be alone you can go sit in a corner somewhere.
Needless to say everyone starts talking to each other after a drink or two. This bar is enormously popular. I've never seen it not be packed. It's an incredibly successful strategy for them. With all the complaints about the death of third spaces, I'm baffled that more places don't do this. I see no reason a cafe couldn't do it as well.
All this to say I think it's a great loss that younger people aren't going to bars as much. I wouldn't say they're the best way to form deep connections, but I have zero fear of ever lacking random social interactions, because I know I can just go to a reasonably busy pub in the evening, sit at the bar, and sooner or later either I'll start a conversation or someone else will. It's also a great way to get good at handling opinions that are different from yours - if you have a thin skin or live in a bubble, being subjected to drunk people from every walk of life will rectify those issues quickly lol.
Bars are a common place, but do you really want to meet the type of person who hangs out in a bar? Sure if you only want a one night stand what they do with the rest of their life doesn't matter. However if you want a relationship you probably don't want to start with a high odds of finding a borderline alcoholic.
You have some rather uncommon prejudice towards people who go to bars. Unless of course your culture is significantly different from mine.
But where I am from: - bars are 'a third place' where people hang regularly without getting wasted - bars serve dozens of different non-alcoholic drinks - most people in the bar are not "looking for a one night stand" but for some socializing, fun, and a chance to meet interesting people
But as I said, maybe your part of the world has bars that attract different clientele.
You don't need to get drunk regularly to be a near alcoholic.
There are a lot of "regulars" in most who need to "get a life". I won't object to those who are visiting once in a while, but there are far more bars everywhere I've been than could exist if people "had a life", my general observation is 5-10% of the population is a regular.
> but do you really want to meet the type of person who hangs out in a bar
Wow, ok. There is a huge space between alcoholic at the bar every night and someone who likes to have a drink with their friends on a Saturday night.
Not all bars have the same "type" of people. Also if you're looking for camaraderie or friendship, it's a pretty good place to have talks of all kind - the silly ones are the best!
But even if I don't drink? Seems like a bar is not a place I would want to go. I know there can be other things to do there than drink, but still.
I find camaraderie is excellent through sports leagues and board game events, stuff like that.
Go to a 'bar' in Italy and people are just as likely to get a coffee as they are wine at night.
Or join something that's inherently a group activity. For me, it's singing in a choir. Everybody goes there to do something together with other folk, which lowers the barrier.
Second this. CrossFit is fantastic for community. Not so sure about my knees though!
Being an introvert myself and perfectly fine when being alone, this is so hard to read. Possibly it's just me but making new friends is quite overrated, and the whole thing OP does feels forced and artificial at many levels. Genuine connection should be built on mutual deep interests, and small talks at random places rarely reveal them. I'd be disappointed if someone starts a conversation with me artificially because I'm part of their hidden social experiment.
Key word: rarely
It’s a numbers game with very low stakes to the downside and very high to the upside
> Genuine connection should be built on mutual deep interests
That's backwards. You can't find friends with "mutual deep interests" without talking to strangers. You have to first find out somehow whether there are mutual interests in the first place.
I thought the same thing. This was really uncomfortable for me.
I realized with the people where I really care about leaving a good impression or hoping to become friends with, it's really hard and scary to do any kind of interaction. If I on the other hand have no desire for a friendship with someone but a chance occurs to chat, I talk to them like I know them for decades and am fully relaxed and don't really have any kind of anexiety.
Seems that the more you want something, the more you are able to sabotage yourself getting it.
I want to congratulate the author for getting out of his comfort zone to tackle a hard problem. But being able to make friends at a gym is not a universal experience.
I joined a gym partially to get fit and partially to meet people with similar fitness goals. Working out alone just feels sad. I tried to be friendly with people, would smile and say "hi," when I walked past someone. I would ask someone a non-confrontational question about their workout. In months of trying, maybe a handful of people who at least said anything back. Zero conversations. The rest either responded with a blank stare or pretended to not hear me at all. Nobody ever approached me or said hi first the whole time I was there, except sometimes the people behind the counter.
I'm socially deficient but not THAT awkward and have no problem talking to people in other situations. I'm not sure if it was the kind of gym I was at, or just the wrong time of day, or if people in the gym only want attention from those who won the genetic lottery. But I didn't have much success.
Different gyms do have different cultures and probably time of day matters too. Absolute worst is right after work it’s so packed and everyone’s still kind of stressed and looking to get done and head out on to the next chore
I'd highly suggest joining a Brazilian jiu jitsu gym. They tend to be filled with other computer nerds (although not only) and people are very friendly in a genuine way.
BJJ is very social because you can't train alone. It also mostly weeds out assholes because no one wants to train with jerks (usually there's a single gym in an area that ends up with all the jerks lol). The other thing that quickly forms relationships is that you're trusting other people not to hurt you and vice versa. Giving and receiving this trust tends to cause relationships to build quickly.
And yes, many gyms are filled with nerds. Once you get past the basics, it's very much a thinking sport.
I go to my gym alone and it seems to me 90% of people there are alone. Also all are wearing headphones.
Imo talking to strangers at the gym is hard. I made friends there just by saying 'Hi', waving to them when we started to see each other working out often enough. Then once you're using the same equipment or get dressed in the locker room you have a conversation about whatever and there you go.
Anyway, the fastest way I made friends outside of school was at a language course, where you have to speak a lot about something. You can switch partners during the course, so you can talk to other people. Another thing is sports clubs, it works out the same as the gym.
So the answer is, I guess, just going to gatherings where people learn new things with an instructor.
100% this. As you say, language courses need content so a lot of it is talking about your life/opinions. Super easy to make friends after a few weeks of that if you make a tiny bit of effort
"Her barbell is a special women's barbell."
FYI, it was probably just a regular women's weightlifting barbell. They are somewhat lighter, and have a thinner grip. Maybe she's serious about her weightlifting training.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_weightlifting#Barbell
This is very HN in a funny way: take ordinary social behavior, turn it into a deliberate experiment, collect observations, then write it up.
I just assume any guy trying to make small talk with me at the gym is trying to hit on me, which I am correct about maybe 80% of the time. I know because I am a gay guy so I know how this kind of thing goes. Not that I have a problem with it, I am always happy to talk to any strangers if they want to, for pretty much any reason. As a straight-passing guy though, women at the gym never approach me except to ask if I am done using a machine, and I also don’t approach them because I assume they’ll just think I’m trying to hit on them. I’m just unsure how to approach people at the gym while making it immediately clear that I am just looking for a friend/workout buddy and not anything more than that
On flip side had switch gyms to be among strangers becomes turning on gym socialization really tanked my training.
This is great! Good on you for putting together a plan and taking action.
One thing I noticed when I was doing salsa dancing is that there's a normal distribution for how you "click" with people. With salsa dancing, you change partners frequently so I may have interacted with dozens of people in one night of dancing. I noticed how most people fall in the middle of being fine to dance with and then you get a few outliers where they are either terrible to dance with or are amazing.
It looks like OP found something similar. Out of 35 encounters, he had 5-6 advance to the "prioritization" stage (~14%) and 2 (5%) ended up moving into building a relationship outside of the normal environment you usually interact at. I think that is very relatable. Most people you interact with will be fine to chat with but only a small percentage will be people that you really gel with.
Best "friendmaker" hobby I know is sailing.
It's in general a very newcomer friendly hobby, which is both important as a newcomer yourself as well as for meeting new people once you are into it. It's naturally collaborative so you have to communicate, not very intense so there's a good amount of chill time, and in the cases where small-talk doesn't turn up interesting topics you can always talk about sailing itself.
For those for whom the gym seems too intimidating to start convos with strangers, another option is to try spotting and signing up to the hobbies where social interaction comes naturally, if not even unavoidably. Things like amateur choir singing (which I do), amateur folk dancing groups, sports clubs where people train in interactive groups (a cross-country ski club in my case), etc. -- these give regularity and allow the persisting social interactions with the same people over longer periods of time to form into true friendships.
I enjoyed this read, the energy, and the detailed positive outlook. However, what am I supposed to take away from "5 weeks / 35 people / no new recurring friends"? Every time I go out I feel this personally, and I never understood why so many people have such thick shells to crack.
> there’s a number of people [at the gym] who want to be left alone and can be irritated if you interrupted their workout to talk.
This one is pretty easy. Look for the people who spend more time yapping than working out. They generally love to meet new people. The opposite case is pretty obvious too. Don't approach someone just as they are preparing to start a set or if they're going hard on a treadmill or bike. Generally, if someone is not talking to anyone and seems locked in, earbuds in, etc. probably leave them alone. But asking for a spot when they're between sets is an easy excuse to at least get their name. Nobody is going to really mind that, and you'll pick up pretty quickly whether they're talkative or not.
Kudos to the author for making friends. I have to say, though, that I'm with the Redditors on this. I go to the gym to focus solely on my workout, and that's it. I'll nod and smile to the other regulars, but conversation is simply not on the menu.
Such a cute read (I mean that in the best way possible). I'm quite a social person and it's really cool to see someone be so systemic about it. But I would not have the balls to just talk to random people in the way you did it, and I really admire that about you!
This was a delightful read. I have a few relationships with people on the autism spectrum who struggle with socializing, despite recognizing the desire to be more social. I can point them to this blog.
Yeah, the weight floor can be hit or miss with regards to striking convos with strangers. Many of the people there want to make friends too, but many just want to focus on their workout.
Two related contexts that I've found to be much more friendly for this:
1. Climbing gyms, for reasons mentioned previously
2. The sauna! Actually very ideal for convos with strangers. Max overlap time is ~15 minutes, people are generally relaxed, no phones to distract and if it doesn't go well either party can always leave.
> activities suggested by r/Syracuse like volleyball ... require you to already have friends.
False! Find a gym with open hours and just show up! I used to do this all the time with my friends, but there were always a few people there on their own. There is always someone a couple players short for their team, so just ask around ("Hey, you need anyone else on your team?") and you'll find some people to play with. Keep coming back week after week and you'll make some friends eventually.
I assume this works equally well for most team sports that can be played casually such as basketball, soccer, and others.
If you want to make friends, water your friend seeds.
Everybody knows a bunch of people by name, and nothing else, from various contexts. You go to matriculation, there's a bunch of people introducing themselves, too many to get to know. You work a job, there's 50 people whose name you know. You go to a party, your friends introduce you to 10 new people, and you don't have time to talk to them all.
The ones you don't talk to much, they are your friend seeds.
You move to a new town, and you know nobody, other than that one guy you never spoke to after the first week of university. Contact that guy.
I talk to everyone, everywhere and find it one of the most humane things to do actually.
This came across as a little odd and nerdy, but I'm actually really glad you shared your internal dialogue around this. It gives me more empathy for socially anxious (or just socially inexperienced) folks. Although the way you're starting out is kind of nerdy and overanalyzing, I'm sure these interactions will come naturally if you keep it up. Connecting with people is a very worthwhile effort and it's great that you're doing it.
In particular, the "rejection" will stop feeling awkward. I have random little one-or-two sentence exchanges with people several times per day, and usually it doesn't go beyond that, but I don't experience this as failure or rejection. I only engage further with the people who show (by words, body language, etc.) that they're genuinely interested in a conversation. For me, it's less than half.
The gym is an ok place, but not a great place, for what you're trying to do. Hiking clubs, running clubs, CrossFit gyms, rock-climbing gyms, and volunteer groups are all better options. The baseline level of socialization is very high in these places, whereas if you look around at a gym, most people have their headphones on, and are doing their own workout, so there's few natural opportunities to start a conversation.
Also, try to find people who are social and have lots of friends. If they like you they'll introduce you to their friends, which is a lot easier than starting cold. Don't be afraid to talk to women. Most of the people I know who are really good at connecting people are women.
Someone once came over to tell me I was using a machine wrong and I thanked them, collected my things, and left. Haven't been back to a gym in two years! But to be honest I enjoy body weight exercises and cycling better anyway.
>however, according to Reddit, there’s a number of people who want to be left alone and can be irritated if you interrupted their workout to talk.
My suggestion would be not to read social advice on public websites on the internet, especially on Reddit, because per public internet, everything is not okay/forbidden, everyone should mind their own business, choose the safest and the most inoffensive action in every possible social situation. Public places such as reddit are full of terminally online socially awkward people who are very unrepresentative of people in real life. Also, there are incentives to recommend the safest course possible because then you won't get downvoted by haters. I don't even say to take advice there with a grain of salt. I say it's probably better not to read such stuff because your brain might subconciously internalize that people think like this even though actully, in real physical world, it works differently.
I guess I should reach out to somebody in my badminton class this afternoon!
Great timing. I used to see a guy at the gym for a few months, we always go at the same time, and one day he approached me to correct my form, we had a chat and we kept meeting in the gym for a few months after that and until yesterday I mustered the courage to even ask him his name. Literally didn't even know his name for months, so yesterday I asked and got his number to catch up later.
omggg let me know when you get married
Is kind of sad reading the aftermath "never saw em again" kind of thing or "don't interact"
Shared interest is a main driver and frequency of interaction/seeing each other... like you become friends at school since you see each other everyday kind of thing
Shared interest, I've recently gotten into cars though I still ride the clapped out POS and someone was showing me their Porsche, sat in it, pretty cool.
But I see that person at work. In general work people don't become friends but sometimes... one of em I go over to their house, when I used to drink I'd drink with them. I do find I have to do more message initiation myself to keep things going so idk. One old friend of mine sends me reels almost everyday on instagram random dumb shit idk. Right now though I only have like 5 real friends that I talk to almost everyday. When I was younger 10s/100s but yeah that goes away as you get older. Also doesn't help I moved away to another state so lost all my IRL friends. And real friends I mean one time when I was really in a bad spot my friend loaned me 10 Gs which not trying to say money is friendship but yeah.
In hindsight a lottt of the "don't interact" is more like we say hi when we're near each other but I'm not initiating more conversations. I'm down to talk but I'm letting them start the conversation if they want to. I updated the article to be more clear
I get reels nonstop too
I've been going to the gym for the past year after exclusively running in solitude. I am still introverted at the gym .. it's sort of my time. But I do appreciate overhearing the conversations which occur.
It's been nice to hear 60-something retirees chat about their health, quitting alcohol, sorting out the pickleball schedule, and sometimes politics (although honestly much more rare relative to the others listed)
I love the community some folks create in the gym.
Very sweet story. Next, invite that guy and his girlfriend and maybe someone else over to your place, or out to do something. Reciprocation matters a lot.
> and maybe someone else
From my experience "connectors" make the most friends and do the most activities.
The burgers look amazing, I'm happy for the author and happy that someone is finally acting on that advice and sticking with it. My sense is that people tend to not see rewards within a very short timespan and give up, and sometimes didn't even care to be there in the first place, so they give that up too, sort of missing the whole authentic part and failing to escape the transaction loop.
Gotta find a few things you enjoy for the long-term that exposes you to people regularly, that you'd be doing anyway, and open yourself up to meeting new people and developing strong connections.
1. Its all in your head. 2. Lead with your heart and instincts- nurture this and the magic happens. 3. Dont take any negative reactions personally- they may be "somewhere" else dealing with shit in their head. But the "wave" you sent them will do its job anyway. 4. The level of creativity that can be applied to this problem is endless! For example.. the idea of them coming to you (harder than going to an existing group/event) but has its benefits.
Experiment that worked for me : I now live in Buenos Aires , and missed playing ultimate frisbee.. so i posted around in various expat groups and craigslist.. "Ultimate Frisbee en Palermo! Beginners wanted - Experts welcomed" link to a youtube explainer vid.
Experiment 2: random street portraits with phone or digital handheld camera - followed up with a "who are you?" existential question (off record)
5. Always say thank you
To me as someone also "deeply afraid of irritating someone or being in awkward situations", it sounds like this project is greatly expanding the surface on which awkward situations can happen? How do you decide if you should wave to the person or ignore them? Isn't it tiring? Don't you wish to be anonymous again?
Meeting and talk to people is a learned behavior. It took me a while in my 20s to get comfortable talking to new people. I'm determined to not let my kids struggle with the isolation that can come with social anxiety. My wife and I are working with my 14 year son to develop those skills. Between a couple books and his therapist (everyone should have one!) he's working through it, and has gone from being one of the shy-est kids to having the confidence to go up to a person and startup a conversation. He has a couple openers he uses to get a conversation going. It's finally clicked how much a small compliment can break the ice with boys and girls. He likes the feeling he gets when he gives someone a compliment and they brighten up.
I was curious to get a sense for the overall "success rate" at a glance, so I uploaded the author's data as a spreadsheet and color-coded the conversations based on length (short=red, medium=yellow, long=green) with the help of Claude:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VqMF0xWzJMXWNndeY4P1...
It's particularly nice if you zoom out so you can see all the rows at once.
I hope the author doesn't mind - if you do please tell me and I will take it down!
This is cool. The plan written as algorithm. Pro-activity is the key. Usually, people like to stay in their comfort zone. This guy was searching for his, and found it.
I wonder, why he did not have any friends from the years of studying. Usually, this is the place friendship forever happen :)
I am happy for him :)
my two best friends from BA and MA moved away, so I can clearly explain why someone might not have friends from university time (-:
Somewhat related: Patrick Winston's famous MIT How to Speak lecture. He's been giving this talk for 4 decades
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY
> “Ignored people I knew from class instead of saying hi because I didn’t know for sure if they remembered me even though the class had only 10 people in it”
This amuses me because it’s the exact reverse of my anxiety. I’m pretty bad at remembering the identities of people I may have briefly interacted with a few times in a situation like class or work, so I’m afraid of the “person from class” remembering me and me not remembering them and being offended. Like, “How about that exam last week” and me being like, “uhhh do we have a class together?”
> “do your hobby with other people, frequently”.
I think it's decent advice, but from my experience, it can take years to make friends that way. I practiced various sports my whole life in the context of sport clubs (martial arts, climbing, snowboarding, swimming...). The way it worked for me is that after months, sometimes years of chitchatting with same people over and over, I barely made any good friends from that context. I did make a bunch of "acquaintances". Definitely better than staying home, but not a silver bullet.
Yes it's very easy to just let things sit at the "acquaintance" level. You know people at the gym, or at work, or at whatever recurring thing that brings you together. But to extend that to friendship, you need to invite them to do something outside of that. Get lunch, come over for dinner, game night, movie, whatever you're into. And then they need to reciprocate at least somewhat evenly. If this doesn't happen it's not really a friendship. And (in my experience) it's very rare for adults to progress beyond the "acquaintance" stage.
Often i sit around a coffee shop where i work frequently as a remote employee, and I think to myself, "there could be another person here that i have the capacity to be really good friends with but i will probably never know it." And I think about how that's probably true of other people in that coffee shop.
The engineer in me wants to believe some technological solution to finding and connecting with potentially great friends is out there, waiting to be uncovered. But of course, an engineer would say that.
> there could be another person here that i have the capacity to be really good friends with but i will probably never know it.
I often have the same thoughts. There are many lonely people eager to make friends.
I used to live in NYC where I didn't know anyone. And I remember one evening at the coffee shop in Barnes and Noble, there were only two other people there, and we started to chat. Even though we had very different backgrounds, we started to hang out and became good friends (but lost contact since then unfortunately).
Sometimes it doesn't take much, just exchanging a few words. Forcing oneself to be a bit more social, without expecting anything, is probably a good habit.
The unstated bit is that you have an incidental excuse to talk to them (compared to cold approaching in other contexts) but you still need to talk to them. Everything depends on you making the effort.
Compared to a gym, the class setting almost forces you to talk to people. I wouldn't see myself talking to people in a gym, but in a snowboarding club or martial arts class, or a group hike, it's difficult not to. Once you exchanged a few words, even for the sake of an exercise, the ice is already broken. At the very least, you'll say hi the next time you see that person.
Instead of a gym another options are joining volunteer groups, a fraternity order (Oddfellow / Rebekahs), a local D&D meetup or local motorcycle club. Sharing a common interest is the easiest way to make new friends.
> “do your hobby with other people, frequently”
>
> On paper, the gym seemed like the perfect opportunity to meet people since I would go there nearly every day
Yeah, the gym is the authors interest.
Well done! Inspirational.
Nice! I have been struggling to make friends at my current gym after moving to a new country, people seem way less friendly at just this gym which feels weird. Debating switching gyms because of it.
For socializing i usually go out dancing, long raves are usually good and gay guys are often very happy to talk, probably helps that I take my shirt off. Just need to keep out from the dark room from now on.
Good on ya! You did really well. 10/10. I don't think gym really is the only option but you made it work well so who cares.
I live in a small town and I have noticed that I just have be outside and look available. I may be gardening, washing my car or just hanging, and people will randomly stop to start conversations, or just say "hey". That reminds me of our grandparents and how they used to just sit on the front porch and someone would see them, start chatting, and maybe come in and have tea. We've lost those moments of availability.
Go to a bar (in America). Sit on a stool. Say "hello" to the person next to you.
Hell yeah.
Observation: people act like this challenge is unique to the young generation, but it certainly affected me (millennial). It was a long, scary process of getting comfortable talking to people. It's still hard! And I have to re-learn it in different phases of life:
>talking to people at school
>talking to people in college
>talking to girls at bars
>getting over the idea that I don't/shouldn't talk to girls at bars anymore, post-marriage
>talking to other parents, male or female, once becoming a parent
all different lessons, all challenging. all worth the effort.
I agree but unfortunately there are more and more young people who seem to think that not doing this challenge is okay :(
I spent several years living in Mississippi. As someone who was fairly introverted upon arriving in the Deep South, I had that hammered out me pretty quickly, during every opportunity for social interaction. It's just part of the culture to engage. I think my time in that area was a bit of a mixed bag, but that one change was for the better, and it has led to wealth of relationships since. Most people yearn for some bit of connection, and it's not that difficult to be the catalyst.
You go to the gym to lift. Not to talk. You may talk shortly if it is related to something you need to continue your workout. Apart from that you do not talk. End of story.
I used to authoritatively state rules that existed in my own head. I no longer do this.
I always liked busting through the little social candy shell in the gym. Offering to let people work in on a scarce piece of equipment could lead to chit-chatting about whatever. It's nice! When you have about 3 minutes to rest in between sets there's time to let someone else work and talk a bit.
Varies wildly. Some people are there with this attitude. For others it's more of a social time with occasional breaks to do a workout set.
Yes! Looking back there were lots of people who chatted in between sets. I just never realized
Wonderful idea to document, share and even have positive outcomes.
The author would probably love this YT channel which is all about helping others come to the same realization as he did: https://www.youtube.com/@socialanimal
Good advice generally. But please, not at the gym. All gyms have a different vibe but mine is almost strictly no talking. We go there to workout, not to chat. Everyone locked in, headphones on, no nonsense. I've been going for years and I can count on one hand the number of conversations I've witnessed.
But the flipside is, I see the same gym crowd at the coffee shop next door and we always have a good chat there. Context matters.
I relate to the amount of `I didn't know what to say so I left` in this post and don't know what to do about it.
Am I too pessimistic, or did anyone else notice the fact that you got everything you wanted with 'the only other asian guy'. Race matters in friendships more than we realize? I feel if it was a gym full of asian people (or a neighborhood with more asians) it would be way easier for you to socialize and make new friends.
Wow this is a really cool thought! I never thought about whether I or the other Asian guy was biased toward each other. Jtarii is right that I mostly approached him because it's slightly unusual for someone to be Asian at my gym and it would be easy to bond over. I think being the same race can help but it's ultimately up to the people in the friendship. Most of the other Asian people I talked to didn't really initiate more conversations after the first converation, unlike "the other Asian guy"
It's more they share a unusual trait that is easy to bond over.
Could be anything really, race, disability, height, metallica t-shirt or whatever.
Good for the author for finding some success. I'd recommend seeking a significant other, somehow that sounds less daunting that making friends past 30. Cool roommates are friend-ajacent and help with loneliness; I had a cool roommate for a while until he moved in with his girlfriend, after which I was deeply lonely until I met my now wife.
I've never done crossfit but it feels like it might be conducive for socializing given the format.
OP, if you're up for trying something different, curling is an extremely social sport that welcomes newcomers. There's a very active club in Utica. https://sites.google.com/uticacurlingclub.org/uticacurlingcl...
> activities suggested by r/Syracuse like volleyball and trivia night require you to already have friends
That's not really the case for volleyball
Most cities have drop-in where you just show up and form teams
I've started the same, but instead of the gym I go to random meetup events. Which feels easier since most of them are exactly for talking to strangers. Also went bars sometimes with people from the group. I have to get more confident about exchanging contact information though, only did that twice.
Gosh, I was guilty on this account just an hour ago.
I just came back from a midday walk in my neighborhood. Headphones on, walking along, when I hear someone call out — I don't quite catch what. I turn around, and there's a neighbor with a kid (not my street, so I don't know her), but she's from my community. At first I thought she was teaching the toddler — maybe 2 years old — how to say hello. So I'm just standing there, nonplussed. She repeats the greeting. I'm still confused about whether she's talking to me or demonstrating for the kid. Finally, a little louder: "I was just saying hello" — except she used the greeting from our community. It finally clicks, I laugh, and say "oh yeah, same to you."
I probably would have handled it differently if I hadn't had headphones in, or if I'd been more present, or just more socially aware from my early days. Still thinking about it and then I saw this thread.
Pro tip: introduce your friends to your other friends. Build a network. Networks get stronger as the number of connections increases, i.e. as more people in that network know each other. People are more excited to hang, bc they know more people, and the hangs are more exciting. And hangs become more frequent, because more people can initiate. And it makes awkward moments less common, too.
This is much more durable, reliable, and (quite frankly) fun than the hub-and-spokes model of friendship, where you just have a bunch of 1-on-1 catchups with people who know you but not each other.
Also, it's somewhat easy to do! In this guy's story, this could be as simple as, "Hey I want to get a few of us from the gym together for dinner sometime. Would you be down?" People are usually more receptive to this than they are to a 1-on-1 invite, too.
I think the important thing here is you weren't just approaching completely cold but people who you've seen a few times before, which then somewhat makes sense. I think if someone approached completely cold in gym it might not come of as well.
> activities suggested by r/Syracuse like volleyball and trivia night require you to already have friends.
Most big cities will have rec leagues that are popular with people in their 20s. Find a league that has a team happy hour after, I live in a transient city and I've made a few friends from people who get placed on my teams.
It absolutely delights me to see someone overcome something that is hard for them. We all have them. When I read about someone succeeding like this, I look at myself and find the next one on the (long!) list and decide to work on it.
Weird seeing Syracuse here.
One thing I have learned is that there are inviters and invitees for friends groups. Most people kind of just sit around and wait for things to happen. Some other people will make plans and invite people. Taking the initiative and talking to people first is the way to go, and looks like it worked out.
each place has different social dynamics. from my experience, working out at a gym isn't the exactly an easiest way to make friends. I've also frequented gyms in the past but there were moments that I needed to focus alone, otherwise couldn't get the gain I needed. the activity itself can become a social constraint in some cases.
when I've joined a social dance community, I was almost forced to talk and stand close with strangers. It is an emotional rollercoaster; it's all happy when I've met nice people but I've felt helpless when I had to dance/interact with people that I don't like, for whatever that is.
I've also practiced some type of acrobatics/solo dance for years and it is somewhere in between.
I think some type of intimacy heatmap can be made with all these activities.
I don't go to the gym much but that is one place where I would be VERY careful trying to strike up a confirmation and heaven forbid tapping someone on the shoulder.
This person took a different attitude toward it and it was fine. Do you know someone who was attacked for interrupting a set or something?
Crazy that this basically inept attempt at making friends still got so much attention on HN lol
Good on you for doing that. I did the same thing when I was in college, but in my case, I did it to get better at approaching women.
I made it a goal to talk to at least one woman per day on the train in NYC (hard mode) and say Hi to at least three.
I don't remember how long I kept this up for; I want to say I did this for three months, but it might have been shorter.
Like you, some people wanted nothing to do with me while others were down to chat.
While this made it easier for me to make the first move, it helped me massively at starting and keeping up conversations with anyone about nearly anything. This is probably a large reason why I'm in tech sales these days.
That being said, this didn't change my default personality. I'm still very introverted, very comfortable with hanging out by myself, have trouble not taking rejection personally (though I'm much better at this than I was back then), and, most importantly, absolutely hate talking to people at the gym, almost all of the time!
(My workouts are 90-120 minutes long on most days, which is a huge chunk of time that I'd rather spend coding, working or catching up on HN/Reddit. I immediately think of how much time I'm sacrificing whenever I'm approached at the gym and stonewall. I'm also like this on airplanes. The joys of constantly feeling behind and stressed for time!)
So glad to see such constructive and supportive reception of your stellar initiative. Half expected people to flame this kind of genuine reaching out for connection we can all (I hope) identify with, as somehow selfish. It is not, and this is a wonderful act of persona growth and humanity that should be more normalised. Well done.
Nothing is weirder than devising a scientific process for making friends.
You should try this in Germany. You'll probably get arrested.
This is the nerdiest way to go about this, I love it. Good job OP! If you're interested in old video games or trading card games, see if there are any card or used game shops near you. The people there tend to be cool
1. I just spent the weekend with a mens wellness group called "Fishing for Good" highly recommended if anyone wants to make new friends.
2. I love this.
3. It is hard to make adult friends! I loved this post.
This is how social life starts, dont wanna spoil it but its full of wonderful and confusing stuff. If i may i suggest you to try some rejection selftherapy where you walk to random spots u think will say no, who knows maybe u get a few yeses u thought were impossible. As u long as u are good and nice and ur intentions are pure, and if you are willing to correct the mistakes u will make in the future, to learn from them as much as possible, u will come far. Just dont forget to have fun.
Thank you, I'm also lonely and this article gave me hope.
compliment people - if you're unlikely to see them again. just being kind goes a long way.
if you see them frequently - just acknowledgement at first goes a long way before saying something. i.e the head nod | smile
I can't stop thinking about the amount of people they engaged with simply never to be seen again. Are gym membership commitments a lot less serious than I remember these days?
or the engagement spooked them
Great writing - and happy for you that you seem to have made some friends!
Or simply move to Latin America or talk to them. Socialization is natural and easy
That is a good looking homemade burger
I read this and feel happier for it. Keep it up OP! I like imagining a world where more people are curious, kind, and open to connecting.
Charming! Reminded me of "Naive. Super" by Erlend Loe, which I loved.
I'm going to keep my response very simple. (and not talk about society, cell phones etc... )
This post WINS Hacker News for the month!
Such a feel good post, thanks for sharing OP!
Last year I was living in a hostel (basically a very cheap hotel) for a few months. About a month in I realized I'd probably be stuck there for a while and started to make myself at home.
I started buying dishes for the shared kitchen. People kept "borrowing" them, so new guests would come, cook something, and have no fork. So I made sure there were always dishes.
The kitchen was a dreadful place. Deathly quiet. This strange tension in the air. Everyone was avoiding eye contact. There was a kind of toxic miasma about the place, and the unspoken agreement was to leave it undisturbed.
I, the heretic: I would greet people! I would greet people who were in the same space as me.
I am told this was considered normal, by our ancestors. In my case, it was partly "it's morally wrong not to greet them", and partly social anxiety around strangers. (In both cases, my autism ;)
So I solved that problem by just saying hello to everyone. I made the tension go away by saying hello.
Two weeks later I had like twelve friends. They started talking to each other, and a whole community formed in the kitchen. It was great.
I thought that was pretty cool. It also got me thinking about how, if I had been able to find a studio apartment or something, I might have ended up with zero friends instead.
In the context of the loneliness epidemic, I have to wonder if the shared kitchen is one answer. More precisely: the absence of a private one. (It sounds harsh, but the alternative... we are currently living through.)
I love this clip from the 90's TV show Northern Exposure on the same subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS2N4VWIbCI
"Guy who was doing exercise where you pick up barbell and lift it above your head."
For anyone curious it is called snatch
It could have also been an overhead press or a clean and press.
....or you could put whatever silly wording onto it, like some of the Gym-influencers are doing, like "do the Bear of X exercise...." - there are no defined/coined terms for exercises globally.
> Old gay with tattoo of Osiris eye
Not sure if that's a typo or not in Week 3...
As the next one is
> Old guy who brought his own towel
Strong gaydar on this gentleman
it was a typo
This is one of my favorite posts ever on HN. Thank you for sharing.
Reminds me approach that you get in nearly every book on "How to meet girls".
Systematic, efficient.
Played this game myself. And I did it when moved to the US with a limited English and lack of understanding of the local culture and traditions.
After a few years of dedicated practice, moved me from the state that author describes to the complete lack of fear talking to strangers, I can easily make nearly ever conversation warmer, deeper and more relaxed.
------
A couple more comments, based on personal experience:
[1] It works better if place where you meet is your deep comfort zone, a very familiar place
- gym, if you are going there for some time, know where each type of equipment is. - dance venue that you were going dancing for a while - art class - etc
[2] It helps a lot if you are quite proficient in the activity, expertise brings respect, and higher social status by itself, even when you do not talk to anyone.
[a] in the gym ideal technique > strength > looks / size of your muscles.
- Third class in powerlifting, based on Soviet grading system is a threshold, passing which life changes (question of months, maybe a year). You get more respect from men and curiosity from women, and you get more confident, because you got stronger: https://www.sportscategory.info/en/powerlifting - As your shoulders get broader, fat fat percentage goes down - it improves your appearance -> your confidence -> helps as well.
[b] Dance venue is a great place to meet people and address your fears / issues. Rule of the game - during the class before the social part teacher makes you switch partners => you will be forced to introduce yourself to the partner, this person cannot turn away and will need to reply, introduce themselves.
Later when social part starts - people switch partners every dance => - you start with inviting for a dance people whom you already met during the introductory class. - In 3 hours of social dancing you dance with 20+ people - As your skill grows (question of weeks-months) and dancing with you is not torture anymore, but quite the opposite - it is enjoyable => you get more relaxed, people want to dance with you => conversations start all the time - In dancing, as a man you lead, and this transfers to other activities (helped to become a lecturer teacher in University), but you also better lead the conversation. I.e. it is not a random exchange of information anymore, but you can vary it's direction and emotional component.
--- [3] Some places are better than others.
It is good to go to the gym, to get more friends, but not directly. I do not like talking to people in the gym, I suspect that other people as well.
you are recovering between sets, focussing on the audiobook, moving weights - you are always busy with something. I also heard that women do not like talking to men in the gym as they may feel "no in the best form", i.e. for her - talking to men feels comfortable, when she took shower, picked a cloths that fits her, not when she is sweaty, struggling with weights and sees other ladies in the gym who are more fit.
Places like:
- climbing gym <- very social activity where you solve same problems - trying to climb a route. You can just tell someone who struggled to climb a bouldering problem something like: "Nice!", "Good job!", "Well done", and ask for a tip.
Ot if you already climbed it - give a tip yourself. These are natural openers.
If you climb similar level of problem, you will get stack in the gym in the same spots, taking a break between tries - universe will force you to talk and socialize.
- Dance venue, as I mentioned above - Hikes - any types of group classes: scuba diving, wine tasting, art classes, etc will do the job quite well
This is awesome lol I love the stories for each person. Great to see you trying OP!
If you want to talk to men at the gym it's easy and no need for awkward scripts. Just ask for a spot. Most guys will feel honoured to be asked as you're showing trust in them. They'll spot you and then just talk about lifting. I met loads of guys this way.
Don't talk to girls you're attracted to, though. They can tell. If they want you to talk to them they'll give you signs. But that's a whole other thing.
The bullet point list in the intro was so relatable. It brought back some still painful memories. I often wish I could go back in time and do some of those things differently. I don't know what I was afraid of, but I missed out on so many connections.
> Don't talk to girls you're attracted to, though
Are you only supposed to date girls you're not attracted to?
Of course not. You only date girls you are attracted to. You just don't meet them at the gym.
Where should you meet them? I’m gay and have no stake in this, but it does seem like pretty much every space you would meet someone is a no go zone for this.
> Don't talk to girls you're attracted to, though. They can tell. If they want you to talk to them they'll give you signs. But that's a whole other thing.
What if you never receive any "signs", as far as you can tell? Should you never talk to girls?
Yes. It's not a hard concept?
That is, respectfully, insane advice.
Always surprising to learn most people are cool
Ha! Nerds.
> Pretended I didn’t know a childhood friend when they said hi because I didn’t know how to act around people I used to know
In high school because people thought I was a snob or something because of my social awkwardness. I love talking to people but absolutely hate initiating conversations. I love looking people in the eye when they're talking and hate looking at people as a I pass, so I usually don't even know who is walking near me. It's kind of crippling (and this is after it's gotten much better over time).
Was interesting to read this post because I've always been an extrovert and have never had trouble making friends. I usually make friends quickly ... and my problem is in the other direction ... I have too many friends and people get mad at me because I don't have the time to keep up with every relationship I've built in 40+ years.
I've been a best man 6 times. A groomsman 20+ times. I'm spread really thin now that I also have kids and a wife and family commitments.
Sometimes I actually crave solitude more than anything else.
Reading this post is almost like reading about another tribe from a distant place, and what it feels like to live their lives.
Is it weird that I'm kind of envious of this guy and his life? Not enough to trade places ... because I'd miss my wife and kids and close friends ... but if I could just like be him for a few weeks and then come back to my life.
This is absolutely bonkers to me. We're not here to be scientifically experimented on or to make you feel better about yourself. The very idea that OP learned about places and activities that people participate in explicitly to be social and, instead, chose to touch people when they're not clearly wanting to chat is just wild.
What do we have to do to discourage you from touching us?
I mean I guess I'm glad that you're trying to resolve your anxiety. Self improvement is good for some people. I just wish it weren't at the expense of others.
There was no mentioning of OP touching or taking advantage of others. I think you read this the wrong way.
dpkirchner was right, I did mention tapping people on the shoulder to get their attention. However I thought about it and I could only remember doing it once; the rest of the time, being in front of them was enough. So I just updated the article and removed the "tapping people on the shoulder" part, if you can't find it
"Then, I would approach them, wave or tap them on the shoulder to get their attention, and then give them my opening line."
I had a friend years ago that was truly amazing at interacting with people. She could, and did, talk to anyone - a rich guy with a $20K watch or a homeless guy; it didn't matter to her. And, the thing that really stuck with me is she always left the people that she interacted with feeling better. Always. I have numerous memories of her conversing with people and watching their expressions or body language completely change in a matter of minutes.
Anyway, that's the part I've tried to focus on - making at least one person I interact with everyday feel better. It doesn't have to be a major, life-changing interaction, just inject a tiny bit of positivity into someone's life. The main thing I realized was that I had to surrender the fear of being perceived as cheesy, corny, fake or manipulative. I think it's gone well; I hope I've made others feel better, if only for a moment. But honestly, I think it's helped me the most.
Here's how I made friends in the real world:
1) pickup basketball
2) aerobics/yoga/group fitness
3) triathlons
4) work
really love this post!
it inspired me to talk to someone today and that person was happy about it!
I don't think is a viable strategy for building a social life. Gym attracts asocial weirdos (not an insult, I happen to be one). I would consider getting a really hobby or switching jobs. There's a lot of turnover in the food service industry, plenty of chances to meet new people. If you're an unemployed CS grad what do you have to lose? The best thing though would be finding a romantic partner and just devoting yourself to that person, instead of moving from one fleeting friendship to another.
I loved this. And love when someone chats me up at the gym more than just "you using this?". See you around the gym, my guy.
If talking to random strangers worked then people would be doing this more often.
The problem is that it's usually extremely unlikely that you actually have something in common with a random stranger. I mean it's fine if you enjoy popular things and do typical activities AND you like having lots of casual friendships, but if you have a distinct personality or you prefer to build deeper connections, then "send to all" approach doesn't work.
I started being nicer to people and I realized I found myself taking part in conversations that I simply did not enjoy.
Love this. Need more of this. This "don't talk to me, ever" is an absolute cancer in our society.
Another trick is that people are usually nicer to you if you talk to them after having gone to the same place at the same time for a while. If you smile and waive at them a few times before you go and talk to them, you've built a bit of familiarity by nature of being a "regular" and aren't just cold approaching people you've never seen.
Other Asian Guy's burger looks good as hell.
IT WAS SO GOOD! I tried remaking it at home and it didn't go so well :(
My advice is to go to nature and leave the built environment. You are anxious because you are living in an artificial environment which is not doing you any favors. When you arrive in a calmer place you will find different people and greater peace. Moving leaves, the sound of wind and birds, sunshine on your skin, fresh air, the smell of the earth after rain, distant views: these are things that make us feel happy and safe due to evolutionary affinity. You don't get them on a concrete cliff in an apartment or lifting in a room with commuter phone zombies and 'roid droids.
Or just nicer cities. Most American cities are hostile to human enjoyment. Filled with noisy cars and combustion exhaust.
There are plenty of cities around the world built for people to walk around, without all the noise, stress, and air pollution. Cities and people themselves aren’t noisy.
So thankful that people do this and chronicle this...our society is getting more and more isolated, it feels. This (I FEEL LIKE, could be wrong, I'm kinda a boomer now haha) was more common 'back in the day' and now some people do it as a social experiment.
I can't recommend going doorknocking for a cause you care about, enough. Its maybe a half-day, you'll find most people aren't like the angry commenters on twitter, you'll meet people in your community and it makes you more confident talking to strangers!
Please don't let Reddit warp your perception of reality. It is just a corner of the web full of awkward and negative people (and bots these days). In real life, there is always people socialising at gyms, especially small ones, even received a random compliment a couple of weeks ago by someone I never met.
I’ve been going for a few years and only had someone talk to me once. Maybe I should start going without headphones.
So negative. An event I went to, everyone I talked to, they had a wonderful time. Reddit's opinion was that it was terrible.
what if your an engineer who likes his alone time >>> and a micro home gym? ))
> Old gay with tattoo of Osiris eye
Was this a typo or … ?
OP doesn't strike me as judgmental so probably a typo.
it was a typo
It's obvious in hindsight but to me its really interesting you can collect data points on the community just by chatting with them. Maybe you could guess, by appearance or behaviour or something, whether most people at the gym are university students, or gym bros, or something else.
But by chatting with them, the world seems a bit bigger. And even if you don't see them again often, or don't chat again, its just nice that you have some level of familiarity and learn new things you wouldn't know unless you chatted with them. And although sometimes you have that awkward uncomfortable short conversation, every once in a while, you make a new friend. That is life, I suppose.
Most of the people in my gym would not thank me for talking to them. They rarely talk to each other unless they know each other outside. It may be a cultural thing.
Autism is a hell of a drug.
Seriously. If he doesn't already have a diagnosis, he should probably get evaluated.
I don't have much issues talking to people, but I have issues maintaining friendship. I came to the conclusion that my relation to people has been fucked up by sexism and its consequences, probably because I think about it too much.
As a male all my friendship with heterosexual males end up being frustrating and diaappointing. They can behave when you meet them with their partners but whenever you go out with alone they can't help acting like alphassholes making derogatory comments about women they see in the street. In fact even homosexual male oten can't help acting like Neanderthals too. I am not under any illusion that women behave much better when they are in groups but I have had less occasions to hear their comments so keep a more candid view.
I tend to have more interesting experience with women but I always find it skewed. I rarely interact with strangers because I don't want to be that guy they could feel is harassing or mansplaining them.
Two recent examples, funnily both happening while riding my bike: - oveetook a woman on the road riding a bike with a bent drop bar. As I glanced over and said hello I realized that handlebar was flexing at every pedal stroke and knowing the fatigue limit of aluminium I assumed it was alrady cracked and was staying in one piece only with the help of the bar tape. I wanted to warn her about the risk of riding with a handlebar that could break anytime and would have gladly offered her to fix her bike for free as we were close to home and I have some spare parts in mint state basically waiting to be used. But I was so afraid of mansplaining her that I just ler her go, hoping she would not lose her teeth in the near future. - last sunday, after a quick stop to take some pictures. When I hoped back on the bike and was progressively accelerating to my cruising speed, two women overtook me. Despite having a friendly hello, I realized later that I was just 2 meters behind and we had more or less the same cruising speed. I was afraid of making them uncomfortable following them as I realizwd one of them glanced several times over her shoulder. In hindsight I should have stopped again foe a minute but I decided to overtake and drop them to save them from that annoyance. They probably thought I was that guy trying to impress them while I was just escaping from an awkward situation.
With non strangers that I know from hobbies or work, I have had great relationships but I have always ended up losing contact. I am even more uncomfortable with those that have a partner as I feel like their is always like a question mark over wether going out with them alone would be seen as trying to date them. I have several ex colleagues that I genuinely wanted to stay in touch that I totally ignored for that very reason after switching job.
Another example is an ex colleague of mine, who was not at the time in a relationship. I had mentionned her to my partner several time as seeing her as a great friend as she had been very kind to me and offered genuine support at a time I was suffering. Since she had moved to another city we always mentionned meeting when we had a chance. Ultimately when planning a road trip with my girlfriend, we envisioned making a stop in that city and my girlfriend asked me if I wanted to message her. But then a few minutes later came THE QUESTION. How does she look? Is she pretty? I knew from that moment that it was a lost case and I just never messaged her and completely lost touch when I closed my social media accounts.
"As a male all my friendship with heterosexual males end up being frustrating and diaappointing. They can behave when you meet them with their partners but whenever you go out with alone they can't help acting like alphassholes making derogatory comments about women they see in the street."
I think you are hanging out with the wrong males. They aren't all like that in my experience. The problem I have had is quite opposite... When they get married, you often barely ever see them again, and then only at dinner parties and functions. I mean good luck to them (most of the ones I know have married decent women, but they spend remarkably little time with their unmarried friends outside the workplace.)
> I am lonely and have no friends.
...
> Here’s the raw data.
yep, that's the problem. For making friends you have to follow the tennis mindset: don't optimize the outcome, just enjoy the rally.
I am really shy and i dont touch grass, i would rather do some c++
> One of these people is someone I will refer to as “the other Asian guy”. I got a lot closer to him than expected.
Oh those bromances ...
Just ask for a spot when you see someone available.
You humble yourself, you grow as a person by practicing communication, and you get to try to lift a little heavier as you know someone is there to help you when you eventually fail a rep (which is important if you're trying to bulk or get stronger). You thank them after and maybe even give/get a fist bump. That's it. Do this often while being mindful of people and their own workouts. One day, someone will ask YOU for a spot. Oblige.
Asking for a spot is absolutely a frequent and everyday occurrence at pretty much any gym. Most people are actually pretty honored when they are asked to spot someone's PR attempt.
You don't really have to make a ton of small talk unless both parties are open to it, but you'll get to know the regulars who will eventually talk to you.
Ask for a spot. Immediately assume the trust fall position.