“SO HOW ABOUT THAT ISRAELI - PALLESTINIAN CONFLICT?”
My wife and I literally started our first conversation with abortion. I’d jokingly mentioned it because she said she liked deep conversation and she went “fuck it, let’s go.”
“Fuck it, let’s go” has been our life philosophy ever since.
Had a gf back in the day and we started at the bar like that.
“I’m a man, my opinion doesn’t really count here, but I have one.”
“Correct answer.”
On our old WoW guild application form we included:
“Please rank all of the Star Trek captains you know from best to worst”
and then gave them a nice big empty text box to go to town in. Some answered seriously, and exhaustively. Some only knew Kirk, or didn’t know any at all. Some chose to go off on a rant about Star Wars being better, or include a joke or tell an anecdote about their relationship to scifi.
Whatever the answer we always learned something about the person and that was a good jumping off point if they got accepted. We did get the occasional humourless “wtf this is stupid” type response but, shockingly, this was rarely the only reason we had for denying such applications.
What distro are you running as your daily driver?
Ok after 5months here I have to ask, what the fuck is a distro?
Arch btw
Fedora 39, and it runs beautifully on my gaming laptop. I’m pondering trying out the COSMIC DE for kicks, but I’m also liking GNOME 45.
This question is like catnip for Linux users, we just can’t help it.
Can I suck your toes?
If the answer is yes it’s immediate love at first sight.
Weirdly enough I dreamt someone did this right in front of me last night. My subconscious is odd.
Based
Quentin is that you?
No, Uma thurmans feet are hideous. Will never know what he sees in them
He’s been into feet in mostly all of his movies. Uma must have been a toe in his bucket list
Have you ever danced with the Devil by the pale moonlight?
Have you ever fallen into a tank of toxic chemical waste?
I ask that of all my prey, I like the sound of it.
Are you forklift certified?
“What defines a sandwich?”
Mate, are you looking to start a conversation or a heated debate?
Is a loaf of bread a bread sandwich?
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TIL you do NOT call a piece of meat on a bun a sandwich in AU/NZ… That’s called a burger. I argue a burger, regardless of its own definition, is still a sandwich.
A burger is a sandwich.
My go to is “how was your weekend?” Hopefully they’ll drop enough information that you can turn it into a conversation.
It usually ends in awkward silence. 🤐
I kind of hate when people ask my things like that because I often had a fun weekend but now can’t remember what all I did so I have to stop and remember for a while before answering, so I usually just say it was nice and hope they don’t ask for more details.
Eh. Yeah. I don’t usually have a lot in common with people, so I try to find some common ground that can start a conversation. I’m not very good at noticing what people like/do, so this gets a conversation moving.
I also forget my weekends. Which turns into a topic of conversation too. 😬
I kind of hate when people ask my things like that because I often had a fun weekend
I hate it for exactly the opposite reason - I seldom go anywhere or do anything interesting the weekend.
I hate when people ask me this because either it makes me think about how I didn’t get to what I wanted on the weekend, or how I was depressed over the weekend… On a good day the problem is that I mostly like to keep my hobbies and personal life to myself. I guess I’m probably hard to get to know 😅.
I know what you mean.
I started doing it because I noticed that I felt lonely at work, so I put an effort into small talk and making myself a bit more available. Part of that involved being more open about my hobbies and free time. It was worth it for me.
I had an acquaintance that started following hockey solely so she would have a conversation starter. I don’t have that kind of commitment, so I just do the weekend thing.
You: "How was your weekend?“ Them: glares at you in silence
So what do you like to do for fun? Or, What are some of your hobbies?
I find these much better than “so what do you do for work?”, which is what I’m asked constantly. “Yes, person who I don’t know, let me discuss work during my free time with you.”
This is one of the questions that gives me the most social anxiety when meeting new people. It stresses me out because I don’t have any conventional hobbies. I don’t think dicking around on Discord, Lemmy, and YouTube really counts as much of a hobby.
I mean what Discords do you participate in? What Lemmy communities do you follow? What videos on YouTube do you like to watch?
You can reframe this and say, “I like to participate in online chat forums about the latest gaming news and technology (discord). I look for cool recipes and cooking techniques (Lemmy cooking community). And I love trying to find new funny comedians to listen to (YouTube).” I think if you narrow it down to the interests you enjoy, rather than “dicking around online” you’ll find that you have interesting things to talk about.
Obviously those examples are my own, but I’m sure you use those platforms because they feed you certain content that you enjoy.
I find that this backfires sometimes because many people don’t seem to have any hobbies.
In the context of an interviewer, I sometimes ask “can you teach me something cool about one of your interests in 5 min?” It’s not the same context obviously but you learn a lot about a person quickly that way. Bonus point is, I learn cool stuff about new things I’m probably not familiar with haha
I have friends that claim they “don’t have hobbies” but the truth is that they spend all their time with their kids and working.
So if they say, “well I don’t do much in the way of hobbies because I’m too busy working and taking care of my kids.” You can then follow up with “well what do you do for work?” Or “what’s the last vacation or outing you did with your kids?” Or “what are your kids interested in? How old are they? Tell me about their personalities.”
The fact that they “don’t have hobbies” isn’t necessarily it backfiring, you then just need to pivot based on their answers. This is just a way to break the ice with someone.
Everyone spends their days doing things, you are really just asking them “how do you spend your time?” Everyone has an answer to that…unless they are in a coma.
“Who are you and how did you get into my house?”
I’m a locksmith, and, I’m a locksmith.
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What init system do you use on your Linux distro?
Who are you?
Something that’ll lead to fairly flippant, casual, low-stakes chit chat about completely unimportant bullshit. People like getting a chance to get a sort of baseline reading of you, so talk about flippant, dumb, unimportant things for a little bit. Preferably ones that they are 100% certain to have recently experienced themselves, so it can go back and forth smoothly.
Given the diversity of humanity, this is a fairly short list. Weather, food, free time hobbies, etc. If they’re like a student, or work in a particular industry, that opens up a lot of options. But for a stranger? Just got a few to pick from. So, just pick one.
They call it “small talk” for a reason though. The real purpose of the talk has absolutely nothing to do with the actual subject of the discussion.
The real purpose of the talk has absolutely nothing to do with the actual subject of the discussion.
That makes it really confusing. What’s a good question, then? Ask about the weather?
Honestly? The weakness of the standard small talk topics is how common and banal they are, which bores people. I recommend them because they’re so easy, and the cost of boring people for a few minutes is fairly small.
But it’s not ideal. For ideal you need something flippant, unimportant but also novel. Since novelty is now valued though, that means you can’t be using the same thing over and over. Other people will probably have used it too, if it works, and that means its not novel.
So, the actual best ice-breaker topic? Some clever, interesting or amusing observation about something in your immediate environment that you can both look at. That adds thinking on your feet to the mix though, so is more of an intermediate level of social skill. Best to have the boring fundamentals nailed down first.
So, yeah, I’m perfectly comfortable leaning on something as dull as the weather. And it makes decent enough practice at chit chatting. But eventually picking more novel subjects that also fit the requirements is better.
The actual question would usually go something like “Hey, did you see that?”
Around this time of year one of my best conversation starters is “What’s your least favorite Christmas song?”. Everyone (at least here in the US) has at least one Christmas song that annoys the shit out of them, but you’ll get tons of different answers.
Or you’ll get murdered because now that evil song is stuck in their head until next June…
Hm… maybe a good ice breaker but a bit negative isn’t it? Why spend energy on somethin you don’t like ?
Because people are opinionated. It’s a fun way to hear someone speak passionately about something. Gives you a sense of who they are.
But people are just as passionate, or hopefully even more so, of things that they enjoy. Why go into negativity when you could be listening to their positive passions?
It’s pretty common to bond over dislikes. Besides, disliking something isn’t negative, and there’s nothing wrong with being negative even if it were.
British people are famous for discussing the weather as small talk. British weather is 90% shit. We’re still alive.
So I don’t think negative questions are a bad thing.
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Slade’s Christmas song. Every fucking year without fail it comes on in supermarkets and has done for decades.
My sister showed me a fun drinking game recently:
One person closes their eyes until the other person/people decide on a number 1-10.
After they all agree, the person opens their eyes then asks the group to rate an item from a category 1-10. Do this with 3 different categories. At the end, the person tries to guess which number was agreed on.
So, the group could agree on 7/10 and the guesser could ask “types of beers” and the group could say lagunitas, skulpin, etc …
Other good questions involve “people we both know”, “sexual experiences”…
