How To Have A Conversation About A Topic Youre Not Interested In Or Dont Know Anything About:

How to have a conversation about a topic you’re not interested in or don’t know anything about:

Listen to what the other person has to say about the topic.

Ask a question about what they said. Asking them to clarify or explain something you don’t understand is great, but any question will do. All else fails, ask them to explain what they like about some part of the topic.

Listen to their responses and go back to step 2.

Do this until 5-15 minutes has passed, then change the subject to a topic of your interest, unless you are actually interested in learning more on this subject, in which case, go on for as long as you like.

Sometimes, they will say something like “I’m sorry to blather on about [topic].” This is an attempt at a conversational dismount. You can either say “no, it was fascinating, thanks” and then bring up your own topic, or you can say “no, it’s fascinating, please keep going” if you want to keep hearing about their topic. Note the tense difference (past -> moving on, present -> keep going).

I just thought I’d write a script for this, because someone who can’t / won’t do this came up in a Captain Awkward column, and listening about topics you have no interest in is a really useful skill to have and not often explicitly taught, particularly to boys and men.

Why do autistic people feel so bad using harmless lies?

I think part of it is a misunderstanding about the goals of an interpersonal communication. Autistic people think the goal of a conversation is to transmit information, and so they want the information to be correct -- whereas allistic people use language symbolically, to break the ice, establish affiliation, pass the time, bond, entertain themselves and others, or to represent their position within a system (such as a workplace hierarchy).

Autistic people, missing this, often are baffled and infuriated when others say things they don't mean, ask questions they don't want answers for, and make noncommittal comments that have no relationship to anything they've ever said they believe in the past or ever will say again. And Autistic people, believing that the primary way to interact with others is to transmit information, give up a lot of vulnerable or potentially risky information to other people quite freely, out of respect for the conversation's superficial text or in hopes of attaining the connection that allistics use more superficial/symbolic methods in order to achieve.

More on this here (specifically the second half):

drdevonprice.substack.com

How Do I Cope with Anti-Autistic Bias?

Autistic Advice #11: Research shows most people dislike Autistics within moments of meeting them. Is there any hope of us finding connection

"It’s often unhealthy to hyper-analyze your sexuality to the point where how you experience it changes where you belong. This is why the idea that broader terms are somehow more restrictive is baffling. Continuously breaking labels down and creating terminology for each facet of one’s identity shrinks communities until it’s just one person convinced that they’re the only one who relates to their experiences. It isolates people and ignores the importance of individuality within a collective identity."

On Hyperpersonalized Sexual Identity

i hate seeing people now making fun of those who care about privacy online. i've seen people saying things like "well they already have your data. what are companies going to do with it" and it's like, that's not the point. it's that companies /shouldn't/ be able to have my data and sell it. am i aware they probably already have my data? yes, absolutely. but i'm still going to try and keep them from monetizing it any further, why are we defending companies selling data they shouldn't have to begin with though?

Title says all, just finished up I am in Eskew and need something new to listen too! I will be listening to all of these, and the order will be determined by the number of votes

Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.

Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?