Talking to people

[jack]

I'm getting better at chatting to strangers on the train, provided they want to talk about the Riemann Hypothesis and guaranteed basic income.

But I still want to get better at finding topics of conversation intermediate between "nice weather, isn't it?" and "so, lets argue about politics and god, and lets talk about set theory". Any suggestions for finding interesting but not-too-contovertial topics, if I'm talking to friends or acquaintances and don't want to force them to carry the conversation?

Comments

[corrvin]

Oh, also, if you're going to discuss entertainment, be aware of what I was horrified to discover the other day: some people don't do meta.

Me: About that series you find interesting, I was thinking about $VAMPIRE_SERIES_PREMISE and I realized that $EXTRAPOLATION, wouldn't that be interesting? And $SCENE seems to support that. Wouldn't that be fun to watch?

Other person: Well there's no such thing as vampires. So they just write whatever they want.

And then I just kind of... slink away while looking blank.

[jack]

be aware of what I was horrified to discover the other day: some people don't do meta.

Yes! I mean, that's totally fine, "more abstract" is not always automatically wiser or more interesting. But also, I resent feeling like I'm stupid for thinking about the implications of something, when blatantly, people DO judge fiction by implicit rules[1.

[1] Just try making a detective show that doesn't resolve the murder subthread or a romantic comedy that doesn't show who the lead gets together with at the end of the film, and see how "it has magic in, anything can happen" isn't actually true, even if people mean it when they say it.