What sort of conversations do you like?

How come I did not see the this discussion before ???

I have a vey high stress job - every mail/conversation I have can have rippling effects on lots of people/businesses. I spend majority of my time in office, and hence in a high pressure situation.

So when I am not working, I am a shallow person by choice (and I am sure given the nature of my posts here on A2K, none of you will be surprised) - and hence in my social life, conversations tend to be shallow as well - which I really enjoy, as I don't have to think abt what I am saying. Bitching abt people we know, gossiping, cars, fashions, etc etc - all while downing copiuos amounts of alcohol.

But what I enjoy most if you ask me, is conversations abt politics. It is not very apparent, but I am deep into politics and hold very rigid political beliefs. I also love conversations abt books, specially Indian epics and literature.

And ofocurse, men ...

Hmmm - lots of different conversations being conversed about! I like 'em all, as I have said - serious and silly.

Not so many men posting here - do we think the conversations are very different between genders?

Yes!

here we go! 'Tis an old chestnut, but I thought it would get things going - so, Msolga, you can't just say "yes"!

Oh, dlowan, I just KNEW you'd say that!
(OK, I'll expand my answer ... in a minute! .... It's just that my brain's gone a bit orf, from all the war talk, all day. )
Be back soon!

sigh...

Sorry, Deb, I think it's starting to REALLY get to me .. <sigh>

OK, men & women talking:
Take the "conversations" here at A2K - I notice a very different TONE of discourse when men are talking to mainly men & the threads where there are a number of women involved, or else in all women conversations.
The male dominated threads seem a lot more competitive, with participants often going to extraordinary lengths to prove the correctness of their respective positions. (I read through a couple of quite heated threads tonight, which will remain un-named...)
I very rarely see A2K women going to such lengths to win the argument ... very rarely see them attacking the individual because of their beliefs ... very rarely see them abusing others.
Of course, I don't want to suggest that ALL men are like this, nor all women!

What do you think?

Men don't seem to listen to each other. Women do. The End.

Oh not hardly, I do not think!


Many of the men I know are good listeners, though I often end up doing most of the listening! We all know the old conversational politics research - you know, we speak less but are perceived by men as speaking more and all that - but, does it still obtain?

I never count myself as a good example, as I tend to fall easily into listening mode with either gender. But - once get me really talking....!

The men I work with would prolly say they can hardly get a word in edgewise, by the way, when the women are speaking - but previous men on our team would not have had that perception...it is often very relative...

I wasn't referring to men/women talking - specifically the man to man chatter in the political realm on a number of forums. It reminds me of a high school English project - when a friend and i wrote a play called "dueling monologues". Nothing reasonably resembling a dialogue happens in those objects loosely defined as discussions.

Something that occurs to me in this context, make of it what you will:

Most of you know I'm deaf, but I don't know if I've talked much about the fact that my hearing fluctuated wildly for about 5 years, from 13 to 18, so that I could hear OK one day and be absolutely completely deaf the next. I rode the school bus with a nice boy who was a bit irritating, and he would talk to me incessantly every morning on the way to school. I don't remember how explicit I was -- everyone knew that I wore hearing aids, and couldn't hear very well, but was a very good lipreader -- but I wanted him to just leave me alone and not make me work at trying to understand him. He persisted, and I'm sure I was not clear enough (I often have moments when I wish I could go back in time and have a firm discussion with my teenage self), and I eventually settled into the pattern of nodding pleasantly while having absolutely no idea what the heck he was saying. This didn't stop him -- he spent an entire school year chattering away to me every morning. We had mutual friends, and I mentioned something about how tiring it was, and it got back to him. He was livid. LIVID. He had no idea that I could not understand, he said, which I found disingenuous -- I mean, how can you really think someone who nods pleasantly at you for 45 minutes without getting a word in edgewise understands everything you're saying?? -- but I do, again, accept responsibility for being far too meek about these things at the time.

Guess what he does for a living now? NPR comes up on A2K fairly often, so some of y'all may listen to him. He's a somewhat famous NPR personality.

At any rate -- one of my favorite kinds of conversations have to do with having the same very strange kind of sense of humor. I am constantly, in everyday conversation, saying things sotto voice that I can't seem to keep myself from saying but nobody ever gets. I have three or four dear friends who became dear friends because they caught the little aside and cracked up. It's so cool to hang out with one of them after spending too much time with sane people -- I say the kind of thing that usually elicits blank stares, and get a belly laugh, or better, a riff on the subject with a straight face, back and forth a bit until we both dissolve in giggles. That's probably one of my single favorite things -- when you get a groove going and rather than laughing right away, you keep upping the ante.

I think of my type of conversation, the conversation I am most comfortable in, as a kind of feedback inhibition cycle, as in biochemistry. This set of reactions goes on and a product accumulates and that either triggers or shuts off another cycle... Well, it is another way of saying I tend to go off on tangents, and understand if other people do. If pressed, I can occasionally remember the main point, and illustrate the connection of what I am saying to it. And occasionally not. I am rather reactive, charged by this or that thought that I or someone else said, and am always looking for analogous situations, riffing, I guess, often playfully, but I am always seeking connections. I love conversations where there are two or more of us talking this way.

I can be succinct. I bet that is a surprise. And I appreciate it in others.

I can be non-succinct, and drove my exhusband crazy for that. Talk about your mismatch between well-meaning people. He read relatively slowly and spoke in a controlled thoughtful way at all times. He would take his time starting to talk. Well, he was getting into his mental filing system. While he read slowly, he seemed to remember what he read in a sturdy outline form, and was able to extract the key features of a given subject, however difficult, years later.

I babble. Well, no, not really, but to someone who watches every word, a person like me is a babbler.

I tell about what happened, make stories out of my day as I am speaking. This is not always a charming trait. I sometimes remember these stories...but I almost never can recite the key features of a given subject years later, as my ex does.

I enjoy conversation with both types of speakers, but I do wish one wouldn't feel superior to the other. That messes up learning.

Osso:why would storytelling not be a charming trait? The only time I find that boring is when a person tells the same story over and over again, year after year, wothout caring whether you already heard it or not, or whether it is marginally relevant to the conversation.

People tell me I'm blunt. "succinct" is so much nicer. I like to get to my point right away, which reflects on my posts, which tend to be shorter than average. I also tend to listen fascinated people who have good memories and can call forth all sorts of information. I find this fascinating because I have a poor memory for names and facts, which makes it hard to converse on many subjects, unless there's a conversationalist there who can keep me supplied. What I do have is an ability to pull together the facts into ways that can make for good conversation.

It does mess up learning when people aren't tolerant of each other's conversational styles, or ignore the efforts of a person who is struggling to learn in a conversation. I think the art of conversation should be taught in school, it would be so much superior to all that time spent sitting at the desk honing up skills like filling in the blanks, which are basically training for becoming a company drone.

Soze - oh dear - how embarrassing! And distressing. I fear if we seek a bottom to the well of human capacity for self-delusion, we shall be falling for a long time.

Dream and Osso - you seem at differing ends of the spectrum - but sometimes brush each other!

I wonder if others are the ones who should be posting about each of our online conversational styles, since we are, I imagine, in the end, the unlikeliest really to know what they are!

Moved to "What did you think today" Digression - cos I am a klutz!

"if you see your neighbor carrying something
help him with his load
but don't mistaking paradise
for that home across the road"
dylan

Bugger! I put that in the wrong thread!!! I will move it...

Huh?

Dream and I can talk and have. I don't remember any trouble at all, actually the opposite/

As to someone not liking stories...

My business partner slams off phone messages amazingly quickly. Has no patience for hemming and hawing. (I rather like hemming and hawing, gives me time to gather wits). My ex did not ever want to hear the odd thing that happened, wanted to get to the denouement, such as it was. An admiration of the straightforward.

What happens then, is that the tale teller peters off, dithering in the glare.

I have had it happen many times - There is a friend of a friend named A., who is so linear she should be sanded. I almost laugh sometimes, she cannot bear a divergence to a conversation and tries to straighten everyone out. Nice enough otherwise though.

M'self, I am a tad wierd, I treasure the expression from people of what they feel. I have gotten more this way over time, and since I am older, the pattern is stronger. Maybe it is that I am single now in a rather isolated locale and have an ear for real talk in my life. Not that you should feel sorry for me. Since I have an new ear for it, it seems to be coming to meet me.

Huh?

Dream and I can talk and have. I don't remember any trouble at all, actually the opposite.

As to someone not liking stories...

My business partner slams off phone messages amazingly quickly. Has no patience for hemming and hawing. (I rather like hemming and hawing, gives me time to gather wits). My ex did not ever want to here the odd thing that happened, wanted to get to the denouement, such as it was. An admiration of the straightforward.

What happens then, is that the tale teller peters off, dithering in the glare.

I have had it happen many times - There is a friend of a friend named A., who is so linear she should be sanded. I almost laugh sometimes, she cannot bear a divergence to a conversation and tries to straighten everyone out. Nice enough otherwise though.

M'self, I am a tad wierd, I treasure the expression from people of what they feel. I have gotten more this way over time, and since I am older, the pattern is stronger. Maybe it is that I am single now in a rather isolated locale and have an ear for real talk in my life. Not that you should feel sorry for me. Since I have an new ear for it, it seems to be coming to meet me.