How to talk to anyone, and why you should

After a bad breakup in 2015, I followed some advice from the socialskills subreddit to “talk to everyone” so that you get better at talking to women you might want to date. The advice was not to only talk to attractive people but everyone. The old man reading a Russian newspaper, the kid on bike doing tricks, people in the elevator.

I do that now and it brings me a lot of joy. Recently while leaving a botanical garden I spoke to a man who was excitedly looking for a few specific plants. He is a botanist (amateur? professional? unclear) and I enjoyed sharing in his passion for a moment. Then I saw a maintenance guy moving with great intention who took a moment to ask me and my family if we had a nice time. We did, and I asked him about the papers in his hand. “Gotta get approval for this purchase request asap.” He said. We talked a bit about how nice it is to work at such a beautiful place.

I highly recommend talking to strangers! People are lovely. Go out and try it.

My recently deceased mother had a talent for talking to anyone at any time in any language. She's always been incredibly social and could establish connections with strangers very rapidly. One time she brought in a school teacher/sheep farmer from Dagestan selling yarn from his sheep's wool, she met him at the market and bought all yarn and asked if he had somewhere to stay before going back, and he didn't. He stayed in our house for a couple of nights, and then we visited him in that little village in mountains of Dagestan on a summer vacation, talk about going back a few centuries in time, an incredible and unusual experience.

I've had to spend week and a half battling Gmail daily email account limits sending batches of 500 emails just to notify people in her address book, receiving hundreds of responses. Her memorial was attended by hundreds of people.

It served her very well in her chosen career of real estate sales, although I think she'd might have done really well in community organizing or even politics where those skills are also very useful.

On the flip side, it was sometimes difficult to be there as family wanting some attention, since her bright light was always shining in many directions.

I've inherited just some of that talent, and I think it is a talent, but trainable.

I miss her already.

I talk to everyone. My friends and family joke that it’s impossible for me to go anywhere without getting into conversation with someone. I can’t imagine not doing it. Earlier this year I walked down the main shopping street it the part of the large city where I live, with a colleague from out of town.

A few shopkeepers waved through their windows as I went past, the greengrocer came out of his shop to have a quick chat, the dry cleaner asked after my dog, and the guy from the household shop told me they have more of the cleaning paste I use. We bumped into a couple of folk I see every couple of weeks, then got a coffee and I paid the “special” rate rather than the rate on the sign that they charge people they don’t know.

My colleague said - half jokingly - “I didn’t realise you were mayor”, and tried to convince me that I should go into local politics. She couldn’t understand when I said that would take all the pleasure out of it, because talking to people would become transactional rather than joyous.

I can’t imagine not talking to people. A while back I changed the route I take when I walk my dogs each day, and the guy who runs the local fish stall started asking people if I had left the area or died. I don’t buy fish from him each week- but every time I see him stop and we have a chat.

I feel incredibly lucky to be missed by my fishmonger just because I started walking my dogs a different route.

I grew up in a tiny village in the country. The building I live in has hundreds of people living in it, compared to the few dozen houses where I grew up. I think talking to people makes a huge city feel smaller.

I usually avoid strangers, because those who talk to you are usually weirdos.

Thing is, if normal people don't talk to strangers anymore, then only the weirdos are left, reinforcing the idea that only weirdos talk to strangers...

It makes me sad that my reaction to this piece is so cynical, but I really think that 90% of the "how" in this article is "be an older British lady". If you're missing that vital piece you'll quickly meet many people who "don't have any money", or just remembered they meant to be walking on the other side of the street, or worse. Talking to strangers when people see you as a threat feels really shitty (for everyone involved) and can be dangerous.

I speak to everyone when in "work mode". Its part of the job. I smalltalk, im curious, i listen. When off work I dont really want to talk to people at all (outside "my" people, i.e. my family and small group of friends). If someone strikes up a conversation I will of course engage, but I reach a threshold where I run out of gas and have to excuse myself.

As someone who has struggled with social anxiety over the years and has thought about this a lot, I have some thoughts.

It's all nice to imagine everyone talking to each other, but the reality is that in (western?) society, we have kinda collectively decided that socialisation is to be avoided. Either it's too weird, too boring, or too unsafe. I mean have you tried randomly talking to people? Most don't seem very open to it.

Also it doesn't help that the little "pretext" scenarios that can lead to socialising are being systematically eliminated from our lives.

And finally, if you're neurodivergent or otherwise aren't perfectly typical, enjoy people thinking you're weird anyway.

It is a hard skill, but I do recommend it. I have always struggled with initiating a conversation with a stranger, but 99 times out of 100 it has turned out well. My teenage daughter just stands there agape when I do it, she is still struggling even to speak up to the cashier taking her fast food order. I keep telling her that it makes me pretty nervous too, but it is so worth taking the little leap.

One of my best stranger conversations talking to a “Big Issue” seller outside a supermarket. As I understand, they’re (close to) homeless usually [1].

When I asked about him, he mentioned he’s Irish but moved on to tell me about his plans. How he was saving to have a farm, planned what to grow, animals - 15m of quite precise description. His story was his future.

This was striking for me - when asked most people tell you about their past, where they’re coming from. It was the first time I realised that where we’re going should be a bigger part of our story and identity.

I try to keep that conversation in mind.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Issue

We are living in a dictatorship of extroverts, who go out of their way (what a suprprise) to tell us that their ways are obviously better.

My kids make fun of me because I know the shopkeepers around me by first name, along with the details of their businesses , and that shopping takes forever because I talk to everyone, customers included.

I just love it, it’s easy and I get a lot in return - from perks to incredible encounters. At work it’s been very helpful.

I developed that skill while traveling alone for a year , and it boils down to practicing and reading whether the person you’re talking to is ok with your talking or not.

In any case, it makes me immensely happy.

It's indeed pretty interesting how our society has normalized being. what I would say is antisocial by the norms of previous generations in the form of the gen z stare. Funnilly I remember a situation where I got a job offer from somebody from an older generation and I just stood still and stared for 1 minute. Not because I wanted to be disrespectful but because I was processing the information and I was simply so baffled that I forgot the social dance of showing the thinking on my face and doing thinking sounds (if you know you know). This led to the other person holding a lecture on how you should respond that you do not have a response yet but I thinking. I ended up accepting.

I was at a conference recently and I went to a meetup session that the organizers put through and I was so anxious that I took a lapel pin and left immediately :( I knew about my social anxiety but never saw it first hand as such. I am so bad in networking with people.

I usually dislike when people talk to me in public. Some people have nothing to say but they trap you in a conversation anyways. Some people are genuinely interesting and energizing to talk to. Either way, every conversation i've had in public has stuck with me and I can remember these conversations 6+ years later.

I agree that expanding communication with strangers is important. But starting with "Do you mind if I sit here? Or did you want to be alone with your thoughts?" and then continuing a conversation for 10+ minutes is a real struggle for me. Sometimes I even wonder—how exactly does this kind of individual conversation actually help me? Maybe this is just me.

I agree with this article completely.

I've had three long and very memorable conversations on internaltional plane flights in the past, with three extremely interesting and intelligent people. I don't tend to take those flights anymore, they were for work and the novelty of international travel for work wore off. Now I get out of it whenever I can.

But those three conversations have stayed with me.

I find the community on Clubhouse understand this better than anyone (well, this is true for Reddit and HN too). Clubhouse especially though because people are bat shit crazy on there and somehow conversations happen. It’s a hidden gem that I think the HN community would enjoy.

I find the decay of human connections an interesting problem to solve. I used to have an app that encouraged meeting in person by utilizing friends inviting other friends[0]. This solved many app-problems like correct matching and safety.

Didn't catch on, though. Setting up events turned out to be too prohibitive. If this interests anyone feel free to contact me at contact [at] eventful [dot] is

[0] https://blog.eventful.is/p/the-perfect-dating-app

Did anyone notice how the last paragraph links to a paid course on talking to strangers… paid advertising??

I feel that there is a down-spiral to this. People who talk to me usually want something from me so I started avoiding people since I have the expectation that they want something form me which means that I also think I look like a weirdo whenever I try to talk to somebody so I stop talking to people.

I'm happy to see that in a sea of commenters who'd hate for anyone to strike a conversation with them, there are people who still enjoy connecting with others.

We are in a public forum afterall and we are all strangers here. I'm always happy when random person sends me an email.

I've done some Uber driving. Chatting in a car is great because there's no awkwardness of whether to look at one another. I've met some really interesting people, from all backgrounds. I can recommend it if you have time to spare and want to chat with people.

Not everyone wants to talk but you can pick up on that pretty quickly.

Does it work in Scandinavian countries?

Interesting. Not the content itself, but the intention behind it: Improvement of social cohesion.

Hmmmm.

People are compartmentalized into groups hating on each other. They're afraid of committing wrong-think and getting labelled, branded, attacked. They prioritize people who aren't there (online people, like you and myself) over those who are.

It's especially interesting from my perspective, because in Vienna we still have some sort of KaffeeHaus-Kultur. CoffeeHouse culture. You can sit there for hours, reading your book, with a coffee and it does not matter, unless the space is really needed.

It's very common to just chat with whoever runs the place at that moment, too. A sense of familiarity is part of the job. For regulars, like myself, the coffee house turns into a second living room:

We people there started talking to each other.

When I was a teenager, many years ago, I had a coffeehouse for table-soccer. It wasn't a club, or association. It was a coffeehouse with table soccer, with gatherings of players.

...

I guess my tangent meant to point at the need for both general, or specialized, "social hubs", where regularly appearing people silently agree to, eventually, getting talked to.

Not like a club. Clubs are too much commitment, causing resistance.

That’s what I loved about NYC, people were generally open-minded and easy to talk to, so I’d chat with tons of people spontaneously. Having moved back to France now, it generally feels harder and weirder, but I got used to it.

It is hard as fuck for me. But every time it happened (either me or other person starting) turned out a great memory on itself, or lead to great experiences right after. Still, I do it less often that I would like

or how to get labeled as a creep by every women

joke or not (actually not) but read some women spaces and it's obviously a lot of people, especially women, just want to be let alone. Don't start talking with random people unless they start talking to you and it's consensual, simple as that.

I am currently struggling with a deep rumination loop about events from 35 years ago; the trigger three weeks ago was completely accidental, but it was one of the biggest shocks I’ve had in decades. I can't help but think how different life would be if I had the communication skills then that I have now.

Growing up in a conservative, religious household outside the US, there was no support for slow processors, and those who didn't fit the dogma were simply told to 'shut up.' The more you were forced to shut up, the more you closed off. Since this was before the internet, self-help tools were non-existent. I really wish the coaching tools and protocols we have today had been available back then. It wouldn't have changed everything, but it would have given me the tools to manage many situations that I simply couldn't handle at the time.

And yes, I agree with the headline... talk to people, anyone, everyone. Maybe you’ll get help, or maybe you just go for it—because regardless of any embarrassment you face now, you may find yourself proud of that courage decades later.

PS: Improved with AI

I read in a couple of comments that you are worried about "bothering people". To be honest, don't worry about it, you can attribute sufficient life skills to others to simply tell you (verbally or non-verbally) in case they feel bothered.

Man, talking to strangers in random places just feels socially uncalibrated to me, like I'm being retarded. The first time I across that idea was in the form of "cold approach", the idea of trying to score a date from a woman you see while out and about.

I wonder if anyone who did this had to start from a baseline of feeling this is straight up weird (I'm pretty sure it is weird in my culture).

I've had some great conversations with random strangers on public transport and in shops etc. Oddly I'm a complete introvert with quite bad social anxiety and avoid social events like work parties etc. But I like talking to strangers I'll never see again. I think it's partly because I'm not trying to make an impression and I'm not there just to socialise. So it's a bit crap for me that people are withdrawing and not engaging in random chit chat as much. It's so easy to be lonely these days.

Why does the majority of people just assume people want to communicate... I have not read the article and never am going to. This headline premise alone of doing that will destroy any sanity I have. I do not, ever, want to talk you as a standard and you should never force that to me.

I hate these sort of things. Like everyone is just sitting there hoping, hoping for someone to strike up a conversation with them. Oh thank god someone has started a conversation with me! /sarcasm

Respect people's boundaries please. Don't force yourself on people unless they're obviously willing participants.

People put extroversion/introversion as like this binary, permanent thing that cannot be changed. In reality I think it is a spectrum that changes throughout the day and the situation. Someone might be introverted at 8am on their commute, but a wild extrovert at 9pm in the bar. Don't assume, don't try to "help" people you know nothing about.

In a world full of shallow people and AI here and there, people cannot hold deep talks anymore. You can still talk with anyone but going out specifically to talk with anyone??? Yeah, that ain't happening.

It gives me anxiety lmao you will have better time with hobbies.

I fail at the first hurdle. A small innocuous comment is often met with a "huh?" as if I had said it in Japanese or mentioned how nice the wallpaper tastes. It's like they clock the (relatively mild) autism immediately. Then I just feel super self conscious and lock up

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Talking to strangers without a good reason, is inpolite and border line illegal in many countries (for example recent street harassment ban in UK).

Author should know better. They seem to be well educated, and write about consent of filming.

Not everyone is interested in small "therapeutic" chitchat. I am not unpaid therapist, and I have no interest in other people problems or opinions.