The most powerful IRL interview/conversation/flirting skill isn’t asking good questions nearly as much as asking good followup questions - it’s being sensitive to interesting micro-reactions. When you ask a question and they respond “😂... no”, and you go “Why 😂?” Etc
This is the script of no script, the formula of no formula, you just pay really close attention to the other person in a curious, non-judgmental way without the burden of expectations, and look for anything surprising or interesting - and ask about that in a supportive way
If you do this well, over the course of a conversation you’ll end up asking questions that make them go “huh, nobody’s asked me that before” and “I’ve never really thought of that”, and that often ends up being quite a bonding experience
Little things like “you hesitated for a moment there, why?” can unearth things you wont believe
But you have to do it in a very kind, nurturing and gentle way, or people will get defensive.
You want to be so curious abt people that you make them freshly curious abt themselves
My ex-boss gave me this gift. He was more curious about me than I was about myself. He genuinely wanted to understand my motivations & backstory to a degree that I had stopped caring about, because I didn’t think I merited that much concern. a lot of what I do now is pass that on
Everybody needs this, but imo nobody needs it more than kids. Kids are so used to being pushed around, told what to do, being treated as incomplete humans on probation. Give kids your sincere, attentive curiosity and you will change their lives 5eva
Also kids are fascinating!!!
Kids are fascinating particularly because they haven’t been fully socialized yet. They each still have some weirdness and oddness in them unique to themselves. It’s quite inspiring and humbling to witness if you can
Thinking more, I realize this is abt paying attention to people’s physiological responses & being supportively curious about that. Why did you cringe, why did you flinch? Why did you frown, shudder, laugh, scoff? The body keeps the score. IRL still trumps URL here
Cc @TheAnnaGat
All of that said, if you need a starting question to surface and unearth responses to ask further about, “what is your relationship with X” is my favourite. What is your relationship with fitness? With food? With the internet? Then observe closely
What is the history of your relationship with music? With travel? With leadership? With taking responsibility? Strength? Vulnerability? Fashion? Self-expression? Optimism? Being a public figure? Privacy? Intimacy? Ugh, I am so curious about everything and everyone!! 😂😅🤓❤️
"The best advice is not to tell people what to do, but to ask them the right questions. Find out what's going on in their head, and help them frame that in a way that's useful." –
@gtdguy
there's a phenomenon that everyone here must be familiar with by now, but I feel like it hasn't yet been given a really good name. it's the relegation, demotion, debasement of in-person reality in service of media/content/feeds/socials. i'll start collecting examples here
the first example that comes to mind for me is kesha being a public nuisance in japan in 2012 to promote her song, not really to the people around her, but to the people who'd watch the spectacle online
this is another good example to point at to describe the phenomenon I'm talking about– when the wrestling match itself becomes secondary to the photo opportunity. reality is relegated to a mere backdrop for content creation. all the world's a stage...
there are several interesting things to be said about the mass Ghibli event
First thing is that people don’t often know in advance what they’d want out of a tool until they see it for themselves. “generate any image you can think of!” draws a blank for lot of people
so lesson in there for anybody making things; customers/users need more guidance than you might think.
Second thing is I think this is an ongoing preference cascade and consensus cascade, at least some of the people who are adamantly anti-AI concede this is a cute/fun use case
for a lot of people this is the first time they’re like “ok fine I want one for myself and heck the whole timeline is doing it so what’s so wrong if I do it too”
I think this is probably a good thing. I think it gets more ppl interested in art and visuals etc
i haven't really bothered to make a deliberate effort to grow my twitter following or to write bangers etc in years, but i still have a clear sense of how to do it and i've advised other people who wanted to do the same, and witnessed them succeed. here are a couple of thoughts
one of the most important things you have to remember, especially if you're still a small account starting out and trying to get more attention, is that people aren't reading your tweets in isolation. your tweets are showing up as a 'beat' on a timeline
so if your tweet is something that's moderately unclear or confusing, or has too many details, or the sentiment is too complex, people's likeliest response is to scroll past it
this changes once people know you, care about you, believe that it's worth the effort to decipher you
there’s a thing I often wish I could explain to people… but hilariously, it fits the same pattern I’m trying to explain:
a lot of the most interesting, valuable things you can do are things that have very small windows of opportunity
so in the case of matchmaking, a beginner matchmaker might think it’s a matter of finding the best possible people (according to some set of metrics) for the best possible people.
but the expert matchmaker will tell you that actually timing and seasonality etc matter more
in something like football you might think that the player with the most stamina, best striking ability, etc is the strongest
but the guy that scores the most goals is typically the guy who is most sensitive to the situation. Messi famously just walks around the pitch Observing