Vouched since I don't get the downvotes and want to respond.
The author sort of conflates two things in this section of the article; lack of interest and lack of knowledge.
The author's lack of interest in drinking adventures is actually their faux pas in my opinion if it's a story from a friend wanting to share a story. My friends have tons of interests I do not share, but I love to hear them talk about their interests because it's something new and they're my friends. I would not be as open to listening about beading or car mechanics from someone I'm not close to since I lack the knowledge to really participate and I just don't really care about someone I don't know very well and their hobbies unless they're a really engaging story teller (then I'm all ears)
The author's article in general sets a lot of weird social rules that they seem to prefer but this is not really some universal standard, it's just some social rules that the author abides by and is positioning as a good set of rules to follow.
Some of the advice is okay; if someone is visibly bored and not engaging, don't keep going on with the same topic, switch it up or move on.
Other advice is weird, like the positive disagreement; disagreement is fun! You have a chance to learn something new and as long as you aren't positioning your entire self worth on a position, probably it's a fun discussion. I disagree with people in a friendly way all the time, most importantly my friends, and we're better for it, not worse. We say how we feel and feel more.relaxed that when there is a disagreement, we understand it's normal and natural.
The article weirdly tries to position some nice advice, but I think it does more confusion than good.
I don’t really agree with this, if you’ve never noticed someone respond in the overly negative way to things you say as annoying and conversation-stopping, there is a good chance you don’t realize how other people perceive this. Sure, if you have close friends they can probably roll with the punches, but I bet they’d appreciate your conversation more if you disagreed to things in a positive way.
Maybe to give a more obvious example:
“Do you like to play any shooters”
“Nah, I think shooters are stupid.”
This halt’s the conversation and reads as “I think the thing you like is stupid, and also now I want you to respond to that.”
If the goal was to continue the conversation, the same feeling could have been expressed conversationally as…
“I’m not really a fan of shooters tbh, I’m more into puzzle games.”
This does 2 things — it expresses your disinterest in the topic presented without insulting your conversational partners preference and it follows up with an offer of similar topic that might be of interest to the other so that they could respond like…
“Oh, I haven’t seen any good puzzle games lately! You have any recommendations?”
I don’t really think there is an exception to this rule. The reason for this is that responding negatively should imply you find the others opinion unsavory:
“This driver is so terrible, they must be Asian.”
“That’s racist.”
The reason that the negative disagreement is used here is not to continue the conversation; rather, it’s to let the other person know that you think their opinion is wrong/bad. (I’m not saying this is a good way to go about this conversation either, I just think it’s more obvious what effect the negative disagreement has on conversation.)
> “I’m not really a fan of shooters tbh, I’m more into puzzle games.”
> “Oh, I haven’t seen any good puzzle games lately! You have any recommendations?”
This is not how a conversation goes. The typical response would be not to engage about puzzle games, but to tell you in blisteringly mind-numbing detail how great the shooter they're currently playing is and how they got out of a tight situation and blasted the opposition.
Because that's the conversation they want to have with you, and they won't be dissuaded.
That’s not how my conversations typically go. If they responded like that I would exit the conversation and not enter into conversations with them at a later date.
The author sort of conflates two things in this section of the article; lack of interest and lack of knowledge.
The author's lack of interest in drinking adventures is actually their faux pas in my opinion if it's a story from a friend wanting to share a story. My friends have tons of interests I do not share, but I love to hear them talk about their interests because it's something new and they're my friends. I would not be as open to listening about beading or car mechanics from someone I'm not close to since I lack the knowledge to really participate and I just don't really care about someone I don't know very well and their hobbies unless they're a really engaging story teller (then I'm all ears)
The author's article in general sets a lot of weird social rules that they seem to prefer but this is not really some universal standard, it's just some social rules that the author abides by and is positioning as a good set of rules to follow.
Some of the advice is okay; if someone is visibly bored and not engaging, don't keep going on with the same topic, switch it up or move on.
Other advice is weird, like the positive disagreement; disagreement is fun! You have a chance to learn something new and as long as you aren't positioning your entire self worth on a position, probably it's a fun discussion. I disagree with people in a friendly way all the time, most importantly my friends, and we're better for it, not worse. We say how we feel and feel more.relaxed that when there is a disagreement, we understand it's normal and natural.
The article weirdly tries to position some nice advice, but I think it does more confusion than good.