I already know that nobody cares what I have to say. I still want to say it.
In theory, my thoughts are just as worthy and as interesting as my conversational partner, so I need to at least pretend to pay attention when they speak if I want them to pretend to be interested in my words. If their story is painfully boring, you power through it and use that experience to make your own story less pointless and meandering.
I don't really want to know about how D is dating M with the fuzzy caterpillar eyebrows and the Stephen King teeth, and how V refuses to be in another one of D's weddings, and can't D just collinearize anatidi without continually leaning on someone that clearly isn't quite that interested, but there it is. Now I get to talk about that thing that happened today that was funny at the time, but is only slightly amusing in retrospect.
Some people don't ever stop to hear you, much less listen. There's no point in saying anything to them. You might as well draw a stick figure in chalk on a brick wall and talk to it--or write it up and post it to an Internet forum where nobody really knows or cares who you are. ...Twitter, obviously.
In theory, my thoughts are just as worthy and as interesting as my conversational partner, so I need to at least pretend to pay attention when they speak if I want them to pretend to be interested in my words. If their story is painfully boring, you power through it and use that experience to make your own story less pointless and meandering.
I don't really want to know about how D is dating M with the fuzzy caterpillar eyebrows and the Stephen King teeth, and how V refuses to be in another one of D's weddings, and can't D just collinearize anatidi without continually leaning on someone that clearly isn't quite that interested, but there it is. Now I get to talk about that thing that happened today that was funny at the time, but is only slightly amusing in retrospect.
Some people don't ever stop to hear you, much less listen. There's no point in saying anything to them. You might as well draw a stick figure in chalk on a brick wall and talk to it--or write it up and post it to an Internet forum where nobody really knows or cares who you are. ...Twitter, obviously.