Most of the advice seems to be designed to amplify social anxiety, not ameliorate it.
I mean, most of the "questions" he suggests you ask to keep a conversation going would probably result in trying to stop yourself from stabbing yourself in the hand with a fork to distract yourself from how blisteringly spectacularly boring the answers are going to be, while trying to feign some kind of polite interest in their dismal hobby.
"So you collect stamps? What is your favourite stamp?"
That cracks me up. How is the answer to that not going to be like being chloroformed by boring-ness?
Yes, because how dare someone have a non-conventional hobby. Furthermore, how dare they be encouraged to discuss what makes them happy with other people.
As someone who would cheerfully discuss the command pattern, the difference between a hypen, an en- and a em-dash, or conventions in writing audio description scripts, I don't begrudge anyone their non-convential hobby. I'm not quite sure how you even reached that conclusion.
Funny enough, people don't ask me about those things, and I understand because while I'm sure I would be entertained to discuss these, it would be psychosis-inducingly dull for almost anyone else.
Nobody wants to listen to me talk about esoteric subjects; and I sure don't want another repeat of, for example, the time someone labouriously and very, very slowly "explained" the plot of some tedious Game of Thrones thing in some unstructured meandering format that was crushingly and grindingly dull. Absolutely excruciating.
So the idea of someone asking about that is hilarious in a very, very sick way.
I mean, most of the "questions" he suggests you ask to keep a conversation going would probably result in trying to stop yourself from stabbing yourself in the hand with a fork to distract yourself from how blisteringly spectacularly boring the answers are going to be, while trying to feign some kind of polite interest in their dismal hobby.
"So you collect stamps? What is your favourite stamp?"
That cracks me up. How is the answer to that not going to be like being chloroformed by boring-ness?