Tuesday, February 23, 2010

conversations are war

alright before i direct this post to the subject matter suggested by the name of its title i would like to address a concern that a reader brought up about "chat clients,"

the concern was that i didn't write about pidgin

so here is my answer: i didn't write about pidgin because a pidgin is a bird not a chat client and the post was not about birds, go back to ornithology class you scrub oh and while you're at it why don't you also start paying attention

we now return to yr regularly scheduled programming

Photobucket
a quality film

humans are "social animals" apparently, which means we form relationships networks etc. the way we do this is generally by communicating to each other, nowadays this is achieved by texting/iming/email/whatever and traditionally it has been done by means of smoke signals/carrier pidgins/telegrams

but in my opinion the most glorious form of human communication is the conversation,

think about it, a conversation is like a real time strategy game, you have to keep up the offensive and not run out of topics or embarrass yrself all the while keeping on yr toes thinking of jokes to make to impress yr associates and it really all is quite stressful

but thankfully for yalls i am a "professional conversation warrior" and i am willing to share some of my strategies

you should consider this a huge service and favor because i generally charge thousands of dollars for this information,

battle strategy #1: don't be a loser

ok this probably seems kind of obvious but if you want to have any chance at all of making a name for yrself on the competitive conversationalist circuit then you need to be somewhat interesting to begin with. i mean yeah my nickname on the official forums is "the miracle worker" since i have tutored countless idiots to fame but i need something to work with, some foundation out of which to construct greatness, some mold from which to sculpt the very essence and embodiment of all that is representative of charisma and charm and conversational prowess. so if you are some crazy rpg player whose character level is greater than yr age or if yr greatest accomplishment in life is having devised a method by which to urinate without having to pull down yr pants then i am sorry but close the browser window and go home there is nothing for you here

battle strategy #2: always steer the conversation towards you

if you are talking about oh i don't know unhealthy food then bring up a story about you eating shitty pizza at a local place (you can say this even if it didn't happen btw, this technique will be more closely examined below) and then talk about how you went home and did a bunch of rad stuff that will make the people with whom you are talking look up to you and admire you. another way to pull this off is to subtly but abruptly change the topic, if for instance you are confabulating about the topic of some shit like everyone's favorite colors then what you should do is after someone makes a joke say "ha ha ha oh that reminds me, i bought an obscenely expensive car yesterday" and then talk about the car, probably no one will have a keen enough sense to ask why the joke reminded you of yr anecdote. but you should always have a backup plan in case that happens

battle strategy #3: invent things and hyperbolize

no one cares about how you almost ran over a squirrel on the road, however if you say that there was a pristine deer in the middle of the street, a majestic silhouette crowned by the golden glow of the morning sun, dew glistening on his antlers like crystals dangling from an elaborate chandelier and then you swerved with all yr might to avoid murdering this beautiful creature and thanks to what could only be attributed to divine intervention narrowly avoided crashing into a tree, a great oaken giant, calm, observant, wiser than nature itself then you might cause some people to cry and if there any any girls then they will most likely ask you to hook up with them. oh and if there happens to be a nobel representative hanging around the area eavesdropping on the conversation then he might approach you and grant you the nobel prize for literature on the account that the story you just told was an impeccable allegory of the beauty and delicacy of the balance between nature and man, and the ephemerality thereof. this has happened to me at least two or three times it's pretty sweet

battle strategy #4: plan, organize, develop

although this strategy is three distinct things i am only counting it as 1 strategy because they are pretty similar, ok?

many people think that conversations are very much improvisational performances in that no one ever rolls into a conversation with memorized scripts i mean this is a conversation not a movie after all but those people are wrong, every master conversationalist knows that unless you engage a conversation with prepared defenses then you are dead meat. for instance if i know that my friend david went to a concert recently then i know he is probably going to talk about it. here is where the strategy comes in you have to research everything you can about this concert and the bands that played and have memorized one-ups to every point you think he is going to bring up. seriously just preempt the hell out of everything that way you can't be caught by surprise and as any soldier will tell you the element of surprise is the most powerful element more powerful than hydrogen even (or helium)

but the key is to make all the prepared stuff seem totally natural and normal if you somehow give away that everything is scripted then you are going to lose a massive amount of face because non-conversationalists think that it is strange to be ready

ok hopefully you guys will know how to have better conversations now that i have "enlightened" you feel free to post in the comments about any conversation strategies you would like to add or about conversations you have had recently where you deployed these strategies, etc,

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