“What’s your favourite dinosaur?”
What’s your sign?
Hello what’s your name?
My go to is “how was your weekend?” Hopefully they’ll drop enough information that you can turn it into a conversation.
It usually ends in awkward silence. 🤐
I kind of hate when people ask my things like that because I often had a fun weekend but now can’t remember what all I did so I have to stop and remember for a while before answering, so I usually just say it was nice and hope they don’t ask for more details.
I kind of hate when people ask my things like that because I often had a fun weekend
I hate it for exactly the opposite reason - I seldom go anywhere or do anything interesting the weekend.
Eh. Yeah. I don’t usually have a lot in common with people, so I try to find some common ground that can start a conversation. I’m not very good at noticing what people like/do, so this gets a conversation moving.
I also forget my weekends. Which turns into a topic of conversation too. 😬
I hate when people ask me this because either it makes me think about how I didn’t get to what I wanted on the weekend, or how I was depressed over the weekend… On a good day the problem is that I mostly like to keep my hobbies and personal life to myself. I guess I’m probably hard to get to know 😅.
I know what you mean.
I started doing it because I noticed that I felt lonely at work, so I put an effort into small talk and making myself a bit more available. Part of that involved being more open about my hobbies and free time. It was worth it for me.
I had an acquaintance that started following hockey solely so she would have a conversation starter. I don’t have that kind of commitment, so I just do the weekend thing.
You: "How was your weekend?“ Them: glares at you in silence
Just had beers with my wife and a complete stranger. She was nice, but I was not in an n overly talkative mood.
Just asked her about herself regularly, and happily listened to her talk about herself.
Turns out she’s quite interesting. We both agreed we’d like to meet her for beers again.
But. Where you from? How’d you end up living here? Family nearby? Miss them? See them often? Your dad does WHAT for a living? We had a similar pet, does yours do X? Think you’ll stay here, or considering another area to live? So you’re not getting on well with your sister? I can understand that, what else have you tried?
Etc etc etc. All about them, but can be genuinely interesting.
I’d want the supper power of having the dishes cleaned after the meal. That would be amazing.
My supper power would be time travel. Whenever the food needs to be done, it will be done. Time can stretch or shrink to accommodate this.
If I had a supper power, it’d be the ability to conjure the most delicious and satisfying meals instantly.
That is like the superman version of the supper powers, not fair. To balance it your kryptonite will now be gravy
OK ok, what if I tone it down to, I still have to make it, but it will always be perfectly done, never over or under rcooked what I intended.
The gravy will no longer incapacitate you, but will merely give you explosive diarrhea an hour after consumption. Also, you will have an insatiable urge to drink gravy.
This is my life but with pork. I can’t digest bacon, but it’s so good.
So what do you like to do for fun? Or, What are some of your hobbies?
I find these much better than “so what do you do for work?”, which is what I’m asked constantly. “Yes, person who I don’t know, let me discuss work during my free time with you.”
I find that this backfires sometimes because many people don’t seem to have any hobbies.
In the context of an interviewer, I sometimes ask “can you teach me something cool about one of your interests in 5 min?” It’s not the same context obviously but you learn a lot about a person quickly that way. Bonus point is, I learn cool stuff about new things I’m probably not familiar with haha
I have friends that claim they “don’t have hobbies” but the truth is that they spend all their time with their kids and working.
So if they say, “well I don’t do much in the way of hobbies because I’m too busy working and taking care of my kids.” You can then follow up with “well what do you do for work?” Or “what’s the last vacation or outing you did with your kids?” Or “what are your kids interested in? How old are they? Tell me about their personalities.”
The fact that they “don’t have hobbies” isn’t necessarily it backfiring, you then just need to pivot based on their answers. This is just a way to break the ice with someone.
Everyone spends their days doing things, you are really just asking them “how do you spend your time?” Everyone has an answer to that…unless they are in a coma.
If you ask me about my hobbies you’d better have some free time and a comfortable seat.
🍿🛋️ Ok, let’s hear them.
Well to start I play the guitar, bass, two kinds of banjo, drums, synthesizer and sing. I’m not picky about genres. I record using a DAW called Reason. I made my electric guitar about 5 years ago out of lumber sourced from the cabinet of a dead transistor organ I could never quite get to work properly that my wife finally told me had to quit taking up space. I have a Lofi synthesizer and a theremin that I built also. I’m also slowly building a collection of homemade effects pedals. I enjoy RC. I have a small helicopter and rock crawler truck, but no airplanes that are air worthy at the moment. I build Gundam models, and have also dabbled in kitbashing unrelated models like cars and airplanes together. This hobby I share with my 12 year old son. I have a couple of 1980s Honda 3 wheelers that I keep alive and occasionally ride. I bake often and I will never be skinny again because I’m good at it. Oh, brewing. I do like to make mead and occasional fruit wines. I’m especially fond of making floral meads with hibiscus or chamomile for example. I’ve been known to paint when the urge takes me. I have a 3D printer. I have even made a few useful things with. I designed a well working samba whistle that I keep forgetting to upload to thingiverse, and a few other things I have managed to wrestle out of blender. I know I’m forgetting something. My wife calls me a hobby spider.
Sick, what synthesizer? I got a midi keyboard and use Reaper, what’s good about Reason? Also if you do wood stuff, do you do it by hands with a saw and chisel or with machines?
My synth is a Roland JP8000. Its analog modeling engine makes waveforms I’ve never seen anywhere else. The Super Saw is 7 saw waves detuned against each other. And the feedback oscillator capable of some fairly monstrous sounds. It also has the standard wave shapes and noise. Fun machine. Its best friend is a 1960s Wurlitzer electronic piano that it sits atop most of the time. Reason is pretty much everything in one place. Besides having a nice pile of virtual instruments and a mountain of effects, you can also record audio from an outside source. That of course can run through any of the internal effects in real time. I find it visually intuitive and user friendly. The downside at this point with Reason is its price. I’ve been on it since version 1 though. I’m not familiar with Reaper. Woodworking I do with a mix of hand and power tools. I’ve had a few years to accumulate tools and toys. I try not to let any of them get too lonely.
This is one of the questions that gives me the most social anxiety when meeting new people. It stresses me out because I don’t have any conventional hobbies. I don’t think dicking around on Discord, Lemmy, and YouTube really counts as much of a hobby.
Someone else said asking what your current obsession is would be a good icebreaker. Do you think that would be better?
I feel like that way nontraditional hobbies could be included so you could talk about things like Lemmy or whatever your favourite Youtuber is up to. Would that bring up the same level of anxiety?
I mean what Discords do you participate in? What Lemmy communities do you follow? What videos on YouTube do you like to watch?
You can reframe this and say, “I like to participate in online chat forums about the latest gaming news and technology (discord). I look for cool recipes and cooking techniques (Lemmy cooking community). And I love trying to find new funny comedians to listen to (YouTube).” I think if you narrow it down to the interests you enjoy, rather than “dicking around online” you’ll find that you have interesting things to talk about.
Obviously those examples are my own, but I’m sure you use those platforms because they feed you certain content that you enjoy.
AM I PLEASED TO SEE YOU OR IS THIS A CANOE IN MY POCKET? WOOF!
Let’s both go fucking close to water.
On our old WoW guild application form we included:
“Please rank all of the Star Trek captains you know from best to worst”
and then gave them a nice big empty text box to go to town in. Some answered seriously, and exhaustively. Some only knew Kirk, or didn’t know any at all. Some chose to go off on a rant about Star Wars being better, or include a joke or tell an anecdote about their relationship to scifi.
Whatever the answer we always learned something about the person and that was a good jumping off point if they got accepted. We did get the occasional humourless “wtf this is stupid” type response but, shockingly, this was rarely the only reason we had for denying such applications.
Do you like getting your asshole licked by a fat man in an overcoat?
Who’s asking?
Yeah who is asking ?
Who are you?
Who who, who, who
Tell me who are youuuu
Tell me, who is this Encarnacion?
My sister showed me a fun drinking game recently:
One person closes their eyes until the other person/people decide on a number 1-10.
After they all agree, the person opens their eyes then asks the group to rate an item from a category 1-10. Do this with 3 different categories. At the end, the person tries to guess which number was agreed on.
So, the group could agree on 7/10 and the guesser could ask “types of beers” and the group could say lagunitas, skulpin, etc …
Other good questions involve “people we both know”, “sexual experiences”…
“What is rimming?”
If you were half human and half animal, what animal would that be and which half?
Half man, half bear and half pig obviously.
What init system do you use on your Linux distro?
