As a teacher I’ve been learning
And forgive me if I boast
That I’ve now become an expert
On the subject I like most
– Hammerstein and/or Rogers
There’s a thing people do… In face-to-face conversation, when there’s nothing in particular to talk about but opportunity to talk all the same, when the goal of communication isn’t to solve a problem or convey a well-defined body of information on an already-identified topic…
- “Hey there!”
- “How’s it going?”
- “Terrible weather, eh? You surviving?”
- “Well, I won’t feel bad staying inside this Sunday; who you going for, Chiefs or '49ers?”
This “phatic” communication serves primarily as a carrier for other forms of communication: tone, cadence, body language… Things that don’t translate particularly well in the constrained, primarily text-based medium of the 'Net.
Also, it’s boring as all get-out.
But then there’s another thing that happens… Sometimes. After a period of time exchanging bullshit, of feeling each other out and developing some rudimentary vibe… We start riffing!
- “So beautiful today! I wait all year for mud season”
- “You’re sick. My boots must weigh 20lbs each! My dog has turned into a mud-colored blob, I sweep and mop a dozen times a day and everything is still filthy.”
- “Yeah, that all sucks. But look around, see the trees budding out, hear the birds calling to each other, the burble of spring streams flowing…”
- “Ok, sure that’s pretty, but the nearest stream is in the middle of the road - that’s why we’re standing here talking, the road is washed out!”
- “Ah. Yeah. So… Think Rt. 6 is open maybe?”
Unlike that initial back-and-forth, this can actually work online. However… Without the handshake that the phatic exchange provides, we often struggle to develop the vibe, the cadence that invites someone else to respond. Sometimes we resort to canned questions, throwing them out like someone flipping matches into a pile of damp tinder, hoping one of them somehow manages to catch.
Like you just did.
But… Questions sorta make me uncomfortable. I feel like I need to answer them. And when I can’t, or get overwhelmed thinking about it, I tend to resort to monologuing.
Like I just did.
So I don’t really have a favorite intro question; while I recognize and respect the role they often play, that’s still akin to asking me about my favorite immunization shot.
(It’s the tetanus jab btw.)
Instead, I’ll share an essay from Adam Mastroianni, titled “Good conversations have lots of doorknobs”, in which he opines,
What matters most, then, is not how much we give or take, but whether we offer and accept affordances. Takers can present big, graspable doorknobs (“I get kinda creeped out when couples treat their dogs like babies”) or not (“Let me tell you about the plot of the movie Must Love Dogs …”). Good taking makes the other side want to take too (“I know! My friends asked me to be the godparent to their Schnauzer, it’s so crazy” “What?? Was there a ceremony?”). Similarly, some questions have doorknobs (“Why do you think you and your brother turned out so different?”) and some don’t (“How many of your grandparents are still living?”). But even affordance-less giving can be met with affordance-ful taking (“I have one grandma still alive, and I think a lot about all this knowledge she has––how to raise a family, how to cope with tragedy, how to make chocolate zucchini bread––and how I feel anxious about learning from her while I still can”).
IOW, consider “getting to know” folks by… Sharing some information about yourself, in a way that makes it both possible and pleasant for others to do likewise. Or, if you’re just more comfortable asking a question… Try to make it a question that doesn’t implicitly turn into an exam, but rather invites folks to respond in ways that themselves are amenable to riffing.