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are NPCs real? when I meet someone new and I ask "what you been up to lately?" and there answer is incredibly dull I am confused, are they having a dull life, or do they lack practice in narrating their inner experience, or is it just a relational mismatch between us
@RichDecibels I struggle with this a lot, and I think I’ve generally concluded that the NPC framing is unproductive at best. Often I feel this way when catching up with old friends or meeting “tropes” of people on the road
@RichDecibels I try to remind myself that (almost) everyone is interesting, and that part of my job as a person in conversation is to uncover with curiosity. But sometimes there’s a question of payoff/feasibility (can we build the rapport/will they give me enough clues in the time we have)
@RichDecibels made a friend recently like this, got to know him & interesting narratives started to leak out I think he’s truly v interesting & just has a bad model of what’s interesting to others he’ll tell a long story about getting incorrect change and then gloss over his trip to Alaska
@RichDecibels Or the environment pokes. Ie, when someone does something sufficiently unexpected, or when a paired habit is suddenly taken away. Ie, when someone who relies on background media to function suddenly has that media removed.
@RichDecibels yes we exist, and we're tired of being treated like we have an inner experience we're simply hiding 😡 https://t.co/Bg6TBI0wtM
@RichDecibels are you more afraid / less interested in potentially breaking social norms or being very interesting https://t.co/oRAoARfnMq
@RichDecibels That will generate mostly bad responses. It’s almost aggressive in the way it asks “hey entertain me with something interesting, even tho I am going to give you nothing to react to.” Try something asking more specifically, giving them something to react to.