Our smartphone-addicted internet age has mutated our species by creating a world where it is no longer necessary for new generations to learn how to have a conversation, and no longer necessary for older generations to maintain those skills. In fact, our species seems to have forgotten entirely what the purpose of a conversation is.
That second part’s not surprising, actually, because conversational interactions are one of those innate skills we develop while growing up, and nobody ever sits us down to teach us the autism version of what’s actually going on.
Except in very rare cases, the primary purpose of a conversation is not the exchange of factual information. This is the case mostly because when it comes to the consumption of information by humans, our SI unit of information is not the factoid. It’s the story. We don’t communicate best in words, or even ideas. We communicate best in stories.
Experts say that communication is only 7% verbal (the actual content of the conversation), with the other 93% being driven by tone, body language, and various other subtle interactive nuances. I know that experts say a lot of bullshit about a lot of bullshit, so there’s no need to take these weird numbers as facts, but the overarching idea that conversations are driven by much, much more than words and content is pretty obvious to all but the most autistic of us.
So if our species is wired to communicate primarily using stories rather than raw information or facts, and something like 93% of our communication is the tone and body language and other nuances rather than the actual words we are saying, it seems like the primary purpose of conversing with someone is not to provide that someone with information or to obtain information from that someone. The primary purpose of a conversational exchange is … drumroll please … human connection.
We are a social species. The ritual of the conversation and how it makes us feel when we do it is far more important than what we actually talk about.
If you have a strong recollection of the last bad conversation you had, it’s very likely that what was lacking was not the informational content. More often, when we experience bad conversations, what was missing was the sense of connection. Most of the time, instead of being truly and authentically engaged in a conversation, attentive to the other person, listening actively, etc., people treat a conversation like a game of ping pong.
I say something while you wait your turn, then you say something while I wait my turn. Most of the time, we decide what we are going to say next fairly early during the other person’s turn, and much of the time, what we are going to say next is something about ourselves or what we think about something that we believe might relate to the topic. We are not actually engaged, attentive, and connected, just taking turns talking about ourselves and our thoughts.
This is actually pretty common with men, especially in the internet age with the global economy in the shitter and all of us working 16 hours a day just to pay rent and buy food. We’re busy, we’re stressed, we don’t have the time or patience for social games or human connection. Just tell us what we need to know so we can get the next task done.
Don’t worry. We’re not actually all autistic. We’re just male. Our brain prioritizes the universe for us - kind of an inborn biological triage mechanism - so when we’re busy and stressed and we’re on a tight schedule and we need money a lot more than we need to deepen a friendship this morning, we become a lot less likeable and a lot less personable with our communications. We only have so much mental and emotional energy to dish out, and sometimes authentic engagement with a conversational partner just isn’t in our tank right now. For many of us, it rarely is.
That’s actually why humans innately tend to find bad conversation so off-putting. Our mental and emotional energy is colloquially measured by “how many fucks do I have in my tank to give”. And when we aren’t engaged in a conversation, that signals “I don’t really give a fuck about the person I’m talking to right now.” Avoiding expending real energy and attention on another person and just going through the conversational motions is understandably off-putting to them, and they will subtly pick up on that feeling by remembering that the conversation was a bad one. They can’t really point at anything wrong you said or did. They just weren’t feeling it and didn’t find you very likeable.
Because remember: the primary purpose of a conversation is not the information you and the other person are saying. The purpose is how both of you feel while you’re saying it. That’s where the connection comes from. The success of the conversation is not measured by how much information you exchange or the quality of that information. It is measured by how the two of you feel.
Women, being the more emotionally intelligent, more socially skilled, and usually far less busy of the two sexes, tend to be a lot better at the art of conversation. I understand that “better” is a bit subjective, because conversational exchanges with women are usually very low-information when compared to conversations with men. But women are always focused on how they are feeling, which gives them a little more natural insight in how other people are feeling as well.
You can talk with a woman about the most banal of nothing-topics, but if you are authentically engaged, attentive, and not simply waiting your turn to talk about yourself, that won’t matter. She will walk away feeling like she had a great conversation with you. Because the conversation felt good even if it was information-poor.
When my wife gets angry with me, she will start delivering speeches. We’re talking four-paragraph diatribes without letting me get a word in edge-wise, getting louder and angrier if I try to talk when she’s still going. There’s some childhood stuff there. You could say that her family’s love language was yelling. Growing up, the loudest family member who brokered no interruptions was the winner of any given interaction, and if you wanted to be heard, you had to be loud and not let anybody else talk. Not that anybody was ever actually heard in that situation. Boomer parents, millennial children — you get it.
So as my wife begins spouting a four-paragraph extemporaneous speech, I start to have some thoughts about her first paragraph, but I don’t have an opportunity to say them and if I try, she gets louder and angrier. I have some more thoughts about her second paragraph. I don’t have much to say about her third. By the time she finishes her fourth paragraph and takes a breath, if I go back and start talking about my thoughts regarding paragraphs one and two, she’s furious and I’m greeted with another four paragraphs about how I don’t understand anything she said and am not listening.
Obviously, I’m listening. I heard all of her words, thought about them, and formulated responses based on my thoughts. But I’m not engaged. I’m not connected. I’m simply responding to her words with my own thoughts. Like a game of ping pong.
Because I’m forgetting the purpose of conversation.
The point she was making was not what she said in her first paragraph or her second. It’s also not the conclusion she spoke in her fourth paragraph. It’s not even an overarching topic she was trying to convey with her four-paragraph speech. None of that was the point.
The point she was making was “this is how I feel”. Which may not have been something she actually articulated verbally, but was something she subtly communicated somewhere in the other 93% of the interaction. The “correct” conversational response is to pick up on how she feels and connect and engage with that. Not to respond to her words.
The words and topic are just the medium she is using to illustrate her feelings in a bid for connection, and the medium I am using to connect with her. If I fail to engage and connect with her and simply respond in a disconnected manner, I am rejecting her bid for connection, and she feels hurt and angry.
There is a time and place to be hurtful toward women in this way, such as if your wife or girlfriend has started playing power games, turned the sex off, and is being a super-bitch. But if you are habitually bad at connecting in this way, it won’t sting nearly as much — your lack of engagement will just feel like you being as clueless as you normally are and confirm that she’s right to be a bitch toward you. Once you’ve learned the skill, though, deciding when not to use the skill can also be a communication tool.
We often remind men to watch a woman’s actions while ignoring her words, because her words are not often factual statements, but merely a medium used to communicate her feelings. When you have cracked that code and can use a conversation properly — as a tool for connection — and women feel good talking with you and walk away liking you, you are miles ahead of just about every average chump in our smartphone-addicted era.
