To start, I've read TofuTofu's stuff on this and plenty of other posts. I've been trying to improve it recently and to no avail.

Within my friend group, my friends view me as a value giver who is fun to spend time with. This is how I met my buddies whom I spend a good chunk of time with. They value my attitude and the fact that I openly don't care how they perceive me. I am good at furthering interesting conversation but I either add too much or too little of my own info. I think it's because the topics we discuss are within my realm of knowledge and I can easily come up with things to say.

When it comes to other people who I don't have any previous relationship with (or someone I know on a lesser level than a 'good friend'), I have trouble holding engaging conversations with them. Is it because my interests may be way different than them? This is especially true with other value givers in my classes/environment. I am seen as more of a 'gray' area, seen as someone who doesn't give a shit but also has nothing to give (Though this is not true). I've worked on my inner game a lot and have honed on my previous mindset that actually fell in line with the ideas here (like ngaf) but am having trouble showing others that I do in fact have value.

In addition to this I tried to gauge my value to a girl who I hung out with a few days ago. We ended up being alone by pure chance (the others cancelled) and I had no intent to escalate so I decided to test myself. We walked around many different places but she had no desire to hold a conversation with me. For example, we were in a bookstore, and I tried to create conversation about different topics regarding books I saw. She wasn't reciprocating interest in the banter despite me being genuinely engaged. I realized this and then tried to talk about herself, yet the conversation was once again one-sided, despite the same level of skill eliciting some sort of response from girls I already know.

Is it my conversation skills that are slowing me down, my value level, or both? I want to improve but don't know where to continue.