Conversation

QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
my favorite size for a group conversation irl is 2-4 people and usually i hope that in any larger group the conversation naturally fragments into smaller clusters of 2-4 people. larger than that and conversations risk getting taken over by the person with the fastest tempo
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
by "tempo" i don't exactly mean the person who talks the fastest although that's correlated. i mean the person who interrupts the most quickly after someone else says something. ime almost always male, almost always someone who is not tracking quiet slow ppl in the conversation
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
in a 5+ person conversation with a person with fast tempo i get frustrated by the sense that i have to increase my tempo to stay in the conversation. i can do this but i don't enjoy it. it rushes my breathing and my thoughts, and quieter slower ppl get further crowded out
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
it's especially frustrating if you've just met and don't know each other well and there isn't necessarily trust and social buy-in in the air to make relatively aggressive moves like pointing out, live, that someone's tempo is too high and it's crowding other ppl out
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
i guess it's more tactful to just try to organically break up the conversation into smaller 2-4 person groups. a frustrating thing about online video calls is it's impossible to do this organically. irl you can just tilt your body slightly and pitch your voice a little different
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khirashi
@altkhirashi
Replying to
@QiaochuYuan
+1 receiving feedback from my more introverted friends was super helpful for me, especially in ways that I was planning and organizing events
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Malcolm Ocean in Glasgow (37/100 vids)
@Malcolm_Ocean
Replying to
@QiaochuYuan
liiiikewiiiiise the fast-tempo thing seems closely related to high-involvement convo style (common among jews, 🇨🇦-maritimers (like myself) and australians) and it's cool but has limitations
Quote Tweet
Malcolm Ocean in Glasgow (37/100 vids)
@Malcolm_Ocean
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Replying to @quotidiania
Yeah! I've found it really helpful as a model. I'm now quite fluent in both conversational styles, having grown up high-involvement then spent much of my adulthood immersed in a very attuned high-considerateness mode. They're both lovely and I kinda want everyone to learn both.
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