When is the last time you had a really interesting conversation...

[WinterFoxes]

and what was it about?

I'm discounting any conversations about DC/family/schools/homes. I mean a wider conversation. And not just an opinion rant about Brexit or Trans, but a proper to and pro exchange of ideas?

We held a drinks party this Christmas and i realised I had nothing to say. Just nothing. No interesting anecdotes from life or observations or thoughts. It hsocked me that all I felt good for was topping up drinks and asking who was around at New year.

I want to chat about the world - anything really - not necessarily heavy stuff, just quirky, intriguing things and I don't know where to start.

Tonight about people from other countries fighting on the Russian side currently and their motivations. Also the effect of mini strokes and heart attacks, DS has just taken an in depth first aid course. I didn’t realise that people can have hundreds of tiny strokes and never know and also that people have unknown mini cardiac events. Plus DS explained some newer slang terms to old Gen X me.

I know it's not actual live conversation as such but I find some of the Mumsnet discussions so interesting. Particularly the philosophy ones, the ghost/woo ones, even the politics ones.
It has at times truly opened my mind.

.

I think sometimes literally just saying what you’ve been thinking to yourself about to someone else can bring up an interesting conversation. I asked my best friend the other night what they’d do if they found out they owned a haunted object (after seeing a YouTube comment of someone saying they’d donate them to charity and us agreeing that we couldn’t do that) and that one point led to an hour long conversation about how our Nan’s used to collect and gift porcelain dolls to all the grandchildren in the family and other things we collected, haunted objects, stories about haunted paintings. Tangents usually lead to the best conversations, I find.

I totally agree. Quite regularly I come across a genuinely interesting thread with a lot of discussion on various sides..... it's so refreshing when they're a proper debate and don't just descend into a slanging match. I've actually learned a lot from Mumsnet, some of the threads on politics/woo/the royal family/trans issues are really interesting.

Tend to agree with JustSomeone ... my family, my DM especially love in depth discussions and 'analysis' of situations... bores me senseless and I would love to just make inane chit chat! I am probably seen as rude as I tend to disengage but so many of the discussions are exactly the same as they were 30 years ago and many comments are negative and judgmental. I agree that some of the debates on Mumsnet are very interesting and make me challenge my own views ...

Today with DP after a swim in the sea we sat outside with a beer in the sun. He told me about the life of an artist he’d been finding out about and how his themes were related to war and we talked about whether you need to be personally connected to that country to make work about it. We talked about how the west sometimes puts people into the role of” other” … it was an interesting conversation I wanted it to go on but had to go get food .

You sound wonderful! And very very funny😊

I think that is very common with people of that age.

Although not just the older generation. I often play a game with myself where I ask everyone a question and wait to see if anyone asks me one. Frequently they don't. I can leave a social situation knowing tons about everyone I was with and they know next to nothing about me. It's so rude.

I have made it my mission to teach my sons not to do this. People tell me all the time how unusually polite and charming and chatty they are.

Had an interesting chat with my sons yesterday about what their highlights of 2022 had been.

They came up with things I was not expecting and some that I was.

Had an interesting discussion at Boxing day lunch on a number of issues, trans, email signatures, and the cartoon the boy the mole, bullshit woke crap.

I rarely spend time with anyone other than my husband and children. We do have interesting chats at home, always instigated by me. We spent a couple of days with friends before Christmas and I tried to talk about books, current affairs, my misunderstanding of freshwater lenses in coastal areas etc... but they mostly wanted to discuss what the kids were up to.

I'm seeing some friends over new year too. Am going to think of some interesting topics and try and get something going. Will report back!
(suggestions for interesting topics welcome).

I often play a game with myself where I ask everyone a question and wait to see if anyone asks me one. Frequently they don't. I can leave a social situation knowing tons about everyone I was with and they know next to nothing about me. It's so rude.

I think that is a self defeating game, since many people have been brought up not to be inquisitive - if they volunteer information about a subject that is your cue to volunteer information about the same subject, but only if you wish. They may be leaving these conversations feeling that you are rude, because you ask them for information but volunteer none.

Just speak up and tell them something about yourself, if you want them to know.

Honestly when you host it is a bit overwhelming and I am not surprised you didn't fond anything to say.

I have some fascinating conversations with my 3 teens on all sorts of topics. They are very interesting and funny people- parenting is so much more rewarding for me these days than when they were all little and needy!

Recently started dating a philosophy teacher and was hoping that would mean some interesting exchanges but maybe he’s just all talked out as it’s been pretty shallow chat so far.

With friends tbh most of our conversations start with the words “I read something on mumsnet last night…” and inevitably that’s a great chat!

I love a really good debate, where views are challenges utterly no one gets upset. It's for the sport of the debate, rather than necessarily because anyone feels very strongly about the subject. It doesn't need to be particularly intellectual either. Recent ones have been:

• what makes a good football ground
• whether people are basically good or not
• Disruption caused by train strikes v the need to protect employment rights
• Yes, trans in sport
• The best light bulbs for a living room 😆

If you ask questions when others express even dull view points (see lightbulbs) it just happens.

Yesterday with my son. I adopted him when he was 8, he was scared of his own shadow, in special school and very behind academically.
He is 18 now and planning on university in 2023.
We were talking about how much he has grown and changed and his hopes and dreams for the future.

What a gorgeous conversation!

Yep we share family.

I once asked my DF "do you listen to the archers?" in the hope of a lighter chit-chat talk over breakfast. Cue interesting but Not Light talk about the Archers as social history, when all I wanted to do was gossip about Ben and Alice

When my DC aged 8 first met - yes, I mean first met ever - my DF I bet them 50p he'd want to explore the nearby church (nothing special about it). Less than an hour in, he suggested we all go to look at it - for reasons of history, art history, architectural history - nothing whatsoever to do with God.

To answer your OP, I think the trick is always be curious, ask questions and go large. So after "do you have a pet?" And they say yes a dog, you say "what would your dog
Be like as a person", or "do you think
Dogs are angels" or "if dogs ruled the world what would it be like" or "how would dogs solve the care crisis"

Yesterday, DH: we'd been to the Royal Armouries in Leeds with the DC. We hadn't been for a few years, and it's been changed a bit, with a new exhibition about the arms of WW2. In the past, when the dc were younger, we've kind of whizzed round, looked the pretty elephant armour and the knights and not thought too deeply about it. Yesterday, we had more time to read the information, and I left feeling very uncomfortable about war. We had an interesting conversation about why that might be.

Earlier this week, DS(14); if there hadn't been so much research into nuclear physics earlier in the twentieth century, how would the Second World War have ended?

He's not in Y9 is he? Sounds just like the conversations I've had with DS recently.

I have some terribly nice posh English friends for whom chat is like a Japanese tea ritual, full of rules that can’t be broken ‘and how is your sister/she is well thank you. And how is your own sister/she also is well I thank you/and how has your weather been’ and when i off-road into ‘she’s all right I think but I worry about her domestic load, but you could say that about most mums, do you think we have really solved the issue of women’s work, what would the suffragettes think I wonder’

This couldn't help but remind me of Eliza Doolittle: 'Them 'as lived with her, would have killed for a hat pin let alone a hat!'

Possibly bar the football ground, all of those would escalate into an opportunity for one particular relative to get very shouty. No chance of them being able to debate the issue calmly.

That is so kind of you, I think that depending on mood I am definitely marmite (I mean I definitely get that sometimes we are all fried and tired and I sometimes tell myself off on the way to the school gate like Just. Talk. About. Trivial Shit.) but sweetly I have just had a friend from my teens text me to tell me she was randomly having a conversation with me about something completely out of the norm in her actual head in the kitchen so clearly I provide a service for SOME people and the rest we just mutually avoid each other.

Went out with a friends mum last night (random invite) and two of her friends and we covered it ALL, I wonder if some of the older generation have better social skills as they had to to build and keep a circle?? Although yes I do know monologuers too.