Fandom Snowflake 2020 #5: Say Hello

[silveradept]

Challenge #5 asks us to comment where we've never been before, or to subscribe, give access to, or friend/follow someone new.

Some of us may have a huge circle of friends, others may have one or two really close fannish companions. Being in fandom is always a chance to interact with new people and potentially make new friends!

Which is great for people who are more inclined to say hello to others, however that gets accomplished. For others, who find peopling exhausting or who worry about having nothing to say, it's not that easy to add people to your blogroll, especially if they're the kind of people or communities that want a lot of interaction.

That said, there is a way of going into a new conversation with at least a few ideas in mind of what to talk about:

An easy way to accomplish this one is to head to the new communities you’ve found as a result of Challenge #3, or check out people’s responses in Challenge #1, 2 and 4, and meet some more new people. Or take someone up on their offer of a Discord invite, or send a message to a new person on Twitter or Tumblr. Perhaps use the ‘Network’ feature in DW. Who knows, you might just find some new kindred spirits!

Since we've done a significant amount of talking about ourselves already, by way of introduction (Hi, I'm Silver, I write fic and curate links and I love comments), talking about our history (I've seen a lot, played a lot, and read a lot, from a very early age, and I wrote a fair bit, too, which makes it hard to say where fandom started), gesturing at our wider communities (mine are mostly, although not exclusively, related to fic exchanges,) and laying out goals (or, in my case, engendering some new habits), there are a lot of hooks available for someone to pick up and use as a conversation-starter.

That's the secret I have to going and talking to people. If you just throw me in a room of people I don't know and say "Go talk to them," that's going to fail miserably and produce significant amounts of anxiety. But if you toss me in a room full of people who are in the same profession, or at the same convention meetup, or who are wearing something that indicates an interest, the conversation becomes a lot easier to initiate, because there's something there to talk about already on display. I own a conversation-starter tool that disguises itself as a "real-life adventure" game called Morton's List, and despite the fact that I found out way later in life that it's strongly associated with Juggalos (the followers of the group Insane Clown Posse), it works extremely well as a conversation-starter, because it provides an immediate hook to use. If you have a bunch of bored people and an hour to work with, some dice get rolled and an activity to pursue for the next hour is chosen off various tables. By the time you're done, you've had conversations and done something together, and so you've gotten to know people who were otherwise strangers to you. Pretty simple premise, and it works better than most types of ice-breakers that I've seen put to use.

While that doesn't work quite as well on Dreamwidth and other places as it does in embodied space, it's worth noting that the principles are often the same, and that there are things like profile interest lists, sticky posts, and tags that can make it easier for someone to find something neat to talk about with someone else. Possibly in some other space to start with, like a community's comments.

So, I'm going to borrow from teigh_corvus (and others) and last year's challenge and say that, in addition to the posts linked above, this post is a welcome post for anyone who wants to stop by and say hello. And possibly pick something from the magic sweets bowl that always has exactly the thing you most want and can have without consequences.

Comments

[perspi]

Yes, I agree it's sometimes hard to just "go say hi!" But I like your suggestion that the principles of finding things to talk about are similar in embodied space and online -- and I'm hopeful that the participants of Snowflake will be able to find those little hooks to hang conversations on.

[silveradept]

That's my hope, too. Shared fandom can be a really helpful way of starting a conversation.

[syntaxofthings]

This is helpful to hear someone just state that some people find peopling exhausting. Some people lately have been subscribing to my DW, and I am not sure what to do with them because I've clearly shown in the last couple years that I don't know quite how to keep up with the people I'm subscribed to already. It's harder than just saying "oh go make friends!"

[silveradept]

Entirely so. I know that I'm not usually this prolific or thinky through the year, so I hope new subscribers take a look backward to see what I actually post about for most of the year.

[hamsterwoman]

I hadn't heard about Morton's List before -- that's an interesting approach to ice breakers!

and that there are things like profile interest lists, sticky posts, and tags that can make it easier for someone to find something neat to talk about with someone else.

I actually find it a lot easier to do on LJ/DW for this reason, precisely because you can usually infer a lot more info about the person you're striking up a conversation with, if you feel like it. (Icons are another great source of strike-up-a-conversation topics, I find, and possibly my favorite one! :D)

[silveradept]

It was marketed as a game, and it's meant to be played with your regular tabletop group, but it also works as a perfect icebreaker. It was also a limited edition run, as best I can tell, and the Juggalo connection hurts it a lot as a thing that could be used as a game or icebreaker.

Icons are very good as conversation-starters!

[madeline_gwydion]

Hello. :-) *steals bowl

I have to look up that game you mention, it sounds useful.

[silveradept]

It entirely is. I have used it at conventions, when I had significant down time between panels just to get myself to go out and have fun instead of holing up in the room and not talking to anyone.

[autobotscoutriella]

It's really nice to see someone else who also has trouble starting conversations with total strangers--the discussion of conversational hooks makes a lot of sense to me! That game sounds very interesting, too. I may have to look it up for those times where I need to interact with a lot of other people, and don't have a pre-arranged structure. (It reminds me a bit of meeting a lot of my online fandom friends through internet, in-character card games--that worked super well in that context, but I've never thought about translating it to offline conversations.)

Also, hi! I know we've talked before, but hello officially, it's nice to meet other library people out in the wild.

[silveradept]

Hello! There's a lot going around a particular segment of library social media right now.

And yes, having a conversation hook to work with makes so many interactions between me and people I do not know so much easier. While I don't have my Morton's List for conventions any more, because they're so seriously packed with programming I don't have an hour to breathe with, and because I'm not staying in a hotel for them any more, it is a really useful thing to get people to do something together for a little while.

[autobotscoutriella]

I may have to look into that! I haven't done much with library social media yet (just got my current job a few months ago, though I was part-time various places before that), but it's nice to know there's others out there.

I'm definitely taking notes. I've never actually been to a convention, but there's a smallish one for my primary fandom that I'm hoping to attend in a year or two, and I've heard there's downtime. Bringing an easy icebreaker game might be a good idea.