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About a new baby? Yes, show me pictures. Also your new kittens, kitchen, a cake you made, a painting you painted, sure, yes.
Vacation not so much.
But these weaker social connections are so important to life and to society. You can't sort people into friends or strangers, care and don't care. There is a lot of room in between - people you know but aren't close with are most of the people you know. It doesn't matter if you are just following the forms, that's fine. Keep on doing that, be nice.
The framing of this question is interesting. "...or are you just being nice?" Seems to assume that being nice is not a legitimate or authentic way of being, maybe unless it is a means of getting something you want.
A psychiatrist once told me "If I've learned anything over the years, it's that people really do think differently from each other." I can accept this as true but it really boggles my mind sometimes when I think I have caught a glimpse of someone's fundamental assumptions that are so different from mine.
I have met a few people who have said things like "I don't have time for small talk or chitchat, it is meaningless noise to me." I thought to myself "OK, you're not getting invited to my bar-b-que then." Which was probably fine with them. Still, it's hard for me to imagine having that mindset. Maybe when I was a teen it might have been said of me that I was self-absorbed and didn't care about anyone else, but I certainly did care, more than I was able to express.
I occasionally encounter people -some way past their teen years- who have no interest in any of the things that I am into, but want to endlessly info-dump to me about My Little Pony or whatever their special interest is. I listen, not because I am particularly interested in My Little Pony, and not because I am "just being nice." There is another reason, and I don't think of it as transactional or "playing a social game."
If there is any point to my rambling it is that I find the either/or thinking of the question reductionist and over simplified. I think this is one of the aspects of autism that makes it a disorder or disability for some people, because the very rigid black and white thinking can create a lot of frustration when reality doesn't conform to their internal strict rules.
I am autistic, and honestly OP, I feel very similar. But based on the comments, I'm starting to think that we're both narcissists haha
I have this particular issue with a house mate who is self-obsessed and wants to do nothing but brag about his charisma and intelligence to anyone who dares come downstairs for a split second. He'll go on for hours, and re-tell everything if someone else comes in. He kind of caricature-ises this whole experience for me. He has trapped me in a convo for so long that I've had evening plans ruined, even after telling him multiple times that I've got to go. No point pretending with him, you literally have to just ignore his existence and leave. Grim.
With friends and family? It depends.
For friends, I care if they're very close (1 of a handful of people), not because of the topic itself. What I'm really listening out for is how they have been affected by the experience.
For more distant friends, acquaintances, colleagues... generally no.
Friends? Sure.
Coworkers? No.
Most times, i'm being nice. But I do care about the moments that make my friends happy.
In general I don't care. I too have come to realize that I'm autistic. It's a shame that I didn't understand this until my 40's.
I have found though that I will care if it's a topic I am also interested in. Babies don't interest me, and in fact annoy me. So that one is out. Most life events, don't care.
Vacation stuff? Ok now I'm listening because I do like to travel and I may learn something. Wanna discuss engineering? We could go for hours.
I guess the threshold is, will I get anything out of this conversation? Which, maybe is selfish, maybe it's autism, I donno. I'm happy that you're happy about the thing but if I'm being honest with myself I don't care unless it effects me.
That's specific to the topics OP is describing and not all conversations. If someone is in need of guidance of something I'm happy to share my knowledge. I am fortunately not a narcissist.
I, for one, absolutely LOVE it when people talk about things that excite them. I ask questions because I want to see them get even more excited or passionate. I would honestly be hurt by someone like the OP, only pretending to be interested, because then with no follow up questions or anything, I would assume the conversation is going nowhere and would probably stop even trying to interact with them.
I specifically wont pretend to be interested. You'll notice that I'm not - that's why I wont ask in the first place.
You care about your baby and your vacation. Being excited to share that with other people is normal, and when you share something you're excited about with other people, it feels good; you get a serotonin boost and relive it in your mind. That process requires two people. It's a social contract. The other person is going to get relatively little out of the situation, but perhaps they get a little nostalgia recounting their own experiences and thinking back to their own kids. You should play along and ask questions because it makes them feel good, and later on, when you're jazzed about something, they might return the favor.
When someone is excited to recount a vacation abroad, it's a learning experience. Where did you go? What did you like? How were the people? What was hard about it? How much did it cost? Assuming you get to travel, it might give you helpful information that will make you more at ease with making your own plans.
Children: When you have them, most people get rewired a little. You go from OH KILL ME NOW, THERE'S A CRYING BABY ON THE PLANE to, ohh god, she must be miserable scared and confused, somebody snuggle that baby. When I see my coworker's baby, I get a wave of feelings/memories from when I cradled my own.
I think I get your frustration, and it echoes my own from years ago. My recommendation is to learn to play social the games. It doesn't take as long as it feels like it will out of your day to act compassionate. Making those connections with people and how those people see you is important. It opens opportunities and can give you comfort and give them greater patience with you when you need them to be patient. You might also find that moving through the motions strengthens your empathy.
I don't always care about the specific thing very much, but I have learned to recognize when someone wants to share their life experience. And they've chosen to share their life experience with me. It takes a bit of extra effort, in an "Okay, what about any of this interests me, so I can ask questions from that perspective," but I'll always try to find something to say that makes the other person feel appreciated for sharing. Because it's probably not that they want me to "see what they've done" and more that they want to engage on a personal level with another human being.
It's a lot easier for me to support that engagement when I look at the interaction through that lens. I don't always get opportunities to engage like that with other people, and it's probably healthy for me to accept those opportunities when they come.
Babies and children, no. I mainly care if those kids are sick as children being sick affect the well-being of who I'm talking to.
I like to discuss vacations and I'll usually ask more in depth questions about travel since I like to travel.
That said, there is usually something beneficial to social cohesion where you care enough about people that you more than just name and role. I've found that it is generally a lot more miserable to work in an environment where everyone is a cog in a machine.
I care for up to 10-15 minutes per topic.
If it turns into an hour long presentation, my level of caring drops off significantly.
Yes and no. For close friends, family, and long time coworkers. I care that you had a good trip, that mom and baby are healthy, and would not mind a few photos. But that's it. I don't need a 500 page travel album or daily baby pics.
I’ll listen if they want to talk about it, but I’m not going to act interested
Yikes
Indeed. OP basically outing themselves as a self centered narcissist.
Yeah.
I can't be bothered to even pretend to care about the lives of people I claim to care about
I love how half the answers are "Tell me about your vacation, forget the baby." And the other half are "OOOOH A BABY! Who cares about where you went!"
Some people truly care, some don’t and some fake it. Nobody is forcing you to care or even fake it. There are just consequences to it if you don’t, some people will think that you are an asshole if you do that and don’t want to associate with you anymore. It’s up to you whether you can live with those consequences or not.
Yes. It's called empathy.
You may not have a vested interest in the particular story, but the very act of someone that you care about (presumably) being excited about something should at least bring some sort of good feeling to you. When people I care about are enjoying something, it makes me happy. So while their kid pictures, or vacation pictures or whatever might not be interesting to me, the fact that they care enough about me to want to SHOW them to me, should give you a warm feeling.
That being said, no...I'm not going to dunk for not feeling that. It's different from person to person certainly; and I (and here I'm going to revert to my "old man yells at clouds" mode) feel like modern friendships are just different. We are suddenly in an age where having a few close friends has been replaced with having a tonne of "shallow" friends that you meet online. They're still "friends", but beyond texting and playing together online, you never see each other, never get closer than that. And certainly it would be a different feeling entirely. But the cadre of close friends that I made while working at Sears in 1998, and who I still talk to almost every day and see regularly, of COURSE I'm going to care.
For a real friend? Absolutely! I'll hunt them down. For a coworker or loose acquaintance? I care a little less, but it's still nice to see occasional baby photos and vacation pics.
I can't believe people would fake politeness about this! No wonder we're all so damn lonely. If you really don't care, why not just say that those things bore you? It would probably make for deeper connections with everyone involved. You wouldn't have to waste your time with them, and they wouldn't waste their time with you!
Drag was socially conditioned to pretend to be interested through years of relatives sharing holiday pictures when drag was small.
As i got older, I cared more. I uses to listen politely, then I started to look forward to hearing about my friends and family lives. Now I'm one of those guys who calls to ask for updates. 😆
Well I look at it like this: I don't really care that much personally about my friends mundane things, but I do care about mine. I think that there isn't a reason for them to care about my mundane things, but I enjoy having my mundane things listened to. I like that reciprocity, so I made an effort to listen and ask questions that show I'm engaged in the conversation. I try to express empathy by saying when a situation sounds tough or fun. I have noticed that "showing up" for the conversation is what our friends want a lot of the time, and that's what we want as well a lot of the time. I have also noticed that after a few sessions of "showing up", I can actually get engaged and move beyond just showing up. I have a buddy who has a sick grandma, and the first few mentions of her I kinda had the same thoughts, like, I don't care about this lady, why should I listen. I showed up anyways and it led to some interesting conversation about the nature of mental illness because she was remembering very vivid details from her past and that led to some interesting convos about all that. I think that being able to find the enjoyment in a small talk conversation is definitely a skill, but it is rewarding in both your interpersonal relationships and in learning new things through unexpected exposure to new concepts. As a fellow autist, I'm pretty information driven, but neurotypical people, I think, are more feelings driven. The small talk stuff is super important to them and they put that up front first, I guess to judge your character? I'm not sure why, but I have noticed better interactions after I have engaged in small talk. It really is a trainable skill and when you get good at small talk, it can be enjoyable!
The nature of my job is that I often listen to people tell me their life story while I’m replacing their kitchen faucet. It’s not that I can’t do small talk - I just find most of the topics incredibly uninteresting. Like I said earlier, I know how to play the game, I just find it mind-numbingly boring.
This goes both ways, though. I’m acutely aware that most people aren’t interested in the things I’m most passionate about, so I don’t bring those up either. But when I do meet someone with similar interests, I could talk for hours. Those conversations are rarely about people or events - mostly about ideas.
Before you even mentioned autism I was thinking "I wonder if they might be autistic", so with that in mind you may want to look up the double empathy problem. Basically, multiple studies have shown that autistic people find it easier to empathise with other autistic people and harder to empathise with allistic (non-autistic) people, whilst the exact opposite is true for allistic people. Importantly, contrary to what many previously believed, there is no difference in the overall level of empathy, it's more a matter of compatibility.
The point being, that the people in this thread who have implied that you lack empathy are probably wrong, and your above comment would seem to agree with this.
How good of a friend are we talking? I care about my roommate's new nephew. I know his sister, and we've played D&D with his brother-in-law. The baby is, like, a relevant part of being friends with them. Similarly, if he went on vacation I'd want to hear about how it went, especially if anything interesting happened.
On the other hand some of my coworkers at my last job liked to talk about this kind of stuff, and I didn't really care, but it was nice to have something to talk about while I was setting up a new printer for them, or whatever.
I don’t feel like it makes much difference whether the person is close to me or not. It’s not that I don’t care about what happens to these people, but a huge part of the topics people generally small talk about are the kinds of mundane things I have almost zero interest in discussing. For example, if something interesting happened to you over the weekend, I assume you’re just going to tell me about it - I would. But I sometimes feel like people expect me to ask about those things, and when I see others do it, I’m often a bit skeptical about whether they’re actually interested or just going through the motions. Thus this thread.
If creating new life and welcoming a new person into your world is "mundane", or exploring new corners of this tiny world that we are confined to is not interesting to you, then you really gotta tell me about the mind-blowing stuff you're doing every day that takes precedence.
Absolutely I care, and I want all of the details and pictures. It brings me great joy to see my homies living exciting lives, and I'm thankful to be part of that. With children, especially - they feel like nieces and nephews and I am inherently invested in their wellbeing and success, even for long-distance friendships in which I've never met the kiddos.
I don't have any family of my own, so my Will and estate is divided amongst my friends, and those with kids are allotted a bigger piece of the pie so they can put it towards their college or whatever when I die.
I don't get all wrapped up in imagining sharing the experience or anything like that, but it's always nice to get a factual update about the other person. And if they have something interesting to say about whatever it is, that's good too.
I usually like to hear about people's travels to xyz. I find it less interesting to know about who had a baby, who's engaged with whom etc. but baby pictures are kinda cute. Usually though the purpose of hearing people talk about therir trip is to tell another mutual friend/family member that "person abc went to country xyz" or "had a baby with xyz". But sometimes you wonder how it would be like to visit that country yourself, or if you have been then how their trip compared to yours, so hearing stories from people you know are good insights.
It can drag on after a while, so when some anecdote goes on too long I try to fast forward towards the end of the trip, ask more about the trip that I want to hear about, or ask "did you bring anything back?" As the last question before changing the subject.
I like telling anyone who's interested about train stuff, and I'll share my travels in conversation, but I try to limit it to showing one or two pictures/videos off my phone and just the highlights in a few sentences.
Yes I do care. The reason i care is because it makes me happy for them as a friend that they're going through or went through an event that brought them joy or enriched their lives somehow.
If it's a coworker then I'm usually doing it to be nice, but also because if you're spending a considerable amount of time with your coworkers each day, you'll probably have a more enjoyable work culture if you get to know your coworkers.
I care. Some people care more than others. That’s fine.
Somebody I care about has had an incredible event or experience in their life. Of course I care and want to hear about it.
I care, usually not very much, but somewhere above zero. It's good that they actually have something to talk about which therefore gives us something to talk about. Holidays overseas are a bit easier than kids because there's some relatability there but whatever they're talking about it's usually more the person talking about it that's interesting more than the thing. You're already friends, so you already enjoy their insights or way of talking about things and you've probably been there for a fair few of their important life events so it's nice to hear about the latest ones and how that's shaping then today as others shaped them before.
Because I don't have kids and wasn't on their vacation for me there is a natural limit imposed on just how interesting it can be hence saying I don't exactly care a whole lot, but it's usually at least enough to make sharing a beer more satisfying.
Autistic and I don’t care, but I do listen and I try to do it well.
For some stuff I don't care, some other makes me jealous and some other is actually cool to discover/learn (think of some new place to have lunch/dinner or some hobby you didn't know about your friend).
But in general I am with you, and I also feel like most people liking and commenting are playing the social game.
I am not very active in social networks, though...
A baby and a vacation aren't comparable.
Do I "care" about every little detail of their vacation? No, but I'm glad they are happy and had a good time.
People like to talk about their experiences, it's not really a game.
This feels like the wrong framing.
I dunno, I like my friends and them being happy about something tends to make me happy. Do I find every baby/vacation anecdote amazing? Absolutely not but a lot of them have a kernel of funny or just something interesting for me to note.
Also, from a pure reciprocity perspective, don't you enjoy having folks to talk with about things going well in your life even they're maybe not the most unique or compelling things?
Vacations, you gotta treat like MySpace. Set your top 8, and make sure you choose your top 8 wisely.
8 photos I feel like can easily net you a good 25 minute conversation.
Babies/pets? Show me 1-2 photos. Don't overdo it. You're going to have more photos as time goes on. This isn't a vacation where you have a finite amount of content. You'll show me a photo of your baby being cute. Hey, that's great. We'll talk about it for a few minutes. But we'll also talk about it for a few minutes next week when your baby is going to be cute again. So it's not like I want to spend all day talking about your baby. Your baby is cute, I'm happy for you, but lets move on.
I'm interested in parts of the trip. Mainly the foods and food markets. What they ate where. If they want to tell me about the views or the guy at that shop who said something, I'll feign interest.
Anyone who has been on a "cruise holiday" eats on the ship, and the food may be good but it isn't exciting or too exotic. I want to know how you ate a sausage and found out later it was an earthworm but it was really nice because they grilled it with lime and stuff and you couldn't tell.
there is an important distinction between real friends, as in people who went through significant part of your life together with you, and your 500 "friends" on facebook...
When it's about good friends, then yes, I care a lot.
Sure, I was always interested to see where everyone was traveling. That's what I had Facebook for until it turned to shit.
I don't have to hear anything about babies though.
If i have somewhere else to be or am short on time, then yea, i cant wait for them to finish telling me whatever they are telling me. Otherwise i can usually challange them with some questions or Insights, to create a two way conversation. Sure, if the person is someone i dont know well, ill usually not ask questions, and i am indeed not interested.
Even if you don't care, it's probably a good idea to at least pay attention to the announcement of a new baby, because this is a new person, who will be a significant influence on their life and may have some impact on your own. Later on, it's considered polite to at least ask "and how's (name of spouse) and (name of child or children, or you can say "the kids"). One isn't expected to remember every detail, but at least acknowledge they exist.