No one online seems to want to talk at all. People in my age seem to lose the ability to talk.

What happens if we all forget how to have a deep or entertaining conversations?

  • pmk@piefed.ca
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    1 day ago

    This week a bird flew into a room I was in, a small one. Ok, they are actually called blue tit, but don’t let that distract, it’s a nice little bird. Anyway, it couldn’t find its way out, so I had to catch it in my hands. I was afraid I was going to hurt it by mistake, because it was trying to break free from my grip, but I managed to carry it back to the open window and it flew away (seemingly) happy. It’s the second time this happens, so I started searching online for the correct way to carry a small bird that doesn’t want to be carried. I did not find this information, but on a page about pet birds, I found this paragraph: “Spend quality time with your bird in a calm and positive manner. Offer treats, engage in gentle play, and use soft, soothing voices to build trust.” I am not a bird of course, but you know what, that doesn’t sound too bad! I want that. I showed it to my girlfriend and she gave me a look. We’ve been arguing a lot lately because she’s been emotionally distant and sort of spiraling out of control. I just wish I had a life like that “how to treat your bird” description but mutual. Do you know what I mean?

    • rockyracoon@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      I sympathize with wanting to feel comfortable and connected with a partner. I hope you can find an arrangement that makes you happy.

      I also totally know the feeling of finding little passages or pieces of art or media that I really emotionally resonate with and struggling to communicate what they mean to me. I’m not surprised, things like that are so strongly influenced by your own context, but I still find it disappointing.

      • pmk@piefed.ca
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        20 hours ago

        Yes! I know that feeling. David Foster Wallace wrote in one of his novels, I forget which, something like “how strange that I can have all this inside me, and to you it’s just words”. When you find something that emotionally resonate with you, art or poetry or anything, do you think that the meaning is what the artist intended, that there’s a 1:1 connection with what the artist felt, or is it more that the art allows us to put meaning into it? Like a more sophisticated and guided Rorschach test?

        • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          it’s not strange. it’s that your external world and your interior world don’t have much in common at all and less in common with the world inside of other people.

          all my girlfriends were obsessed with Taylor Swift. They thought I was some robot asshole for not being ‘taken’ with her music… which i found to be trite pop culture crap of zero value… basically auditory Doritos. but i went along to get along. then if i played music i liked, it was deeply weird and offensive to them and was further evidence of what a freak I was. Same with books, movies, pretty much everything else.

          what is meaningful to you is horrific to someone else at worst, and at best it’s meaningless. I don’t care for sports, and that alienates me from most of my family and huge swathes of the population for whom sports is the single most important thing in their lives.

          • pmk@piefed.ca
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            11 hours ago

            I like that people like different things, even if I can’t see what they see in it. Nobody should be made to feel like a freak for liking something, or being interested in something.

            • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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              7 hours ago

              dude i like to cook. people tell me what a freak i am all the time for liking cooking and not wanting to eat out all the time or get take out everyday. just like I don’t really drink, and also makes me a freak.

              people don’t like stuff that is different than what they like. they want you to like what they like and if you don’t, then they hate you.

    • mech@feddit.org
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      22 hours ago

      You hold one hand on either side of the bird, fingers pointing to the ground, and very gently cusp them around it.
      When you have a hold on it, turn your hands upwards, so the bird “lies on its back”.
      That makes birds go quiet for some reason.

      • pmk@piefed.ca
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        21 hours ago

        Oh! Thanks :) I’m trying to imagine this in the situation when they are flapping their wings trying to get out through a closed window. The next time it happens I’ll try to get it so it lies on its back.