The most interesting people I know aren't trying to be interesting. Thank God. They're saying what they actually think and wearing what they actually like, pursuing hobbies that genuinely fascinate…
The most interesting people I know aren't trying to be interesting.
Thank God.
They're saying what they actually think and wearing what they actually like, pursuing hobbies that genuinely fascinate them, regardless of whether those hobbies are cool. The most mind-numbingly boring people I know are working overtime to seem interesting: curating their book recommendations, workshopping their opinions to be provocative but not too provocative.
The effort is palpable. And the effort is exactly what makes them forgettable.
I've come to believe that boring = personality edited down to nothing. Somewhere along the way, too many of us learned to sand off our weird edges, to preemptively remove anything that might make someone uncomfortable or make us seem difficult to be around.
And the result = boredom.
You've been editing yourself
Erving Goffman wrote in 1959 about how we all perform versions of ourselves depending on context. What's less normal is when the performance becomes the only thing left. When you've been editing yourself for so long that you've forgotten what the original draft looked like.
This happens gradually. In middle school, you learn that certain enthusiasms are embarrassing. In high school, you learn which opinions are acceptable in your social group. In college, you refine your persona further. By the time you're an adult, you've become so skilled at reading rooms and ajusting accordingly that you don't even notice you're doing it. You've automated your own inauthenticity.
This process feels like maturity, or it feels the way we think maturity ought to feel. It feels like growing up and becoming an adult or a professional. And in some sense, I suppose it is. But there's a difference between reading a room and erasing yourself to fit into it. Reading a room is social intelligence. Erasing yourself to fit into it is something else.
I can always tell when I'm talking to someone who's been over-edited. They have opinions, but the opinions are suspiciously well-calibrated. They have interests, but the interests are respectable. They never say anything that makes me uncomfortable or surprised. They're like a movie that's been focus-grouped into mediocrity: technically competent and forgettable.
Make a list of everything you've stopped saying or admitting to because you worried it was embarrassing. The band you used to love until someone made fun of it. The hobby you dropped because it wasn't sophisticated enough. The opinion you stopped voicing because people looked at you weird.
Most people's cringe lists are surprisingly long. And most of the items on those lists aren't actually embarrassing in any objective sense. They're just things that didn't fit the persona you decided you needed to maintain.
I stopped telling people I loved pop punk for half a decade. I hadn't stopped loving it, but I'd learned that pop punk was supposed to be embarrassing, and I wanted to seem cool, or at least not uncool. Almost everyone I know has some version of this story: the authentic enthusiasm they buried because it didn't fit.
The things on your cringe list are probably the most interesting things about you. They're the parts of your personality that survived despite the editing. The fact that you still feel something about them, even if that something is embarrassment, means they're still alive in there somewhere.
Get it back
The weird parts are never as weird as you think. Or rather, they're weird in ways that make you memorable. Being the person who's really into competitive puzzle-solving or birdwatching gives people somthing to remember. Being the person who's vaguely interested in the same five acceptable topics as everyone else gives them nothing.
The recovery protocol is simple. Start saying the thing you would normally edit out. Mention the embarrassing enthusiasm. Voice the opinion that might not land well. Do this in low-stakes situations first: with close friends, with strangers you'll never see again. Notice that the world doesn't end. Notice that some people respond positively to the unedited version, even if others don't.
The people who respond negatively aren't your people anyway. That's the benefit of being unedited: it filters your social world. The more you hide who you actually are, the more you attract people who like the persona, which means the more alone you feel even when surrounded by friends.
Be polarizing
The most memorable people are polarizing. Some people love them; some people find them insufferable. That's what having an actual personality looks like from the outside. If everyone has a mild positive reaction to you, you've probably sanded youself down into a carefully constructed average of what you think people want.
Christopher Hitchens was polarizing. So was Julia Child. So is anyone you can actually remember meeting. But provocation for its own sake is another form of performance; what actually matters is that you stop preemptively removing the parts of yourself that might provoke a reaction.
Some people are going to dislike you.
They're allowed to.
That's the price of being someone worth remembering.
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Comments
I'd lump this in with so much other inspirational advice (e.g. "Dance like nobody is watching! Love like you've never been hurt!") that is well-intended but hugely impractical.
I think there are finely-tuned social algorithms that we innately follow. For example when meeting somebody we often perform the progressive self-disclosure algorithm in an attempt to find mutual talking points, so maybe yeah you say that you're into drinking IPAs or some other stereotypical thing, that's great.
The reason such a protocol is highly effective is you want to establish somebody's feelings about you before disclosing a huge amount.
By t-3 2026-02-2015:16 Yeah, so much of in-person interaction is attempting to suss out the size and orientation of the personal Overton windows of your counterparts so that you can both find the overlap and take a peek through to the other side without sticking your whole head in and having to hear and smell the sights too. Walking around "with the shutters open" can speedrun things a bit, but it isn't practical in many contexts (work, community events, etc) or for people who have a public image. The whole point of smalltalk is to avoid being pulled into public largetalk, not because people are incapable or have no ideas about larger things.
People say things like this but I remember a time when there was a lot more "acceptable" eccentricity. I'm only in my late 40s so it wasn't too long ago.
The article misses the other half of being interesting: being interested. If you're not able to find your counterpart interesting, they'll find you boring.
The proliferation of identities and labels like "neurodivergent" is part of the problem and not part of the solution.
I never got diagnosed as a schizotype in school but they tried really hard to accommodate me anyway. Today I would be misdiagnosed as ADHD or autistic. Today there is a two-class system in school between people who have a diagnosis who can get little accommodations like another two minutes to use the bathroom and people without a diagnosis who have to ride on the back of the bus.
By resoluteteeth 2026-02-2118:04 You seem to be describing yourself as a "schizotype" but isn't that also a similar label to the ones you are criticizing the proliferation of?
If you feel that the other labels are unhelpful why do you feel it is helpful to label yourself as a "schizotype"?
Do you think that the people who dance like no one is watching or who love like they’ve never been hurt are on average happier or unhappier than the average person? Are they happier or unhappier than the people who dance like everyone is watching or who love like they’ve always been hurt?
I feel like these are risks with a large penalty if it goes wrong but on average probably higher, no? Dancing more so than love
I meant in comparison to the reward. Loving recklessly isn't much more deeply and could make you hurt significantly. Dancing confidently isn't rewarded compared to bimeinf embarrassed for dancing badlt.
By paulcole 2026-02-2115:32 It seems like you have really strongly held beliefs about these things that are based more in how you’d like the world to be than how it really is.
Even if you think there is a small benefit to dancing confidently compared to dancing insecurely, what specifically is the big relative risk of dancing confidently. What will go wrong?
By raw_anon_1111 2026-02-2015:023 reply My wife and I live above a bar frequented by tourists and the bartender is a friend of mine. When it isn’t busy, I’ll usually go down there order a soda and just talk to whoever shows up. The easy opener once the conversation starts is “what keeps you busy?” and keep the conversation going. This lets them talk about work, family, hobbies or whatever else they like to talk about
I read a book that said you should try something new to you at least every quarter if not more often. It gives you something to talk about.
While my wife and I are empty nesters and at point where we travel a lot and we do the digital nomad thing in spurts so we can always talk about travel or more often ask “what’s the most interesting place you’ve been to”/“What’s interesting about where you live” etc, it doesn’t have to be travel.
And just to be clear, it’s always either guys I am striking a conversation with or couples. There is no way for a 50 year old married guy to talk to a woman alone at the bar without coming off like a creep.
On the other hand, I try not to talk about politics or religion. What’s the point?
> I read a book that said you should try something new to you at least every quarter if not more often. It gives you something to talk about.
Any chance you remember the name?
By marcd35 2026-02-2015:54 not OP and not sure of the book but if you're interested in material like this, check out Derek Sivers' work - usually revolves around stepping outside your comfort zone, exploring new ideas, etc.
By raw_anon_1111 2026-02-2016:34
By CuriouslyC 2026-02-2015:142 reply > There is no way for a 50 year old married guy to talk to a woman alone at the bar without coming off like a creep.
Not true. You have to engage in a way that signals very clearly you don't really give much of a shit about talking to her, and your social status is higher than hers.
For example, if you're having a conversation with your bartender friend and you need a female perspective to settle a disagreement, and you ask for it without fully "engaging" with her, that'll work fine. Once she's been pulled in you will have to keep hooking her into the conversation with interesting tidbits, but eventually most women will just keep talking.
I am not big into going to bars but I'd say post-50 I have no problem talking to women and not being a "creep". Somehow I am really avuncular and rarely perceived a sexual threat. When I was younger I had more of that problem and was intimidated by beautiful people, a month ago I shook hands with a former Miss America.
Attraction does sometimes come up with women who are 10 years younger than me but otherwise I think it is a non-issue.
By raw_anon_1111 2026-02-2018:14 I am not either for the most part by myself. It just so happens that I live in a vacation area where my wife and I are the only permanent residence of a condotel (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/condotel.asp). I go down to hang out with the bartender. It’s mostly guys and couples getting away from their kids after spending all day at the parks (Orlando).
The bar is literally downstairs from where we live.
My wife and I also usually sit at the bar when we go somewhere and just talk to people whenever we go out.
> signals very clearly you don't really give much of a shit about talking to her, and your social status is higher than hers
he said "_without_ coming off like a creep"
By CuriouslyC 2026-02-2015:501 reply Maybe if you do it very very wrong. I suppose you're imagining some swaggering jerk putting her down and acting self important, that's your mistake.
No, it's very much yours and the way you phrased it. Perhaps you didn't mean it this way, but you sound like some kind of "pickup artist" type giving advice on "negging" women.
By CuriouslyC 2026-02-2022:591 reply Since I didn't mention how to do anything, seems like he was projecting his biases on my words. Pretty sad that "be someone worth talking to" and "don't project neediness" are somehow owned by the manosphere now. No wonder people are marrying chatbots.
By verall 2026-02-221:25 > "be someone worth talking to" and "don't project neediness"
Doesn't come off like a creep.
> signals very clearly you don't really give much of a shit about talking to her, and your social status is higher than hers
Comes off like a creep.
One that cannot tell the difference probably comes off like a creep.
By kevinsync 2026-02-2015:23 Not to mention that humans seem to have a fixed (yet variable, compared to the entire population) amount of energy they're each able to spend. Sometimes very interesting people gatekeep their authenticity to protect and preserve what they have to offer others, especially to strangers, coworkers, clients, even family.
I think the general message of bravery in authenticity is very important on a personal level, and incredibly subjective with regards to anybody external.
When a vampire knocks on your door, do you always invite them in?
By FuckButtons 2026-02-2017:021 reply > I think there are finely-tuned social algorithms that we innately follow.
That would explain why I can’t do small talk, those are not innate to everyone.
By raw_anon_1111 2026-02-2019:17 Wasn’t to me either. It’s a learned skill that you can study and practice. I am only child. About a decade ago I saw one of two ways to make above my 2nd tier city enterprise dev wages - about $150K - either “grind leetCode and work for a FAANG” (r/cscareerquestions) or go into customer facing consulting where I would be required to do the business dinners and small talk.
I chose the latter. At 45+, there is no age discrimination in consulting - I still do hands on keyboard coding + cloud. Even before I got into consulting (working full time for consulting companies), I had roles inside companies where I interviewed with new to company directors/CTOs who were looking for someone who could get things done not reversing a b tree on the whiteboard. I had to learn how to talk. I haven’t had a coding interview since 2012 and I’ve worked for 6 companies since then
By soulofmischief 2026-02-2014:551 reply When you put it that way; I guess after some reflection, I realize my algorithm is optimized for efficiency and I immediately try to hone in on strong agreements or disagreements in taste/politics/etc. so that I don't waste my time getting to know a shitty person, or miss out on a potential best friend.
These means engaging in a level of provocative speech/behavior that sometimes makes people uncomfortable (not my problem of course; I have little interest in euphemism or politeness, my energy goes toward transparency and kindness)
Progressive self-disclosure can have its uses but if I can't break the ice in two minutes with a stranger, it's not a good sign for our compatibility.
Now, I did grow up in an environment where I was never really allowed to exist. I am an atheist raised by an hyper-abusive, hyper-religious, ex-boxer Catholic deacon in an extremely conservative part of the United States. The police were at my house every couple of weeks. So this may have influenced my comfort with radical transparency; I had to learn at a young age to literally fight constantly for my right to think my own way, and I'm ready to do that at any time.
But I have definitely been in some neighborhoods where the most interaction you should have with a stranger is a nod of the head, anything more is asking for trouble no matter who you are. I can vouch that there are harsh urban environments which prevent, by design, even progressive disclosure from being a safe option. This effectively kills any chance at real unity in the community, and drives up crime statistics, further justifying the continued disunification tactics.
It would be cool to catalog, categorize and analyze these kinds of social algorithms. It seems like an interesting cross-disciplinary field, involving psychology, sociology, game theory, cultural anthropology, etc.
If I meet somebody that immediately skips the progressive self-disclosure small talk and jumps right in to a big discussion… I’m going to withdraw. Even if I agree with everything you’re saying, it comes off as aggressive. like youre trying to speed run forming a relationship by skipping the small talk
By soulofmischief 2026-02-2015:342 reply No, I'm just not going to progressively disclose my nature. I'm just going to be myself, regardless of how others in my environment might react.
I can field the small talk, several of my friends have commented on my ability to break the ice quickly with strangers. But after a minute or two, the conversation is either over or we're moving onto more interesting discussions.
Come to one of the conservative towns I grew up in and you'll understand the need for such a mentality. Progressive disclosure can lead to things like accepting racism, sexism and other injustices.
It's a good mentality to carry forth into other environments as well, because at the end of the day, the less masks I have to carry, the better.
You don't sound like someone I'd like to speak with even if we might agree on things. You writing has a very aggressive tone to it for no reason.
I'll be honest if someone tries to get into politics and other such things very soon after I start speaking to them it really puts me off. I might not disengage right away, but I'll probably never choose to speak with them again.
By soulofmischief 2026-02-2023:401 reply I think both of you are projecting an aggression tone onto my words. Poe's law, maybe.
It shouldn't offend you that I don't personally enjoy continued small talk and prefer to form deeper connections at the risk of losing superficial connections, by not engaging in drawn-out progressive disclosure.
You're making assumptions about our compatibility without knowing much about me at all. But, this was my point: Now I know that we don't need to continue the discussion and we can both spend our energy elsewhere.
As a neutral 3rd-party who wants to help you speed-run your self-growth (because I like your energy):
- Yeah you come across as aggro. That's okay, sounds like you went through some stuff.
- Sounds like you've identified you grew up in a weird situation. That sounds bad, sucks you had to go through that.
- But it also sounds like there's a piece of you that's trying to overcorrect. I understand, it's common among us nerds -- you grow up in a situation where you aren't as appreciated as you should be and you try to turn off that feeling entirely somehow. Unfortunately these types of attempts to hack our own feelings are usually worse than the problems in the first place. Usually the best course is to slowly try to remind yourself (over years) "That was a bad situation, it was bad luck, it meant nothing, and it's not the norm. I don't need to fundamentally change to not have that happen again."
By soulofmischief 2026-02-212:201 reply I do appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts. I still believe that you and the two other commenters here are misreading or misinterpreting me.
That's a lesson for me to choose my words more carefully, but only to avoid misinterpretation in an online forum; everything I said, I 100% stand by, and it's honestly unsurprising that a comment about being provocative and to-the-point, not always progressively self-disclosing, has made some people uncomfortable.
> Unfortunately these types of attempts to hack our own feelings are usually worse than the problems in the first place
I want to stress that I mean this in the most constructive, positive way possible, but it feels like your comment projects a bit onto me in an attempt to find common ground. I welcome the attempt but I do want to point out that I don't try to "hack my feelings", and I don't organize my life and behaviors under some fear that my childhood is somehow going to happen again. I am very in touch with my feelings, I value emotional intelligence and reflection. I don't pathologically worry about others appreciating me.
I brought up my past to show how such a perspective might form, but the perspective is not some kind of defense mechanism. It is a playbook for how to live my life in a way that aligns with my ideals and goals, and it's one of the only good things to have come out of my childhood. I cherish my perspective and how it's allowed me to help both myself and others.
Well the reason I said it sounds like you were trying to "hack" feelings was that you mentioned you came up with your own social "algorithm" for testing people you meet that could make them uncomfortable. It's been my observation that most attempts to optimize conversation backfire.
But I'm not really trying to convince you, I don't have a horse in this race. If you want maybe ask an AI and see what it thinks, they are great neutral tool for being a judge on human tone or being a social mirror.
By soulofmischief 2026-02-2113:02 > you mentioned you came up with your own social "algorithm" for testing people you meet that could make them uncomfortable
I didn't say that, reread my comments. I have no interest in "testing" people like some sort of sociopath. You mentioned the algorithm of progressive disclosure. I said that I specifically do not do this whenever I can help it, and mused about why that is, and why it might be so for others raised in certain communities.
I said I quickly like to discover who other people are and communicate who I am, to skip all of the progressive disclosure crap and either come to terms with the fact that we aren't compatible, or to find a thread to start pulling and weaving into a relationship.
> It's been my observation that most attempts to optimize conversation backfire.
Progressive disclosure is an optimization. It's just optimizing for different things. I don't walk into a random conversation with someone planning to control how the conversation unfolds, or "optimize" it. But anyone with experience in public speaking, or leadership, sales, political organization or other environments which necessitate the ability to navigate and calibrate conversations, will learn a few tricks for keeping things on track or avoiding dull moments.
Conversational speaking is a skill, and getting better at it for the sake of improving your ability to communicate is not "hacking" or "optimizing" the conversation. I think you have decided on a bunch of behaviors in your head that I simply do not engage in.
> If you want maybe ask an AI and see what it thinks, they are great neutral tool for being a judge on human tone or being a social mirror
I have dumped my entire HN history into chatbots to study my conversational approach and learn from it. Self-betterment is always a work in progress, but I simply do not engage in the behaviors you've decided I engage in without even meeting me.
This thread has turned into a series of misunderstandings from multiple users, none of whom ever stopped to seek to understand or ask for more detail before making assumptions. Instead, I had to field several bad assumptions from people who were ironically claiming that someone whom they've never met, but simulated in their head based on a single comment, is aggressive or annoying to be around. It's ironic because, from my perspective, all of these assumptions represent missed chances for us to seek understanding from each other, and shift this from a conversation to a debate, which to me is aggressive.
I simply shared my perspective. This thread did not need to evolve this way. If I were the first user replying to my post, I would ask more questions to clarify my understanding before just deciding for myself that someone is annoying to be around because they said they like to be themselves from the jump when meeting others.
By recursivedoubts 2026-02-2015:211 reply How about we go the other direction: how to stop being bored by other people.
Most people are fascinating if you engage with them in good will and solidarity. That doesn't mean you have to like them or support every opinion they hold or behavior they exhibit, but just take them as they are and figure out what they are interested in.
I have been surprised to find that many "boring" people are, instead, shy and are much more interesting than the extroverts that are usually labeled as such.
By karmakaze 2026-02-2022:48 Actually this is the best advice I've heard to not being boring yourself. If you are earnestly interested in the other person's interests, wants, dreams, what have you, they will find you interesting.
This post is slightly different about not being bland/non-weird, which is another thing--be yourself out loud.
I know I do edit what I say to new people that I meet, because they probably actually aren't interested in my several deep but narrow interests--I can tell by my Youtube feed. I am unapologetically weird and totally fine with progressive disclosure. I suppose if we have common interests but they act similarly it would be a missed opportunity--I should give more signals, the equivalent of wearing my fave band T-shirt, like mentioning things regularly in casual small talk.
If anything I've edited my own life down for simplicity and focus: family, friends, some aspects of work, and a handful of lasting interests. If you don't care what other people think, a lot of things just become unimportant.
> They're saying what they actually think and wearing what they actually like, pursuing hobbies that genuinely fascinate them, regardless of whether those hobbies are cool.
Joke's on you, OP - even being like that you'll still find people who think you're boring because it's subjective.
Truth is, once youth passes, over time people become increasingly disinterested in others. This effect was exacerbated by the recent pandemic.
You might be a genuinely fascinating and authentic person, yet all that is going to fall flat in a crowd whose reaction to going outside is "ugh, people".
What really works is showing genuine interest in others. It's such a rare thing in this day and age that many are surprised when they experience it.
> Truth is, once youth passes, over time people become increasingly disinterested in others.
I find almost exactly the opposite is true. As you age your perceived value lessens, while you find the nuances of human behaviour ever more fascinating. Meanwhile many of the current cohort of twenty somethings seem disinterested in everything, including one another.
I would extend that to thirty somethings, so my generation as well.
Over time most of the people this age in my extended social circle kind of... faded. I don't know what caused this but I find myself increasingly socialising with younger people because they still haven't retreated to the comfort of their "me time" activities.
By lotsofpulp 2026-02-2017:24 In the US, I think that not doing the boring thing, which is spending time during 20s working or studying for a handful of career paths, climbing up the career ladder, saving up for downpayment for land in the richer areas of a handful of expensive cities, etc comes with huge costs.
The cost is that when you are 40 and you either have stable finances such that you can provide your kids with an acceptable amount of healthcare and education and housing stability, and you will be able to retire, or you get to 40 and you have to start sacrificing the goal of raising kids within the aforementioned parameters.
Maybe that is how it always was, it just wasn't a "known" thing so people didn't incorporate it into the decision making when they were 20.
By FatherOfCurses 2026-02-2015:101 reply "... over time people become increasingly disinterested in others."
The average person perhaps. I find as I get older that people become more fascinating to me. Maybe I've just gotten better at listening and identifying interesting things about them.
By aristocracy 2026-02-2015:26 Would agree wholeheartedly with this. Once you drill down into a person, you will eventually find an aspect of them that approaches life in a way you do not, and in a way which increases your appreciation for the depth of human experience if you listen closely enough. The signals the author are clued in on here are superficial to me. Idiosyncratic consumptions, a controversial political take or two? Sure, those can tickle one's curiosity, but they are only entrances to possible points of uniqueness and can be easily faked. Obviously you can't know everyone, nor should you want to, so these are just proxies the author uses to find people they want to spend their limited time with rather than in my opinion actual "not-boring" people.
By morissette 2026-02-2015:041 reply “Ugh people” - see I found my people! You don’t happen to be in Philly?
By Tade0 2026-02-2015:57 No, but you're already the second person to ask this, meaning I now have to see this place.
I'm not American, but I was meaning to visit Altoona, PA as, according to one person living there, it was "the most average town in US". Unfortunately Luigi Mangione put it on the map, so it most certainly lost that title by now.
By m463 2026-02-2019:02 > over time people become increasingly disinterested in others
I think it is smartphones.
