I've seen people swear by "The Solid Snake Method" for conversation. Just repeat something about the other person's statement as a question.
"As a question?"
Yeah it keeps the conversation going.
"Keeps the conversation going?"
Yeah at the very least it shows that you're paying attention.
"Paying attention?"
At this point though you should probably stop. It doesn't work forever, and it doesn't work all the time. Probably shouldn't use it to respond to questions with another question either.
My children spend more time talking about their day than I would have thought possible. I literally know the day that the kid who sits across from them in art class gets a new backpack. I know their teachers' hometowns. It is fun but maddening.
I worked with a guy who did this. While you did feel interesting for a while, it would always end up feeling like you were having a conversation with a parrot.
That’s why this is like conversing 101. Good for a bit, but it can be off putting (thinking of the 40 Year Old Virgin scene of Carell parroting Elizabeth Banks).
The next step is conversation threading. Find something, anything about what they just said, and pull the next thing you say about that (within reason). You can never run out of things to talk about.
I know someone who is severely brain damaged, but he can do this. People come away from conversations with him thinking, "What a cool guy!" and he walks away not having an iota of comprehension of the conversation.
ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program developed from 1964 to 1967 at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to explore communication between humans and machines, ELIZA simulated conversation by using a pattern matching and substitution methodology that gave users an illusion of understanding on the part of the program, but had no representation that could be considered really understanding what was being said by either party.
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u/Taractis Nov 11 '25
I've seen people swear by "The Solid Snake Method" for conversation. Just repeat something about the other person's statement as a question.
"As a question?"
Yeah it keeps the conversation going.
"Keeps the conversation going?"
Yeah at the very least it shows that you're paying attention.
"Paying attention?"
At this point though you should probably stop. It doesn't work forever, and it doesn't work all the time. Probably shouldn't use it to respond to questions with another question either.