People May Not Want to Read What I Want to Say

Yes, that title is correct and before you say anything, yes, I did read the rules and regulations and any fine print and white ink. Hear me out before you adjourn with, "This girl's lost the whole damn plot!". I started out on Vocal as someone who hadn't spent a day of her life doing voluntary writing. I started because of an ad detailing the Goodbye Donald writing competition and as a young Canadian who shows the same level and attitude of engagement in US politics as I did Schitt's Creek (great show, FYI), I definitely wanted to share my two cents. I continued writing on Vocal because I enjoyed having incentivized prompts to inspire me to write (for pretense: I am a giant science nerd, sadly not the biggest free-flowing, creative mind). I wanted to start finding something I like to write about that I can really get into. For the past few weeks, I took a break from checking out stories and thinking up ideas for my internet literature because I decided to talk to humans (I know, yikes). To make matters worse, not even humans I know, just humans around me: coffee-drinkers, subway-surfers, puddle-hoppers, grocery-shoppers, the whole funky bunch. Now for anyone who knows me, I'm not one to initiate random conversation; I've never been the one who got to know the mail man or who had a regular barista or even the one who said the cheeky "hey, how you doing?" to the people boarding the same elevator as me. I'm the one with the earbuds damn near stapled to my ears with a constant stream of music playing until I reach my destination, find a familiar face, or am interrupted by someone who is the aforementioned random conversation initiator.

I am awkward.

I am introverted.

I am...in customer service?

On paper, me working in a public-facing role would be -10 out of 100 in terms of compatibility. Yet here I stand, a monument to what fronting on a 10-minute interview can get you. I've got to say, in spite of it all, I appreciate this job immensely because it forces me to talk to people. There are two things I found out real quick once I started engaging back:

1) Some people actually really like talking

2) I can make anything I want up because chances are, they won't care enough to remember anyways (different story, different day)

Days of this formerly dreaded social interaction ensue and another realization clicked.

3) People are really opinionated

Maybe not about every little thing, but if you press enough buttons, you're bound to find the alarm. or break the machine, but that's yet another story for another day. In a way, I always felt like I looked at the world as a spectator. I like to watch social commentary, be it the news, podcasts, or documentaries, I enjoy reading stories about experiences and views of others (think Humans of New York and Reddit forums), and I spend more time than I'm willing to admit "observing human behaviour in its natural state" (i.e. people-watching). Breaking out of my shell fulfills my interest in humanity but also makes me more of an active part in it, even on a micro-scale. But what triggered my burgeoning desire to button-push was one encounter with a fellow socially-averse human who, after feeling obliged with making conversation with the jovial administrative staff before meeting me, pointed out that he appreciated me not doing the whole "overly-jaunty customer service schtick" so that he didn't have to "feign interest in someone for 30 seconds just to inevitably leave and never encounter them again.". In the most ironic way, that caused me to follow through with conversation (whether he was interested or not is dubious at best) and I had to point out that maybe "my lack of conversation is what makes me perfect to do customer service because I feel like many people don't actually like making small-talk.". He gave a small nod and a face that screamed 'internal agreement but get me the fuck out of here'.

We finally reached our departure from one another. Little did he know he birthed my remedy to social interactions.

You know how some people talk like a bag of sand with a hole in it? They just spill and spill and you're standing there thinking of why they feel the need to share and when they are going to just shut up.

Just me?

Welp, ok.

Now I just play devil's advocate. Someone tells me about how vaccines are bad because Big Brother is putting tracking microchips in us and I'll spend the rest of the time in the waiting room before my appointment explaining how I'm looking forward to never, EVER being lost in the woods at night or that I in fact only own a smoke stack for communication and never use public Wi-Fi or upgraded from my sundial because I'm one step ahead of Big Brother (which got a side smirk and chuckle from the nurses who were a part of the discussion by proxy). Maybe a very "well-informed" middle-aged man wants to inform me that my generation of girls are being too 'sensitive' and 'can't take a compliment'. Before, I'd probably just give a scowl and walk away but what if I'm stuck in an elevator when he decided to inform me of this? Now I'm equipped with the ability to thoroughly retort with what it would be like if a man went up behind him and pinched his ass or followed him home or leered at him from across the office all the time. Y'know, really test out the tough skin of the older generation male.

Here's the thing about devil's advocating, at least for me. There's no yelling or getting worked up or even batting too much of an eye. I like to make it like a game of Minesweeper where it's calculated and strategic and explained with the same level of enthusiasm and robotics as a math proof (again, science nerd, sorry). Another thing about it is that, like me with the dating pool, it goes both way. I have my own opinions about certain things and I stand firmly by them: pro-choice, equal rights, distinct separation of church and state, amongst other things. For these things, I'd only ever be on the supporting side. But there are other times in which a subject is introduced and whether I tend to be swayed more one way than the other, I will try to take devil's advocate just to challenge the other person. It isn't always about quashing the narrow-minded, nasty naysayers, but it's also about having eye-opening, educational, and engaging conversation. I've come up into talks about astrology, capital punishment, sex education and everything in between and did my darndest to play every position on the field. This practice led me to one last social discovery.

4) People are sometimes not too comfortable being challenged

This is where my idealistically profitable egg is hatched. In my small circle of social interactions I'm able to develop or force onto other people, I've been able to see multitudes in regards to the tacit social contract. I want to expand that to a platform that many people can voice themselves. Not quite like Twitter comments and Facebook posts where the word vomit occurs, but more of a podcast or newspaper column type of recurrence where people can write in or submit topics for me to broach with some willing victims and gain this back and forth to write about later on. This writing prompt came at a perfect time because I had planned on starting a sort of series of write-ups on Vocal of some of most intriguing conversations and the perspectives that came from it. Having people read these could spark insightful, thought-provoking back-and-forth from people all over the world. For me to be able to transfer this process to Memberful would be interesting because the people reading and following may also be challenging their own views and may not want to follow, read, or hear, what I have to say.