It seems that being extroverted is mostly about simply building certain extroverted habits. I’ve just noticed that I should probably try and replace my default response to “How are you?”/”What’s up?” with something with hooks for interesting topics, or maybe just saying whatever’s on my mind at the moment.

It occurs to me that certain situations and topics constantly reoccur, and that these present useful opportunities to transition to a more mutually interesting topic. For example, I should probably condition my response to mentioning the weather into “honestly, I think I probably follow weather satellites more closely than the weather itself”. This might easily lead to discussions of space, technology, or even GCR/X-risk hooks like the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor or the Solar Storm of 1859.

At the moment, the best I can come up with for discussing sports is to bring up the idea that anyone sufficiently obsessed with anything, regardless of topic, basically slowly becomes a nerd. Sports nerds start out as just fans, but once they start tracking stats and playing fantasy football, they slowly turn into nerds. They are especially amusing because of the “jocks vs nerds” archetype, which is a completely arbitrary dichotomy. I can imagine this leading to discussions of in-groups, sociology/psychology, or maybe meta-analysis.