Why is No One Listening Anymore?

Thanks for hanging! You talked at me for 3 hours, and the second I shared something about my own life you dissociated, went on your phone, interrupted me, or somehow immediately made it about you.

I hang out with a friend and she talks 80% of the time. I ask question after question, listen intently and presently, respond with validating or interesting sentences.

I wait for her to finish her sentences. I don’t interrupt or bulldoze or make everything she is saying about me. I listen actively and presently the entire time. We discuss and analyze whatever it is she wants to talk about from every angle, for about 45-60 minutes.

Then, finally, I mention something from my life – a new job, a new person I’m dating, a weird or funny moment from my week, just anything I was really excited to talk about – and nothing. No question, no real response, no reaction. Just a nod, if that, and then my friend continues blathering on for another 40 minutes about her life.

Why is no one listening anymore? Responding even? Asking a question?

And it’s not just me. In group conversations, I notice an inability for anyone to let anyone else finish a story or sentence. Interruption is rampant.

A friend will be 25% into a story about how she met her long lost aunt for the first time at 22, and someone will just interrupt: “Omg when I was 22 I blacked out for the first time and called my cousin to pick me up even though he lives in Florida.”

And then everyone just goes around interrupting and talking over each other, sharing stories of the first time they blacked out. No one actually responds to each other, no one listens. It’s just a merry-go-round of people waiting for their turn to talk, getting their airtime, then retreating back into their own self-absorption or dissociation from the group.

On more than one occasion, I’ve had to say, “Wait, I want to hear the end of Sarah’s story about her aunt,” or something along those lines.

During one-on-one conversations, I feel either constantly interrupted, un-listened to, or unheard.

Sometimes I can literally see it – the moment when my friend’s eyes glaze over, she zones out, dissociates. She’s not listening to me now, she’s just letting me talk, and waiting for her turn to say what she wants to say. I leave the hangout feeling like an unpaid therapy intern.

When I’ve called friends out on this, I get mixed responses. One friend is on particularly thin ice because when I’ve said, “Sorry, are you listening to me?” she’ll shift her eyes back to me and jokingly say, “What? What? Sorry haha no I wasn’t” with a grin, as if it’s hilarious that she can’t focus for more than two sentences on my life and yet I essentially Barbara Walters-interviewed her for 45 minutes on the minutiae of a first date she had.

And so it goes. With some of my friends, I have basically given up on expecting to feel heard or listened to. I show up to hang out, ask them a million questions, laugh at all their anecdotes, validate and give active responses to all their musings, thoughts, stories, and then go home and journal and blog into the void in order to feel heard or seen in the slightest.

Look. I understand that not every conversation can be a perfect 50-50. Sometimes, someone is going through a divorce or a big life change. It makes sense that they need to chat more, get more off their chest, and I can take a conversational backseat. But a lot of you bitches are calling me up to beat the same dead fucking horse for the 50th time, and don’t seem to give a shit about whatever thing is going on for me.

It’s not just about actually listening – it’s about responding in a way that suggests you’ve been listening. Maybe we’ve become so used to “listening” via a screen, wherein no response is required other than an expressionless, silent face, but sometimes even when friends do listen or at least don’t interrupt me mid-sentence, I get hit with a lifeless stare and silence after talking. It’s like I’m just another TV show or person on TikTok.

I’ll share a story about something funny that happened at work or something I read that made me think of something new to write about. And then there’s just dead air. It’s like talking to a fucking wall. I let the silence hang over the table, give up on getting any human feedback, and just ask my friend a question about her to keep the conversation going.

And then my friend will just talk about herself, and I’ll ask her a bunch of questions, respond with things like: “That reminds me of that thing that happened to you in high school” / “I think you handled that really well” / “Wait that’s so interesting that reminds me of something I read last week in ABC Magazine, it sounds like your point about XYZ.”

***

My whole life, people have told me that I have a “freakishly good memory.” If I met you once three years ago, I can feed back to you everything I learned about you, like where you went to college, where you’re from, what you do from work, some unique anecdote you shared.

But here’s the thing: I DO NOT HAVE A FREAKISHLY GOOD MEMORY. It’s just that, unlike the self-absorbed, dissociated, and TikTok-brain-melted people of my generation, I actually fucking listen. I honestly think that if you cannot remember a single thing about the people you meet and talk to, you’re probably not listening at all.

And I am genuinely curious: what are you doing when other people are talking? Are you totally tuning out? Are you playing a song that’s stuck in your head? Are you just rehearsing and thinking about the thing you want to say when it’s finally your “turn” to talk? Why would you ignore and disappear from the human being before you?

I have done some soul-searching to figure out why I am like this. I know that, ironically, this will come off as super self-absorbed, but I wanted to understand: why am I such a good listener? I have my intrapersonal flaws, but conversational presence+curiosity of others+responsiveness is not one of them.

I think it might go back to the fact that I was a really lonely kid. I didn’t have real friends until I was 15. I was frequently bullied and ostracized in school. This made me become extremely observant and socially aware in a way maybe others aren’t. I often felt like an anthropologist, observing and trying to understand what made it possible for my peers to befriend one another so easily.

Additionally, I was a student journalist in high school and college. A lot of my formative social, creative, and professional experiences centered around conversations that were just interviews. I would come up with follow-up after follow-up, honing my pre-existing curiosity, and listening intently so that I wouldn’t miss an important quote, new piece of info, or something juicy. Then I would ask even more questions.

As a result, it’s possible that I perpetuate this conversational pattern IRL, but I also think there’s some onus on my friends to at some point ask me a couple questions, or at the very least actually listen or stop interrupting or zoning out.

Recently, I’ve found myself doing something oddly dystopian. When I feel like I’ve been talking for too long (more than 25 seconds) and I feel like I’m “losing my audience” I do what I do for my TikTok videos or stand-up comedy routines. In both, the industry advice is to keep people constantly engaged by having a punchline at least every 15-30 seconds, using big hand gestures, dramatic or provocative language. I find myself thinking what I would say to keep a random TikTok user engaged — but I’m just talking to a friend. I literally TikTok-ify human interactions now, otherwise people will zone the f out.

People often tell me, “Wow, you ask really good questions. You’re such a good listener.” I think this is sad. It’s sad that so many people lack any fucking curiosity about other people at all, such that the task of asking a follow-up, genuinely wanting to know more, or even just clarifying a detail is so foreign to them. I don’t even expect curiosity or questions from people now in conversation. Instead, I wait irritatedly to find out how Person A is going to make Person B’s immensely singular and unique story all about Person A.

A year ago, I witnessed a guy mention that he had his first gay kiss with a fraternity brother at a party. I immediately had a million questions: What was the kiss like, do he and this brother still talk, why did he kiss that particular guy, did he come out after or stay closeted anyway, etc. etc.

Before I could launch into my questioning, another girl at the table jumped in: “Wait, you went to UC San Diego right? You said you were part of the same fraternity as Dave Glassik? I grew up with him, he’s so nice right?”

Gay frat guy: “Yeah, he was pretty nice.”

Girl with undiagnosed NPD: “Yeah I remember Dave and I used to bike around my neighborhood when we were little, that’s so funny that you guys went to the same frat. He’s so nice, that’s so funny I know him and you guys were in that frat together.”

This is a quintessential example of poor modern conversational skills. Someone will share something intense, personal, unique, and deserving of further focus. And someone will find a way to make it about them, even through the most trite and mundane connection, just so they can get their talk in. I almost wanted to scream at this girl: THIS GUY JUSY CONFESSED TO HAVING HIS FIRST GAY KISS WITH A FRAT BROTHER, WHY ARE YOU BLATHERING ON ABOUT YOUR STUPID CONNECTION TO THE FRAT AND BIKING AS A KID? YOU CAN’T SERIOUSLY NEED TO TRY THIS HARD AND THIS QUICKLY TO MAKE IT ABOUT YOU!

All the time, I witness people confess or say the most interesting, vulnerable, singular things and then watch the people around them make it immediately about anything else.

I would hate to complain without offering solutions, so here is my advice for anyone concerned that they may be a bad listener and a bad interlocutor:

1. If someone shares something, ask one question about it. Then, fine, make it about yourself.

2. If you do not have any questions, respond in a way that is conducive to letting the other person share more, or makes them feel heard/seen/understood.

Ex).

Person A: I was shocked at how well this date went. She had a really different vibe from her profile. On Hinge she seemed kind of pretentious but in real life she was actually genuinely really smart. We had a lot in common. She’s the only other person I’ve met who read the same niche book series I wrote about for my senior thesis in college.

Person B: That’s so great, like a reverse catfish. It sounds like you could have a second date soon.

3. Let people finish their sentences. If you feel the need to interrupt, take a note of what it is you wanted to say, and save it for the appropriate moment.

If you notice that doing these things are difficult for you, here is some other baseline advice:

A. Get off social media for 3 weeks. Seriously. If you are struggling to let people finish what they have to say, if you are unable to treat your friends as flesh-and-blood human beings and instead as TikTok videos which don’t require real listening, engagement, or a verbalized response, then you’re fried.

Movies, TikToks, and TV are easy to “listen to” because you actually don’t have to — you can zone out, dissociate, and in fact you are categorically unable to ask a question or respond to the speaker. That’s kind of the whole point.

In fact, streaming companies have leaned into the horrible listening and attention skills of our era by creating intentionally mediocre shows that are meant for watching while you do something else — laundry, dishes, scroll on TikTok. So even while you’re watching TV, a task which requires little effort for focus and no curiosity or responsiveness on your end, you’re even further decreasing your focus, attention, curiosity abilities.

But that’s the opposite point of an IRL hangout, wherein you should ask questions and respond. People are not behind a screen.

B. After consuming some sort of analog media, whether it’s a magazine article, book, painting – write down 3 questions you have about it. These could be questions about the piece itself like “What was the author/artist going through when they wrote this?” or question you would ask to another person: “What do you make of the decision to kill off the protagonist before the detectives found him?”

C. Journal. This seems counterintuitive, since it just makes you write and think more about yourself, but oftentimes I find that people interrupt and take up so much airtime in conversations because it’s their only outlet to mull over their week or life. Likewise, find some sort of creative outlet if you do not have one. This could be learning to play the piano, how to speak a foreign language, reviewing books on StoryGraph, photography, reviewing hikes on AllTrails – whatever. But just do something that helps you be more present, express yourself, and tune into the world around you, rather than just the world within you.

Good luck!