social interaction question
When you're in a conversation with someone who "hogs the microphone" (that is, talks a lot and doesn't "give the mic" back to you often), how do you handle this?
I dislike this in conversations, but am not sure what a good response is. Some ideas:
1. Stop hanging out with people who do this.
2. Confrontation: explicitly point this out & ask them to share the mic more.
3. Passive Aggressive: interrupt or use other strategies to forcefully take the mic back.
What's worked for you?
social interaction question
@tty I admit to a fourth option - letting them say what they want, with little interruption, just jumping into what micro-gaps exist and reducing my contribution to a thing of concise brevity. Conversation hogging happens to me principally with coworkers, but I figure there's possibly something I don't know about their homelife or something that means they feel need to unevenly dominate a conversation - a cathartic outlet they don't get in other areas of their life?
social interaction question
@fetchrobin I've wondered about root causes also!
A hypothesis I had was that some families have a take-the-mic-if-you-want-it policy. I've been at family tables like that, where there's no "here's the mic", but rather a free-for-all where you are seemingly expected to take the mic if you want to have a turn to speak.
social interaction question
@tty I sometimes suspect conversation-hoggers maybe live with someone where certain emotions or topics are not-up-for-discussion and so they almost want to hear *all* their own thoughts out loud? Or else there is someone at home, or in their past who was domineering or dismissive. I sometimes sense a vulnerability in a conversation-hogger.