Imagine this exchange occurring at any social gathering:
What do you do for fun?
-I like to watch TV, read, go on hikes: the usual.
Happy hours can feel like parrots spouting checklists at each other on the hunt for overlap. A banal response like that paves over the unique preferences and consuming patterns each of us has that provide far more interesting conversation fodder than a single verb, show, or book. Sometimes it feels like the english language lacks the words to properly express the degrees of attention one may give during any activity.
Technically also ‘watching TV’
Streaming previously watched comedies with a sleep timer on the TV at bedtime and Sunday evening event television with lights and phones turned off are both ‘watching TV’: how much you do of each and how your consumption changes with time or your mood are the more interesting conversation topics. Each conversation with a stranger is a new opportunity to explore the ways we choose to navigate life and relax. A person’s consumption patterns is more accessible to making me feel I ‘know’ someone than any 4 letter curse word Myers-Briggs can conjure.
Of course, banal responses and questions have a chicken and egg relationship. Both parties in a conversation are equally responsible to make it as interesting or as brief a convo as it can possible be. Why miss out on any opportunity to optimize things. Far more interesting responses could come from
If you woke up one rainy Saturday morning with no plans, how would you spend your time?
What was the last TV show that made you feel the highest level of excitement and how were you introduced to to it?
How often do you reread books? Why?
versus
Game of Thrones?
-Game of Thrones. Stranger Things?
Stranger Things.