Centre Of Attention

Usually in a group of people, someone will inevitably dominate the conversation. There can be different levels of it, but someone will be the main driving force for conversations and others will want to be involved in that topic as well. It's just human nature to want to be involved in something that everyone else is.

There are a couple of ways in which people can dominate the conversation. Sometimes its just by being the loudest and talking about what you want regardless of what others want. These characters are just plain annoying and either have no sense that others are bored or just can't care. Either way, I hate it when people do that. What's worse is, if you try to talk to someone else on another topic, they will still drag you back to their topic.

It's even worse when there is no substance to the person adn their topics are just plain old boring. This is when I know it's time to leave the conversation. I can't be bothered sitting there listeing to crap unless it was something I had to do.

The other way for someone to dominate a conversation is if they really are the most interesting person. The person doesn't necessarily be a celebrity to be interesting. For me, its when people have clarity of thought and contribute interesting observations, anecdotes and related stories to the conversation. For someone to do this, it generally means they are well read or have an interest and knowledge in a lot of areas to be able to contribute fascinating insights.

You may call me an intellectual snob, but the worse thing I find is to talk with people who clearly have little intelligence. Intelligence doesn't have to come from being educated, but that does help. Education teaches you how to think in a different way. But the worse types are those who just rehash the same thing over and over when its no longer funny or interesting. It's very easy to spot people like this. You find that after a while, they clearly have nothing interesting to contribute to a wide range of topics.

In different groups, the same person can go from being the centre of attention to the fringe of it. It's just the way that human social dynamics works. We're always being compared to each other to be able to assess what good and bad, high and low, fast and slow is. You can see that on Big Brother, even though all the personalities chosen are already larger than life, inevitably, some will dominate more than others. You always hear the so called "quieter" ones say "I'm the centre of attention in my group of friends." That is true when their friends are quieter compared to them, but now they're the quieter ones and the roles are reversed. Not everyone wants to be the centre of attention and generally we find a level that we are comfortable with. However, I deny anyone to say that they don't crave some attention occasionally. I can for one say that I like to occasionally be the centre of attention.

As I'm getting older, I'm finding that I am more confident in myself and that I don't have to try to talk to the most dominate person to be noticed myself. Nowadays, I know that you can learn a lot more interesting things from everyone if you just bother to ask. Hence I'm constantly asking people questions and I'm frequently being pleasantly surprised to discover how interesting some quieter people are. In fact, I can say that I judged quite a few people too quickly from just looking at the exterior and thinking they were boring since they were more reserved and quiet. It's only when you get to know them that they open up to you when they can trust you more. Similarly, I open up to them as well.