Bill & Ted said it most pithily: be excellent to each other.
I ask because I'm bad at conversation. I hear this "genuinely care" and I just, usually, can't get myself to do it. I don't care. I would like to have a nice conversation and I try to care in the moment but the odds are pretty high that 5 minutes after it's over I'll not even know their name and move on with my life. That's not "genuine care" to me.
I think the idea is that if the stranger on the bus has a haircut you genuinely find to be wonderful: tell them about it. You don't need to force yourself to be nice, just take action on the things you're genuinely excited to do.
And if you don't ever want to be nice to people, then you have some digging and reflection to do (including about if/when you are nice to yourself).
I'd argue that there is a very strong value in doing something good, not just because it's genetically or socially imprinted on you, but because you actually decide to do it.
This applies to everything, there is no merit in being good at something just because you were born that way.
I would posit that no, it is not. And it's not even unambiguously a good thing. There are plenty of cultures where people are described as cold until you get to know them, but once you do - they'd die for you. To me, that is genuine care. The American "Hiii! How ARE you? I don't actually care if you keel over and die!" approach feels fake.
When someone else has that spark, and their eyes sparkle, and they beam as they talk about "their interest"? Idk, I love that. It makes me feel good to hear them. I feel like we both come away better for the conversation.
I guess not everyone is like this?
That being said, if you go through a bit of game theory and apply it to the real world - the experience of the last few millennia of recorded history is the strategy most likely to get people what they want is lots of communication and setting up win-win deals for everyone. Someone who reliably offers win-win deals has a natural advantage over the more common person who thinks in terms of win-lose deals. Communities that make a habit of setting up win-win deals for their members have an overwhelming advantage over those that don't. If you tap in to that type of thinking it tends to translate into taking a real interest in how other people are going because it is easier to set win-win deals up if you know what their problems and goals are. And a sensible sub-strategy is making sure to be as kind as possible to everyone to get into the habit of thinking empathically and keep channels of communication as open as possible.
So if "genuine care" means you literally feel something... nobody has much use for your feelings, we can't tell what your feelings are anyway and you probably can't call them up on demand. If "genuine care" means you try to figure out what other people want and then help them get it then that's simply good strategy and most people should find their way to it if they think about it for long enough. Some people have to think a bit harder than others and there are a few rare maniacs who really just want to cause pain and suffering. The maniacs are bad news.
1. You don't care about X until you do. Like, you can go for years without worrying cholesterol. And then you can have a reason to care about it and all of a sudden you do. The reason can come from something that forces your hand or just because you take an interest in a subject.
2. Altruism. Think less about care and more just doing without expecting anything back. People notice, especially with selfless conversation.
Personally, salespeople have randomly complimented me and repeated my name over and over, and on the receiving end it weirded me out. So the problem is that in certain situations there is an overarching "what did you want to get out of that person?". Don't be those people.
Strike up conversations because you enjoy people and their stories.
(Poor Charlie's Almanack, Charlie Munger)
Also, there are counterexamples to that person's claim, such as the film Before Sunrise, which is an excellent romance film that doesn't involve an arc where the characters are indifferent or dislike each other at first. The films Sideways and even Office Space defy that trope as well.
Even they said that he seemed to be a pretty alright guy who was genuinely nice to people in his personal life, not just in his public persona.
"The airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds"
He was as nice as they can be for a white man living in 1930. Good for fellow white men, not good for anybody female or a different skin tone.
But the book has been changed over time to make it seem like he was always an "pretty alright guy"
I need to read it again, I think about it a few handful of times a year, many years later.
Like, I don't even disagree with what he wrote, but most of the stuff just felt a little out of place and intruding on people who generally want to be left alone or keep it to small talk on a different level.
but long after The Prince was a thing.
No literal red-pill as in the Matrix but the ideas that mainstream "red-pilling" espouses are those of The Prince.
Inspiration for the red pill (which represents choosing knowledge, however ugly, over pleasant ignorance) would be more like... the apple in the Garden of Eden. Or the Allegory of the Cave maybe. Or Alice in Wonderland (which Morpheus directly mentions in the Matrix)
Redpillers latched onto that red pill imagery because they view themselves as, you know, having the best grasp on reality. Unlike the poor ignorant masses. Or so they believe.
"Redpilled" views do have some things in common with Realpolitik, and The Prince, in the sense that they're kind of nakedly amoral and rather ugly.
Its kind of weird they have such degratory views on sex and
gender, given the directors of their favorite movie they
cant stop talking about.
This is exactly what suave people do to get to know strangers outside of professional context. It's a common TV/movie trope. Asking a stranger's name puts them on the defensive.
At my current office, there is a staff "phonebook" that also uses people's ID badge photo. At this agency, there are about 400 people working here. Plus about 300 more seasonal staff in the "busy season".
If there are "team" photos, see if you can get one and write names on it. You'll get a lot less static from HR if you let them know you have a hard time remembering names and ask them to help you write the names down.
- neighbour watering lawn Jack, wife Gemma, daughter Jane
Then I try to remember it later in the day and confirm with the note. I do that the next couple days and it's locked in and I can delete the note.
Just a quick note somewhere (phone is easy-enough, or for a long time I carried a waterproof Field Notes notebook with a Fisher Space Pen and that worked a bit better), to be reviewed later.
Maybe that review happens an hour from now. Maybe it happens in a week, or a month. Or maybe all of these. Refreshers are good.
I don't even have to write much, if anything, about the person; the mere act of taking down the names usually helps a ton with my ability to recall the context later.
If I can remember when and where I took that note (which I can often do very easily), then the rest of the details fill themselves in quite nicely.
(I don't erase the notes, so as to let them remain useful to me later. I don't care if that creeps anyone out; my intentions are pure and the problem I'm trying to solve is very real. Its creep-value is really no worse than the contact lists that I've transferred between cell phones, pocket computers, and now pocket supercomputers for nearly a quarter of a century.)
I just delete the ones from mine after a while since they aren't needed and makes it more likely to lose focus on the new ones I'm still actively remembering.
I started out by anticipating that somebody would tell me their name at some point and repeating it in my head a few times when I heard it in the conversation. It helps to round off the conversation with "thanks $NAME, pleasure meeting you." so the name is something that gets used and isn't a bit of stale trivia. After the exchange I'd consciously go through what their name was and what they said, trying to attach associations to it. You've got to give them some space in your head. It was kind of a ritual I'd do, like how before I go out I do the "wallet, keys, phone" thing. Now I just do it automatically because of all the repetition.
Honestly I think the biggest things are:
- remembering to make the effort - the anticipation of hearing it, and - using of the name
First, you need to put yourself in situations where you can practice learning and remembering people's names. At the start of college, I had read How to Win Friends & Influence people and it directly influenced me to try and learn how to remember people's names. This was a very good environment for this, I was constantly meeting people, and wouldn't it be nice if I made a good impression on them! Conversely, hard to practice the skill if you aren't meeting people often. It's also not a permanent skill for me, and if I fall into a routine without meeting many new people, then it's not as easy, but thankfully still comes back soon after.
The next thing was that I wasn't trying to remember somebody's name, I was habitually checking during the initial conversation to see if I had forgotten it. Depending on the culture you are in, you have about 15 minutes after meeting someone to ask them their name again, as almost certainly they have forgotten yours, people are not good at this. It's an easy way to indicate that you are interested in continuing to know them, it's social, polite and even charming at times, as why else would you want to know their name if you didn't want to contact them in the future because they're good people? So a few minutes, then ten minutes, then a half hour, you check if you know it, and ask if you don't. That's easier to remember for me, than to remember somebody's specific name.
I have kept a daily journal for most of my adult life, and it's more or less write only, I don't often go back and read it, and often cannot, my handwriting is so bad. But it's helpful on days when I need to write things out, and it's another useful habit in learning to remember names. At the end of the days when I was really training this skill, I made myself write down the names of everyone I had met that day. This was often difficult, and I remember getting headaches doing it at times, trying to write down the names of 20 or 30 people at a time. However, it helped set the expectation that I would remember everyone's names, and that reinforced the behaviors.
I did find that I developed chunking of names for lack of a better term. I would remember names in order of where I met them and maybe even which part of a room I was in. Not unlike a mind palace, but not something I really tried to do consciously. Just the idea of remembering I met Grace, Alice and Bob in that order at this party.
After that, just try and do your best for a couple months and it will improve without a doubt. People tell me they are bad at remembering names, and I ask them honestly, how hard do you try to remember them? Even a little bit of effort goes a very long way here.
What I will say is that I have difficulty learning somebody's name in two specific scenarios, beyond it being a bit harder as I get into my thirties now. If I am on zoom, it does not work at all the same. Their names are right there and so I never really feel the need to learn it and I can feel that I don't really know it. The second is that if I have to learn the name at the same as learning that it is a specific persons name, then I struggle with it. That is to say, if it's a name that is foreign to me, it's harder for me to remember, and so I have a habit of asking them to say it again right off the bat. I'm living in a different country now than before, and I can tell that I've gotten more used to the names and language with the time as it is easier for me to remember most of the people's names now. The trickiest ones for me at times are not putting together names that sound very similar together mentally but are in fact spelled and pronounced differently.
With that, that's all my tricks. I am pretty happy with it and it's served me pretty well over the years. I never turned into one of those freaks with the excel spreadsheets full of names and birthdays though ;) That's a step beyond me, and I'm just not socially diligent enough to keep that up long term yet. Good luck!
Yoshihiro or Yoshiyuki would likely be called Yoshi by their friends.
I completely support the defensive adoption of a sardonic butler-persona for everybody on the other side of a cash-register. :p
"Why should I have to change? He's the one who sucks!"
I do think Dale Carnegie overemphasizes the importance of saying people's names, and in fact saying people's names in conversation often sounds forced and manipulative, but maybe that's just a cultural shift over the past century.
But, yeah, it usually sets off my spidey sense when somebody keeps using my first name in conversation. It's just seems weirdly unnecessary, so it makes me wonder why they're doing it.
Doc Rivers is an awesome name though.
I'm convinced that 99% of the people who criticize or even just talk about that book have never actually read it, and have zero idea what they're talking about. It's just in that Ayn Rand bucket of books that people talk about, because they see other people getting likes and upvotes for it.
In general I am of the opinion that a happy woman is a happy woman and that this doesn't look fundamentally different in 2026 than it did in 1926.