Have you ever been told that your oversharing is “inappropriate” or “unnecessary” or “TMI, this is a first date and I just asked you how you’re doing?”
Well you’re in luck, because today you’ll find out that those people are all wrong and bad.
Hi, I’m Lily Blumkin, holder of a doctorate in Being Annoying from NYU (America’s top Annoying university). I’m here to tell you that oversharing is none of those negative words. It’s radically honest, powerfully vulnerable, and coincidentally, a great way to get people to pay sole attention to you (which was my main area of study at NYU. Not sure if you heard, but I went to NYU).
I’ve spent months studying the best ways to make everything about oneself and through my painstaking research, which I conducted in the prestigious Elmer Holmes Bobst Library in New York’s famous Washington Square Park, I’ve found that the overshare is one of our most powerful tools in this endeavor.
Psychologists and social scientists will say that oversharing is typically an anxious person’s response to processing difficult information. We feel lonely and confused, so we overcompensate socially, yet doing so only tends to makes those feelings worse. It’s a vicious cycle, and while that may be true, what these people neglect to mention is that oversharing snatches the social spotlight and that is what matters to me.
Below, you’ll find my exclusive step-by-step guide on how to get people talking about you with the perfect overshare. Follow these steps exactly and you, too, can make people just concerned enough that they’ll think about you for the rest of the day. An ideal scenario.
Start small. Mid-conversation is usually the best place to insert an overshare so that it knocks people completely off guard and gets all the focus turned to you. But don’t stress, you needn’t have a one-to-one connection to the conversation topic in order to butt in. Simply find a word or a phrase or even a whisper of an idea, anything that reminds you of something deeply personal will work. No one needs to know or understand the connection, frankly the more enigmatic, the more intriguing. In other words, say anything, whenever.
Be specific. The best overshares have a lot of details. You didn’t just discuss your breakup in therapy. You drove 15 miles in the pouring rain — offshoot from the hurricane no doubt, which of course is upsetting to you having been born in the south during hurricane season — to discuss with your aging therapist how your fear of dying alone grows bigger every day. Kevin used to make you feel safe, but he, like the hurricane that tore up the coast, left so much damage in his wake. Now people CAN’T change the topic or THEY’RE the asshole! Bingo!
Talk past the point of logical conclusion. Does your story feel like it’s wrapping up? Add another sentence. Or two. Or three! The moment you feel someone start to drift off is the moment you need to double down. Go bigger with the details, ask rhetorical questions you will then answer yourself, repeat what you just said for emphasis! You want to hold them hostage verbally, so they have no choice but to sympathize.
And finally, say absolutely nothing afterwards. Answer no questions. Make no statements. Just nod or shake your head and look pensively off to the side. Imagine a rocky beach or a childhood pet or a grandfather’s finger gently booping your nose. These thoughts will help your facial expressions reach the perfect combination of wistful yet pained. An image that will no doubt linger in your listener’s mind.
So there you have it. These four easy steps will help you stay on the top of people’s minds for hours or even days after your interaction. Sure they may be “worried” but a thought’s a thought, and if you are in that thought, you’ve won in my book.
And to return for a moment to the haters who called this delicate practice such nasty words as “unnecessary” or “inappropriate,” I ask if they’ve ever known what it’s like to be outcast, to be forgotten, to be left in the dust? That happened to me in the summer of 2006 when I made the newcomb B team at my sleepaway camp. It was such a humiliating experience because the girls in my bunk told me I wasn’t athletic or coordinated. They even called me “unco” behind my back. “Unco” was short for uncoordinated, which wasn’t even a clever nickname! I would have understood if it was something like “pipsqueak” or “flop” because those at least have some bite! But “unco?” That sounds like a two year who can’t say the word “uncle.” But their stupidity didn’t even matter cause they never let me forget how bad of an athlete I was. It was devastating and I’ve never forgotten it for as long as I’ve lived.
Anyway… what were we talking about?
Checkmate.