Comic Strips

Then they briefly acknowledge you before returning to whatever uninteresting topic they were already discussing and tighten the circle so that you could not join in even if you wanted to...

You look around the room and everyone is in tight circles, making mostly small talk, with a few people in each circle dominating the conversations. At best, all you can do is stand outside a circle, essentially eavesdropping, but that's creepy.

So you just wander the room admiring the art and architecture, look out the windows, etc., before either finding a way to leave or finding a quiet corner and pulling out your phone.

I am fully aware that I am about to clang some cymbals, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

"Do you guys know about Free and Open Source operative systems?"

The fiend teeth makes this

I don't do great with "normal" conversations. I actually love it when someone brings up some random ass special interest. This allows me to have a clear decision tree A. I know nothing about this, but it sounds interesting, here is an opportunity to learn. B. I know a little bit or maybe even more about this than this person, let's nerd out a bit C. This doesn't sound remotely interesting to me - I don't like talking all that much anyway, but this seals the deal, I'm Noping the hell out of this conversation asap.

So thank you to all you autistic conversationalists for smashing your cymbals!

I've learned from Professor Oak about how there's a time and place for everything but not now.

Totally unrelated, but you should check out 20 em 1 for the Sega Master System!

Me wanting to know what my friends think about superdeterminism while we play monster hunter

I learned to just keep it to myself.

Me with linguistics and technology, lol.

"So Amicus is a gay, alien, wolf guy and he kidnaps you to be his pet and show up his brother who also has a cool pet, but humans forgot that aliens exist so Amicus basically broke the Prime Directive for which the punishment is death, and they also don't have gas anymore to take you home so you have to pretend to be a dumbass while also helping Amicus become emperor so he can get gas from the Gods and send you home, but then you fall in love and don't want to go home but the Gods say you have to go back to Earth for 8 years to do some missionary work so Earth can join the Galaxias..."