When I encountered the term "doom loop" in the Jim Collins book Good to Great, my brain filed the term away.
And rather than apply it as intended—referring to a bad economic situation or aspect giving rise to another, then another, and so forth, in a "doom loop"—I started thinking about how certain conversations are "doom loops."
Doom loop conversation — A conversation that circles around the same topic over and over again, even though people want to change the subject.
One of the most awkward gatherings of my life was an end-of-semester dinner at a professor's house during college. The class was 10-12 students, none of us particularly close friends. We were sitting around the professor's living room as she prepared dinner and someone mentioned that their childhood pet had recently died.
Half an hour later, we were still sharing dead pet stories. What had started as a depressing but effective icebreaker topic had drawn everyone in with mortifying gravity, and we were all stuck in a doom loop conversation.
Every once in a while, I find myself in one of these.
It's good to recognize you're in one of these—a little like the jolt you get in a nightmare when you realize it's just a dream. Wake up. Change the topic.
Or better: Ask a question.
Getting more specific is great for one type of doom loop conversation: culture recommendations. Whether it's TV shows or podcasts—the usual suspects—culture recommendations fling people into a doom loop conversation that it's hard to get out of.
I've been any number of times in the past few years to listen to any number of "true crime" podcasts. The first season of Serial excepted, I don't really have any interest.
But rather than let someone rattle off the dozen murder podcasts in their queue, one way to twist the conversation and shake off the inertia:
What do you find so interesting about true crime stories?
Then again, doom loop conversations are hard to end. There can be a lot of inertia to overcome, but it's worth trying!
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