Maybe everyone has the problem of perceiving themselves as being boring, and it is especially true when they are not with their friends talking about mutually relevant things. Why would Steven Colbert develop such a peculiar personality if he wasn’t boring as a kid? He was trying to learn how to be interesting, and failed again and again. Probably his problem revolved around the obvious fact that he was smarter than nearly everyone he encountered and it was nearly impossible for ordinary people to keep up with him and have an ordinary conversation.
So, to make things interesting young Colbert would cultivate his weird personality in an attempt to be interesting to the people he met. Now on the TV stage, his six-minute interviews with some of the smartest people alive are certainly challenging for them, and if he treats common people like that he would be instantly disliked, even hated, and what we are seeing is the result of his childhood attempts not to be boring. In fact he was digging himself deeper into the hole of being a bizarre weirdo, and most people simply won’t tolerate anyone out of the ordinary, except on stage, and then bizarre is accepted as a fantasy – it’s a suspension of disbelief kind of thing. But, in ordinary conversation with friends, the suspension of disbelief isn’t in play, and everyone expects the person they are talking to to be absolutely honest.
Most if not all of the late night comics have conspicuous personality problems; that is what makes them interesting. Or is it that those comics have serious trouble with interpersonal relationships so they respond by talking about public personalities, instead of cultivating real personal friends,and that works because those people and names are known to their audiences? The celebrities have become the family of the audience, but those fantasy celebrity families are surprisingly dysfunctional, which makes them interesting.
Well, I’m no TV personality, and not much of a comic either, although I do get a laugh in a conversation once in a while, but I have had a problem of being boring to some other people. It probably arises from my penchant of intellectualizing about whatever the situation is at present. It is because of that problem that I have sought out a weekly two-hour improv class. It is a wholly different way of relating to the world; it is additive to a conversation rather than subtractive, and thus people become more involved instead of being shut out.
Intellectualizing is a bore to others, but talking about mundane personal problems is delightful because that is where they live, in their personal problems.
Probaway - Life Hacks 