I don't know why this perspective bothers me so much, but it does. This idea that people are alternatively dull or interesting feels wrong to me, on a kind of visceral level. So far so that I'm having trouble marshaling my thoughts enough that I can tell you why. It's like there's an intuition gap so large I'm getting vertigo. Nothing here is intended to say that the way you feel about it is invalid, but I need to write out my own feelings in order to put my brain's feet back on solid ground.
It feels entirely backwards to me that there is some kind of dull/exciting switch that flips and a person becomes dull or exciting, depending on whether the observer finds the topic the person is speaking about interesting. The one at fault (such that there is any) for the lack of interest isn't usually the speaker, surely?
I have a friend who works in a field that most people absolutely find completely uninteresting (and, to be frank, I am also uninterested in the field in general), but when we sit and have a pint after work and have a chat, I can't help but be engaged because there is more to learn about everything, and while the technical minutiae of his trade is unexciting, the conversation is not. I know more about turbidity now than I ever expected or needed to, but I don't feel like it was time wasted.
Swap me out for an analog of your wife, and the guy flips from interesting to dull? That seems unfair, for some reason, not that fairness should really ever into it. Just because an interest isn't shared doesn't mean it should be derided as dull, right?
And, y'know, conversely, I know a dull guy. Like, I like to think I'm a good conversationalist. I can hold my own in a chat with basically anyone. But this guy. He sink-holes literally anything you try to say. One word answers. You can drag out the most maniacal story of the past few years of your life, a story that every single person you've ever talked to about it has been engaged and you get a good back and forth and a bit of patter, but this guy: "Oh, cool". And he's like that with everyone. Play word association, you say salt, I say pepper, you say this guy's name, I say dull. All of this seems really mean, but I'm pretty sure he's happy being that guy. I mean who knows what his actual inner thoughts about the matter might be, because you'll never get him to say anything worth listening to about it.
And this, I think, is probably the crux of why I'm so not on board with the way you see it. My friend and my boring friend are not the same, vis-a-vis in a dullness competition. They're not even in the same weight class.
Anyway. Perspectives. Weird, huh?
You're both saying the same thing. Seemingly dull people become interesting depending on the audience, particularly when the dullee actively interviews the duller.
Ah, but perhaps you're proving the point? Is it not possible, if not probable, that the fellow you're referencing simply considers you dull? For instance I would, in general, tend to have little interest engaging with a good conversationalist, because I often find that that that, especially in an American context, boils down to inoffensive superficiality at length, owing to the nature of banter without purpose, which is what most conversation for the sake of conversation is.
For one who enjoys engaging in such, I'd certainly appear dull, because I'm not going to partake in it, especially if one starts overtly using my name repeatedly, because I find it dull and artificial. By contrast, express a novel or distinct perspective on something I find relevant, mastery of some interesting skill or whatever, and we'd certainly be having some fun.
Right. I think it's a different conception of being interesting or dull. It's probably the distinction between people-oriented and thing-oriented people.
When some people say that a person can make a dull topic be interesting, they mean that the person can craft and narrate engaging human stories around the activity or topic. The payoff is not really learning or discussing the details of the topic itself but human failure, overcoming of struggle, human connections forming, or betrayal and so on. It just happens in the context of that hobby.
On the other hand, thing-oriented people like two car guys or computer guys will just discuss that topic itself down to the tiny detail, and an outsider truly has very little gain from this. I've sat in bars discussing CS, programming language features, algorithms, math etc. deep into the night over beers with pals throughout college, and I'm aware that this is deeply off putting to most people-oriented people and would find it extremely dull. But as you say, it works the same way backwards. For me it's like, okay thanks for telling me what happened in the last days, you went to a party where normal party things happened, sure, but when do we get to the part where we talk about eternal themes that aren't bound to the here and now of whatever happened recently? Tall tales, one upmanship and namedropping things for street cred just feels so dull. Why not talk some substance?