It’s more subtle than that. Obviously no one who already smokes is going to say “Oh, the packet isn’t as pretty as it used to be, guess I’ll quit smoking now.”

It’s about the big, long-term picture. Companies spend money on branding and advertising because it works. You create the perception that your product is for a certain type of person, which makes them more inclined to buy it. By making cigarettes boring, you make them less appealing, and on average less people will smoke.

The proof is in the pudding. Social attitudes to smoking in Australia have totally flipped within a generation or two. It used to be something that everyone did. It’s now mostly seen as a gross habit.

Great comment. We have the same thing here in Australia with tobacco laws. The most recent change was to ban almost all branding on cigarette packaging. They’re not allowed to use fonts, slogans, logos, or colours, just the brand name in plain text on a standard brown-green box.

The logic being that branding makes a product more attractive to a consumer. Make it duller and less people will buy it.

Tobacco companies fought it tooth and nail. Kept arguing it wouldn’t stop people from smoking. Well then why are you lobbying so hard against it? Obviously the only reason they will ever fight anything is because they think it will hurt their revenue. So whatever they oppose, I support.

Yeah I think the raw chicken thing also varies from country to country depending on what the local agriculture is like. I’m in Australia, we’ve fed our cats raw chicken necks every day for 10+ years and they’ve never had any issues with it. It’s great for their teeth.

I understand some countries’ poultry industries have more pathogens that are potentially harmful. Cats obviously evolved to eat raw meat, just not farmed raw meat, so it depends on how clean the farms are.

My understanding was that most road rules are state-based, not federal.

I’m any case, I’m 100% certain that in Victoria, you can ways chuck a uey unless a sign prohibits it. Doesn’t matter if there are traffic lights or not.

It’s definitely something we have to be mindful of when driving interstate! I think a lot of Vic drivers on holidays get done for illegal U turns.

I’m pretty sure you don’t have to signal when exiting a roundabout in Victoria. We might be the outlier though. In Vic it’s also legal to U turn anywhere, unless a sign specifically prohibits it.

And twenty thousand tons of crude oil but there’s nothing else out there!

Nothing, there’s just birds, and fish, and sea.

No you see we towed the body outside the environment. It’s not in an environment.

“You’ll feel better in the morning.”

I get a lot of intrusive, negative, catastrophising thoughts late at night. Worrying about things I would never worry about during daylight.

I always try to tell myself: don’t think about this stuff right now, it’s not helpful. Put it aside and if it still feels important in the morning then you can do something about it. Fixating on it right now serves no useful purpose.

It can be hard. Honestly I got pretty lucky in that I was able to find lots of good people through work. There are good and bad parts to the industry I work in, I got hired by a company with a really strong culture that matched what I was looking for. So I was surrounded by a ton of people with similar values and overlapping interests.

Without that, I think mostly it’s about trial and error. If you’re struggling to find the right people, you need to be brave enough to keep putting yourself out there, and to walk away from groups that just aren’t a good match. Like I said, not easy!

Lol yep I’m 34 and also just recently diagnosed with inattentive ADHD. Hence being very aware of different communication styles.

Bit of a left field suggestion but one thing that really helps is finding your people.

In my younger years I sometimes really struggled with casual conversation, I often felt like I was the weird guy who had nothing to say.

It turned out that was only really true when I was spending a lot of time with people with whom I had very little in common. As I got older I eventually found “my people”. Friends who I click with, who I share values and interests with, who communicate similarly to me.

It’s not about finding people who are just copies of you, that would be pretty boring and make for a real social echo chamber. You want a range of friends with different interests, from different walks of life. But you want them to be, for lack of a better term “compatible” with you.

If you happen to be neurodivergent then that adds a whooooole extra layer of complexity to conversational compatibility. There’s a stereotype that autistic people are awkward or socially inept, which is complete rubbish. They just communicate differently to neurotypicals. Put a bunch of similar autistic people in a room together and watch them have no trouble at all making conversation with each other, in their own style.

Anyway, maybe this isn’t relevant to you, and you’re already happy with the people in your life. But it’s worth taking the time to examine whether the reason you struggle to make conversation is because you’re trying to make it with the wrong people.