Reading Enthusiasm
Launch library · evergreen read
Genuine enthusiasm in an answer is usually easy to spot: a faster pace, a brighter tone, unprompted extra detail offered without being asked. Recognising it matters, since a topic that lights a subject up this way is often worth pursuing further than the original plan allowed.
Enthusiasm can also be performed rather than felt, particularly by a subject eager to please or to present themselves favourably. The performed version tends to feel slightly effortful, lacking the loose, unplanned detail that genuine excitement usually brings along with it. A performed version can be harder to sustain across a longer exchange than a truly felt one ever is.
Whichever the case, following enthusiasm with further questions rarely goes wrong. Even performed enthusiasm, gently probed, tends to either deepen into something genuine or reveal itself for what it is fairly quickly. Either way, following the energy with further questions rarely goes wrong, since even a performance tends to reveal something real underneath it eventually.