a conversation game for two
Static is the noise you've stopped noticing. It's been there so long it sounds like silence. This game is about finding it — in how you think, and in how the person across from you thinks.
Before You Begin
No phones. No talking. Just you and something you've already written.
Before anything starts, both of you take 10 minutes alone. Go through something you've written — a blog, daily notes, old questions you never answered, a voice memo you forgot about. Find 3 topics you actually want to think out loud about. Not topics you want to teach. Topics you're still working through.
Write them down. Come back.
The point is to bring something real to the table, not something prepared.
How To Play
Two people. A timer. No agenda. Just thought, bias, and the strange honesty that comes out when you're not trying to perform.
You do 2 to 3 rounds each. One person starts. The other listens — and keeps a notepad nearby.
One person speaks. The other listens. But this isn't a monologue — interrupt when you want. Jump in. Push back. Ask something. The point is to add your bias to their thinking, not just nod along.
The only rule: every time you say something, say the lens it came through. Your thought, then your bias.
"I think cities make people lonelier — and I'm probably saying that because I've always lived in small places and romanticize them."
Don't perform the bias. Don't make it a disclaimer. Just say what you actually think is shaping the thought.
15 minutes is not a stopwatch. You're not glancing at the clock. You talk like you have time — let things wander a little, let the conversation breathe.
When the 15 minutes end — stop. Mid-sentence, mid-thought, it doesn't matter. Leave it unfinished.
Turn the page on your notepad. Open a blank one. This is the most important part of the game.
The unfinished thought is not a loose end. It's proof that something real was happening. Stopping mid-thought is an act of trust — you're saying: this doesn't need a conclusion to matter.
A conversation that ends cleanly is often a conversation that stayed safe.
After All Rounds
This is where the game earns its name.
Take 2 or 3 minutes of quiet. Don't fill it. Think about the person across from you — not what they said, but how they said it. What they kept circling back to. The thing they seemed to believe before they even said it.
Then tell them. Not as a judgment. As something you noticed.
You're handing someone a small mirror they didn't know they needed. The patterns you caught — the words they kept using, the fears underneath the opinions, the frame they put on everything — say it plainly.
"You kept framing everything through fairness. Even when you were talking about something personal, you'd zoom out to what was right for everyone."
"You seem to distrust systems but deeply trust individuals — I noticed that across every topic."
"Every time things got uncertain, you reached for a story. You made sense of it by narrating it."
"You said you don't care what people think, but you kept checking — hypothetically — how things would land."
These are light observations, not verdicts. You're not diagnosing anyone. You're just saying what you saw. Then they do the same for you.
A Few Things
If You Need a Starting Point
The best topics are the ones you're still figuring out. These aren't questions to answer. They're doors. Walk through them however you want.
Is wanting a lot a personality trait or a wound?
Do we choose people or do we just find ourselves around them?
What would you do if you weren't trying to prove something?
Where does the feeling of being home actually come from?
When is being direct a virtue and when is it just comfortable for you?
At what point did you stop becoming someone and start just being them?
What does someone have to do to lose yours? What does that say about how you give it?
How much of who you are now is chosen, and how much just accumulated?
Make It Your Own
Optional. Stack them, pick one, or ignore all of them. They change the texture of the game.
The best sessions usually have at least one thing that makes it slightly uncomfortable. That's where the good stuff lives.