Speeches leave you speechless – by droning on and on forever

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

re people boring because they drone on and on forever – or does it just seem like they go on forever because what they’re saying is utterly, mind-numbingly duller than ditch-water?

It’s a question you might ask yourself next time you’re stuck listening to the father of the bride using his chance to suck all the energy out of the wedding reception by taking us back to the birth of the light of his life. . . and then chronicling what seems like every day ever since.

You might also contemplate this great question if you go to Mass and the priest is giving you the meaning in monotone of the First Letter of St Paul to the Ephesians.

Are they boring because they’re going on too long – or are they going on too long because they’re boring?

A man called Robert Ewers, from Imperial College London, asked himself that very question and finally decided to seek out the answer.

What he discovered was that boring people go on for longer, and it’s not just your imagination.

Of course, if you were enthralled by their talking you probably wouldn’t notice the hour slipping by – but when they’re dull, the minutes seem like hours.

And sometimes they actually are.

Robert Ewers, bless his heart, sat through 50 speeches, all of which were to be limited to twelve minutes.

He chose the midway point to decide if the speech was boring or not – and then he timed how much longer they went on after that six minutes.

“The 34 interesting talks lasted, on average, 11 minutes and 42 seconds,” he said.

“The 16 boring ones dragged on for 13 minutes and 12 seconds.”

Which meant that a boring speech was a minute and a half longer than an interesting one.

In fairness, that’s not a huge overrun because you don’t normally lose the will to live until 25 minutes or so – in that context, a minute and a half is little more than a deep intake of breath.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and  county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.