Charisma is just responsivenessJoyful language-learning + symphonic sentences (Issue #282)Published inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now--Theres an essay I read a while back, by Sasha Chapin, about what might be the key to the universe (or at least some parts of it): responsiveness.He begins with a viral video of someone ordering dinner at a halal truck (1.6 million hearts) and uses this as a jumping off point to make an argument about charisma: its basically just responsiveness, i.e. picking up what others are putting down. We all want to be liked. And, Chapin argues, we all know how to be liked its just hard, and we dont always want to put the effort in. It takes attention and openness, he writes, and the confidence to present your character like its a fun mask youre wearing rather than a lesson youre desperate to teach someone.Anyway: Responsiveness. Weve all felt it in conversations, or even in writing. Chapins example of an email that feels responsive? Derek Sivers, the founder of CD Baby (an early music distributor) chalks up most of his success to a single email, the one youd get when you bought a CD. I adore this email:Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved Bon Voyage! to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 6th.I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as Customer of the Year. Were all exhausted but cant wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!Its just an email, but, like its charming. You can sense a responsive human behind the words. Someone was thinking about this. Someone wanted to give you something that would make you smile. Someone actually cared. Surprisingly rare!Once you realize how much humans love responsiveness, you kind of cant unsee it. I was reading this story by a UX designer who fell in love with a Samurai game, for example, and latched onto the way he described the games immersive world. Grass parts as you walk, animals react to your presence, leaves move with every swing of your sword Mike Curtis writes. These subtle environmental responses created a continuous feedback loop that validated my existence in this space. Harris Sockel