[turaw]

You don't have to talk about yourself in a conversation :P this probably feeds back into the 'don't interview someone' mentality, but just talk about something in the news or other recent developments. Have they watched Daredevil (s1 or s2)? Which Zelda game was their favourite? Even though politics have been ruled out as a generally safe conversation topic, it's still fun to ask someone their opinion of Trump (wall/no wall/half-height but with barbed wire).

So I propose the following. Instead of using the simple heuristic of talking half the time which will work with nearly everyone practically always (modulo some edge cases when people have literally no strong opinions about anything), use the wealth of your experience as a human being to establish when and when not to promote complex human social interaction, additionally taking into account contextual and mitigating factors, while simultaneously ensuring that all parties are satisfied with the level and intensity of discourse instead of taking some random Internet person's sound bite advice.