I Attended a Toastmasters Club
I Attended a Toastmasters Club yesterday.
For those who don’t know, the Toastmasters Club is not about making bread, it’s a club where people improve their public speaking.
Incredibly welcoming and friendly people, many people came up to me to introduce themselves and tell me about the event. They were also very tolerant and nonjudgmental even when some speakers were shy and had trouble speaking.
The big issue I have is I just philosophically disagree with the Toastmasters Club.
Ten years ago, a Singaporean won the World Champion in Toastmasters, and the speech was this incredibly fucking cringe talk where he’s showing his underwear and making bad jokes and sharing cookie-cutter self-help advice. But you can see why he won, he spoke in near-perfect sentences and he can pronounce his vowels and consonants well or whatever.
But to me, the real test of public speaking is: you take a camera, and film yourself speaking about something. You post it online, and see if people like it enough to share it. The gap between someone who watches and simply says ‘oh that was nice’ versus ‘that was so great I have to share it to someone’, is massive. I bet none of these Toastmasters members will be able to pass that test. But that’s what I value: speaking skills not as intellectual masturbation, but as a practical tool to communicate important ideas to the world. You have to speak about something compelling enough to get people to share, so that important ideas spread, otherwise what’s the point?
Public speaking clubs overemphasize delivery, pronunciation and how many ‘uhmmms’ you have in a sentence, when in the real world the technical aspect of speaking doesn’t matter that much. Most people don’t need Shakespearean eloquence, you just need to speak ‘good enough’. No one gives 2 fucks if you ‘uhm’ or ‘ahhh’ here or there.
Now what is actually valuable is finding something you deeply care about, that you feel a burning desire to spread. I firmly believe if you have something that’s really important to you that you want to share, you can’t help but speak well. That’s more a lesson of self-discovery, and I doubt these clubs have the knowledge to cultivate that.
So the speeches that were given in the club session I attended, were mostly boring talks that I’d never watch if I wasn’t there. And the feedback to the speeches were lackluster because it harped on the technical aspect of the speech instead of the quality of content.
Then they had a Table Topics event where people were given a random topic and had 2 minutes to speak on it. I genuinely liked participating in that and hearing other people speaking and struggling with it. But then we all had a vote and they announced who was the best speaker for table topics, and the winner was someone who was all jittery and nervous and barely said anything coherent or important and I was like what the fuck. That frankly felt like a popularity contest (Also I definitely should have won but whatever, maybe they just didn’t know my name when they voted (strangely no one recognised who I was in that club)).
Also, the table topics thing was really short. The bulk of the event was spent listening to five 7-minute prepared speeches, and hearing the invigilators give their feedback. I wouldn’t bother spending the time to come up with a 7-minute speech to have it judged by these nerds. Furthermore, these sessions are every 2 weeks for 3 hours each time. They said if you’re a guest, you basically only get to speak for 2 minutes during the table topics. If you become a member, then you get to give a 7-minute speech, have an invigilator give you feedback, and give speeches in other events. You just have to pay 150 dollars a year membership fee I was like hell no.
So would I go to the Toastmasters Club again? Hell no. Even if I could give the 7-minute speech and get the feedback for free. Just to be clear, the experience didn’t completely suck ass. It was just a 5 out of 10. Would you date a bitch that’s a 5 out of 10? Nope. So there’s that.