- hello, which floor?
- 9
- Descartes or Kant? Please elaborate
Hume, obviously. Although if forced to choose, Kant. But not very much.
You mean to say: you kant descarte hume?
I’m gonna take Descartes as discount there and give you a +
Some people are just scared of silence I guess.
Asking my life partner how their day was is not small talk. Asking the same question from the cashier at the grocery checkout is small talk.
They’re both small talk, you’re just calling the scenarios you don’t like doing it small talk and the ones you don’t mind doing it something else.
I would say that small talk is when you ask questions you don’t actually care to know the answers to, just to fill the silence. “Did you catch the game last night?” is small talk if I’m talking to my coworker whose name I don’t even remember, but it’s not small talk when I’m talking to my friend who I know has been invested in the season, and whose opinion I actually want to know.
It’s small talk both times, you just don’t like forced conversation with your coworker. And that’s fine, but they’re both small talk. And no, I strongly disagree that it’s defined as answers you don’t care about the answer to. Many people who describe themselves as enjoying small talk do care about the answers, or else they wouldn’t be asking them or they’d be asking something else.
I don’t know why people have defined small talk as some exclusively negative thing. It’d be like someone saying riding a bike isn’t exercising because it’s fun.
I don’t believe that small talk must be exclusively negative just because you don’t care about the answers. I don’t think anyone can honestly claim that people ask things like “crazy weather we’re having, huh?” because they genuinely want to know if you agree about the weather. They just like talking. They like hearing themselves and others make noise. Nothing wrong with that, but I think it’s telling when the people I know who enjoy small talk rarely remember the things I said last time we engaged in small talk - they don’t care about the answers, so they don’t remember them. Again, nothing wrong with just enjoying passing the time with meaningless chatter, but I certainly believe that it is indeed the meaninglessness that defines whether it’s small talk or not.
There’s a clear issue in how people define the phrase, and it’s easy to understand why when I look up the definition and the Merriam-Webster defines it as “light or casual conversation” with the synonym of “chitchat” but the Cambridge dictionary specifically says that it’s “conversations about things that are not important, often between people who do not know each other well.”
Those are two very distinct views on the concept (with the second having a rather…negative connotation to it, in my opinion), and I think it gets even further muddled by one very simple thing that I think is the real root of the argument: whether someone is an introvert or an extrovert. And I’m not talking about the “introvert=shy” that has pervaded common culture, but the actual psychological definition of the two which is about how people use and recharge mental/emotional energy. Extroverts are energized by social interaction, regardless of whether they’re shy or not, while introverts are exhausted by it. So introverts naturally have a more transactional relationship with social interaction because they have to. If they didn’t, they’d emotionally and mentally burn out. So to an introvert, any social interaction has to be weighed against how much mental and emotional energy they’re willing to invest into it, and cultural formalities with people you don’t know or care about to simply fill periods of silence with human noise would therefore fall very far down the list of things that they want to do. Whereas an extrovert, for whom basically any conversation could be like water to a parched plant, would delight at pretty much any chance to engage any random person.
So what we really have in this thread is introverts saying that they’d rather spend their limited daily emotional labor on the people they love than random strangers and extroverts mystified by the concept that anybody would balk at the opportunity for stimulating conversation.
I’ll muddy the waters further by saying I’m an introvert (and not in the shy way, the same way you describe it) but still define it as light conversation, not unimportant conversation I don’t care about the answers to.
That helps explain why it feels divided though, thanks for sharing the actual definitions.
OP and all your down votes are from morons. Don’t fret
I sort of expected it might be the case. People who say they dislike small talk are really weirdly adamant about it.
I didn’t say anything about not liking either of these. The two scenarios are qualitatively different. The purpose of the one at home is to learn what happened that day, how the other person feels about it, planning what we do with the rest of our day, and so on. It’s an exchange of information.
The purpose of asking the cashier about their day is not to actually learn what happened with them (unless you actually know the person of course). It is exchanging pleasantries or just making banter, without the intent of exchanging any information that matters to the other person. I don’t dislike it. But it’s not a conversation, it’s small talk.
I read your top level comment as well and you do seem really irked that some people differentiate small talk from conversation. It seems like you’re fighting windmills though, and it’s in fact you who for some reason has strong feelings about the topic.
Small talk is an important part of interpersonal communication, and it’s good when it creates a sense of comfort, belonging, or serves as the prelude for a deeper conversation. But it can be annoying if it’s self serving, because either it fails creating any positive feelings, or it never gets past the warmup phase. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people who don’t enjoy small talk, or with those who do.I guess my gripe is the examples people give, like if you really don’t care, why ask? And I don’t mean the standard “hi how are you fine thanks you fine” dance, I mean why ask a cashier how their day is going if you don’t care? If you want to talk to them, why wouldn’t you ask them something you actually do care about? There are plenty of ways to conversate, break ice, fill a silence (if people feel so obligated) that don’t involve asking questions that they don’t care about, so why ask the ones they don’t care about and then complain about the process? “Omg, I asked the cashier about the weather, but I hate talking about the weather and it sucked.” Then ask about something you do want to talk about if you want to talk? It’s not like it’s impossible.
Because it’s polite, we live in a society
I never said not to though, lmao, I said to pick something you actually want to talk about.
I never said you said not to, LOL
If you really don’t care, why ask?
That’s the question I answered, it’s in the very first sentence of the comment I responded to.
Then ask about something you do want to talk about if you want to talk? It’s not like it’s impossible.
What if they are the same person?
If there’s someone behind you, that’s called “holding up the line.”
It averages out to medium talk.
People that claim to hate small talk should be forced to listen to themselves talk.
So… silence, then?
I’m feeling happier already.
Counterpoint: people that claim to enjoy small talk should be forced to listen to themselves talk.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that they enjoy small talk. It’s just the small talk haters trying to claim that they only talk about important topics while everyone else is stupid and boring.
From my experience, boring people are bored and they need someone else to entertain them. A conversation requires two or more people. Nobody is going around telling them to stop talking about interesting topics.
Because the purpose of life is to experience it?
Hearing what happened at my gf’s office shows that I’m interested in what she’s doing. Her telling me about her coworker who had a health scare means she cares about the people around her in that office. Her asking how my baseball game went means she cares that I did well, or I had fun playing the game.
Life isn’t a bunch of yes/no/maybe computer prompts from an RPG. That sounds like a miserable way to live to be honest.
yes, thats what I want
the best kind of relationship is the one where you can be silent together and you don’t have to talk about trivial crap.
it blows my mind how much trivial miserable nonsense makes up most folks conversations, and how obsessed they are with other folks… and 100% they would be RIPSHIT if someone else talked about them the way they talked about the person they are gossiping about…
I used to have an ex who would viciously gossip about her friends/co-workers intimate details to me, and I asked her once what she would think if they did that about her. She got so angry at the thought… least to say we broke up pretty soon afterwards.
And I was a lot happier without her going on for hours about Lydia’s boyfriend’s crack addiction and his limp dick, etc.
We don’t. Weigh the risk/reward and determine what you really want vs what you’re willing to offer. If you’re not willing to offer a partner who requires the full emotional and social commitment of human connectivity and only in it for base needs, you’re an asshole. If you both agree that it’s just about satisfying each other’s base needs, great. Eventually you get old enough you don’t care anymore and coming home to no one is a blessing, just four walls blocking the noise of society, a dog or cat or both, and the blissful solitude of not having no responsibility for the emotional needs of another human being even if deep down you know yours are unsatisfied. Accept you’re a hot mess that other people shouldn’t have to deal with and make the best of what you’ve got without dragging someone else into your cycle of misery.
Wo
Exclusively dating ND women has been a blessed relief from small talk
Every woman I’ve dated since high school has been taller and more autistic than the last. If my wife ever leaves me, I’ll need to find a non-verbal WNBA star.
This guy likes Uppies
AY LMAO!
We either have free will or we have the illusion of free will so convincing and persistent that no meaningful distinction can be drawn and we must continue to act as if we have free will.
Begin the day with a friendly voice, a companion unobtrusive.
Deeply unsettling
Also, if there is no free will, there is nothing you can do about it, nothing changes.
I just like keeping it real. I genuinely don’t care about your day and I won’t pretend like I do in order to fill the “awkward” silence. If I’m interested enough to talk to you, then it isn’t small talk
I think your definition of small talk doesn’t line up with how people use it.
If you care about someone, then you care what happened to them.
Then it isn’t small talk if I care about someone
So asking how some ones day went isn’t small talk then?
We’re both autistic and therefore both hate small talk. Problem solved.
We don’t plan to
Sincerely, schizoids
I don’t mind having a conversation about stupid bullshit, I love those. But I do hate having a superficial conversation filled with lies and obfuscation about meaningless topics neither of us care about solely for the sake of filling the silence. It’s a waste of energy and time.
Then bring your A game to every conversation. Most people are interesting, they just need steering towards their subject of interest.
I think you have to be pretty open to new things for this to be true, a lot of people will shut down and think certain topics are boring, art for example. You kind of have to force yourself to find those things interesting for a while before everything seems interesting.
I don’t know my experience is everything is interesting if someone is passionate about it. It’s mostly my fault when I’m only waiting for my turn to talk. (Mostly the reason is I’m forgetful and if I think I have something good to add I’m afraid I’ll forget it)
I think it’s sort of a two-way street, people feel a lot more passionate sharing something if the other person shows real interest in it. Being the person who makes them want to talk about it is more a skill I had to learn :p
Oh my sweet summer sunshine. It’s not other people’s jobs to do your emotional labor for you.
You’re kinda confirming my pet theory that the “I don’t do small talk” people are all cunts
No, they’re introverts and therefore have to weigh every social interaction with how much of their emotional labor/mental energy they want to spend on it.
Think of it this way: as an introvert, you start the day with 10 spoons. Every time you talk to someone, you lose a spoon. How many spoons are you willing to give up to Frank and his play by play on what your other coworker is doing right now (you know, the coworker that’s also sitting next to you both)? Maybe you’d rather use those spoons on playing with your kids.
In this nonsense scenario, extroverts start the day with 0 spoons but generate a spoon whenever they socially interact because extroverts regain emotional/mental energy through social interaction. In theory, you could game the system by having two extroverts talk to each other every moment of the day to create infinite spoons and start your own silverware company.
Some people make it into a personality trait, definitely.
Nobody’s expecting you to. But I’d fell like you’re missing out on the human experience.
that’s the “neat” part
