Asking someone you love “How was your day?” is a meaningful question. Small talk is bullshit time wasting between randos or acquaintances.
“Lovely weather today, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, makes me feel like picnics,”
is expressing feelings to each other, affirming a shared worldview in which sunny weather is good, and affirming the value of each others’ feelings and potential plans.
Just because the real meaning is hidden, doesn’t negate the value.
That’s fair. Sometimes I can be a bit grumpy with randos.
after you get through all the asking each other stuff to get to know each other’s histories etc phase, it’s okay to just not talk all the time
It’s not just histories and facts, though. Sure, you don’t have to talk all the time, but sharing feelings and connection, in a relaxing way, through small talk, helps maintain and build that connection. More important for some people than others.
No, we just stfu when we don’t have anything interesting to talk about. It’s not complicated.
Why do you think small talk isn’t interesting? Sharing neat things that happened during the day is small talk. Talking about your hobbies is small talk. Talking about cool movies and TV shows is small talk. All interesting topics.
Is talking about your hobbies and interests really small talk? I always attributed small talk to the like of “how is it going? Fine thanks and you? Fine too thanks oh damn crap/great weather we are having huh?”
It absolutwly can be small talk.
Small talk is a low stakes way to build rapport without exchanging any information that is intimate, vulnerable, or confrontational.
Talking about the weather is boring small talk. I hate boring small talk very much, but small talk in general is important for building rapport with people you don’t know well enough to be vulnerable with.
Talking about pop culture, like [TV SHOW] or [LOCAL TEAM], are also small talk.
“What have you been up to today?”
“I was fiddling with my ham radio, I contacted Portugal for the first time.”
Bam. Small talk about a hobby.
Why do you think small talk isn’t interesting?
because im sad, bitter, and socially inept
Because a great deal of it isn’t interesting. I have to listen to all the ancient dudes I sit next too talk about the most innane crap all day long. I don’t need that when I get home too.
I’m not saying all small talk is interesting I’m saying not all small talk is boring. For whatever reason people have it in their heads that if it’s small talk, it’s boring, and if it’s not boring it isn’t small talk. That’s not what the phrase means though.
I get it, people can yap, and sometimes it is boring as hell. I’m not trying to say the boring conversations you overhear at work actually are thrilling.
Well put.
IDK what to tell you. I don’t think of interesting conversations as small talk. That’s not what I’m complaining about when I say I don’t like small talk. What I think of as small talk is when people seem to have to run their mouths just to ruin a perfectly good silence with shit about the weather or sports or something. That’s just how it is. If the conversation isn’t going to go past small talk I’d be just as happy to not have it at all.
What are things you like to talk about? It’s possible other people say the same thing you just did but list the topic you said instead. Weather is fascinating. Sports are fun. People like different things.
It’s fine that others don’t share the same interests as me. I don’t expect them to talk to me about them if they don’t want to. We can sit in silence. That’s nice too.
Yeah, I’m not saying sitting in silence is bad and that you must engage in small talk, I’m just saying “small talk” is not inherently a bad thing. Too many people seem to think “if it’s talk I wanna do, it’s not small talk. All small talk is talk I don’t wanna do,” but that’s not what it means.
So like when you get home from a normal and boring day at work you just walk into your house in silence and sit down?
No “hey honey how are you” or anything like that? No ranting about crappy coworkers? No comments about how you saw 6 silver accords in a row on the way to work?
I would love to walk into my house in silence and just sit down. I’m usually stressed AF when I get home and the last thing I want to do is talk to someone. Unfortunately I rent from a couple of retirees who spend all day camped out in their living room watching TV and it’s impossible to enter the house without going through there and having to have a tedious conversation with them about what their dog did today or whatever stupid thing.
That’s actually kinda crazy to me because those “tedious conversations” are usually the highlight of my dad. It’s a nice lil bit of human connection while I slog through the corporate machine
It really is different for different people! I think it also depends on how much taking you’ve already done: I’ve heard a number of people express that they run out of… talkiness? I’ve felt that myself. If I’ve done a lot of talking, I’m more likely to want to just rest, or even interact, wordlessly; at other times I cherish small talk and catch-ups.
Is or is not talking about how your days went considered small talk? I literally don’t know now. I’d say it’s small talk.
Small talk is a way to gauge someone’s mood before going for the bigger discussions
If a colleague asks me “Hi, how’re you doing?” it’s small talk and I’ll respond something like “Oh you know, the usual.” If my partner asks me “Hi, how was your day?” it’s a genuine question and I will respond “That fucking dickhead at work that always plays nice and personable came around with another set of “urgent” requests and no fucking clue what he’s actually asking for, whether it’s possible or why I told him last week it isn’t.”
The difference is in how serious I take the question.
Not spelled like that, no.
Fuckin’ got 'em.
Hey, that’s racist. Freewill’s ancestors were enslaved and abused for generations, now they’re free so his parents, William and Wilhimina, named him Freewill to celebrate his freedom!
I do exactly this ! Hi honey how was your day ? Kids were restless ? Ok. Does that affect your stance on education through play ? is punishment sometimes advisable ? you haven’t read your copy of Foucault’s Discipl… hey where are you going ?.. baby ??
“I’ll be right back, I forgot my stack of research notes in the kitchen! Do you need citations?”
It’s not small talk, because i actually care how my wife’s day was.
How do you get married to someone if you never started with small talk?
through meeting with intent so your talks are not small.
You seem lovely on dates
In the case of my grandfather he just went all in on his batshit insane stories, his first one was apparently how he electrocuted his balls. My grandmother avoided him initially, but after she realized he was the charming type of insane she warmed up to him. The fuck were people doing in the 70s?
Electrocuting their balls, apparently.
Well that and using chemicals that cause cancer if you don’t use a mask with a filter. He came to regret that one. My grandfather was a walking OSHA violation.
The free will question is much closer to the conversations I was having with my wife before we got married. We were talking for hours every day, I can’t imagine spending hours on small talk.
Fill the void with intercourse.
Try getting married to a dragon, they don’t care about small talk
I can’t, morally, upvote you but I appreciate your self-consistency.
What did drag do?
Idk. Everyone’s done something but I don’t know them like that.
I was adopting a joke stance against their dragon fuckinf.
Because that way “I see you as a friend!” lies. At least that’s why I’m single.
I guess I see small talk as gateway questions to deeper conversations. I met me wife by asking about the weather.
“Hi there! Beautiful weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
“Yes, perfect for marrying…”
Well that wasn’t really the question. But actually I met her when we were both pretty young so I don’t recall it being much of an issue. We probably talked about kid stuff.
What’s your favorite color? Do you like hot wheels? Perhaps our definition of small talk differs from others. To me it’s a starting point to get into deeper conversations.
Silence isn’t a crime you know…it’s actually pretty great.
I REFRAIN FROM THE PRACTICE OF UTILIZING MINISCULE SPEECH. EACH AND EVERY INSTANCE OF MY EXPRESSION IS VAST AND VERBOSE AND MAXIMAL.
So, you just HAVE to talk?
Do you hate silence?
One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating the obvious… At first Ford formed a theory to account for this human behaviour. If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don’t keep on excercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.
One of my favorite passages from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Shhhhhhh…
ITT we ask the autistic to self identify
That sounds great, actually
I absolutely love questions like this! My wife absolutely hates them. She often gets irritated when people ask questions about what you think.
Like when our therapist asked her “How do you think your actions contribute to your own unhappiness?”
I feel like you wrote another six paragraphs about all the reasons why she asked your wife that specific question before deleting it all… I feel that feels.
I never was good at being subtle.
“How do you feel about being to blame for your problems and relationship difficulties?”
“Um… >:-(”
“See, you never like it when I ask about your feelings!”
I just went with forgoing my own self care and losing my sense of self in pursuit of meeting her ever changing expectations instead of acknowledging if come to define myself be the relationship. Not sure which is better…
Not to worry though, the papers are in the mail!
Ah, sorry to hear that. It’s a tough barrier to break, when a partnership is like that. I wish you the best in the future.
Why does the image look like AI generated? How the letters are so fucked up?
Took a picture of their monitor with a phone camera that uses AI image enhancement
Shit, you got my interest peaked, I want to know now
piqued*
Or, their interest has peaked, and for a brief moment they want to know, but then their interest will decline.
Might have been corrupted through a bunch of screenshots and then restored by ai
got a neighbor can’t control his motor mouth. last time he came to my door i said ‘what the fuck do you want’ and closed/locked the door. not too bright. he yelled through the door, ‘I only want to talk’. hahaha fuck off
Tough one. I’d probably end up being the person who just kept politely listening while trying to shut down the conversation amicably like “well anyway” and “I must get cooking dinner now” and “my plants need moisturising” or something.
Neighbours are extremely high on the list of people I want to avoid pissing off, because a neighbour with a grudge against you could be an absolute nightmare (especially when you live in a townhouse and share walls)
let him in once. talked non-stop for nearly 2 hours. unstable. out. used to be normalish. lost his mind.
