Silence isn’t a crime you know…it’s actually pretty great.
That sounds great, actually
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.
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.
I think so? Perhaps it’s small talk as long as it remains small. “Hi honey, what did you find out about the coefficient of friction in the graviton chamber after interviewing that nazi scientist, and does it mean we have to uproot our family and travel to a new country again?” is probably not small talk, unless it’s answered by, “oh, yeah, friction’s quite big, it’s all fine; can I have some toast?”
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.
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…
I REFRAIN FROM THE PRACTICE OF UTILIZING MINISCULE SPEECH. EACH AND EVERY INSTANCE OF MY EXPRESSION IS VAST AND VERBOSE AND MAXIMAL.
ITT we ask the autistic to self identify
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!
Daily life is what daily life is all about.
I do think I’d potentially be happier with a partner who I could speak philosophy and politics with, but if we couldn’t also function simply navigating running a household and raising our family, then we really couldn’t be anything more than friends with benefits long term. Not that that would be a bad thing. It just depends on how you want to live your life, and whether you value a stable partnership over firey romance.
Some people are lucky enough to have a partner that fulfills the entirety of their intellectual, intimate, familial and financial needs, but such people are few and far between I’m sure!
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?”
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.
Like yeah, exactly. With the right person, you can talk for hours and hours about all kinds of stuff that interests you.
with the right person you can also be quiet with for hours
One of the best relationships I ever had.
We still don’t talk sometimes
This! Silence is so much better than unnecessary and forced talking
Absolutely, but a lot of people don’t understand that you can’t arrive to that point by not ever “small talking” along the way. Small-talk is how we express to each other how we feel, how we want to be talked to, what we notice around us and so on. It’s a critical component to socializing. Conversations between human beings doesn’t play out narratively like in media and movies, there’s no “point” to conversing with someone you’re close to, you’re just sharing shit.
But also meaningless bullshit. That does not denote a bad relationship.
Exactly. I can’t remember where I heard this - it might have been a podcast like RadioLab or something else - but it was talking about how happily married, intelligent couples talk to each other .
It turns out, it’s not usually super deep, intelligent conversations. The vast majority of conversations are just meaningless bullshit. Most of the time, couples aren’t even really talking to each other, but they’re just kind of thinking aloud. Stupid stuff like, “I swear I saw a dozen blue Volkswagens today.”
It turns out that people who are comfortable with each other don’t need to have deep conversations all the time. They can just relax, unwind, and be themselves.
My partner will talk to herself, loud enough to be audible, but not (to deaf me.) loud enough to be coherent. Drives me fucking insane. I have my ways of driving her insane.
That may be a blessing for the both of you, friend.
Sorry mate, that’s gone right over my head. She’s said to me that “love is putting up with your partners downsides”. I’m a massive pain in the arse, so …
She’s not wrong. I just meant her muttering may be about the downsides. Not always, ofc, because I’m single and still mutter.
Nah, it’s about what she’s doing or whatever’s going on.
The way I understand “Smalltalk” is not whether the subject matter is “serious enough” but rather whether either party actually has any interest in it, or if it is a polite nicety to avoid awkward silence.
Discussing the weather in a car ride with a coworker is smalltalk, contemplating with a friend how one might conquer the world using ant-controlling super powers is not.
This exactly. “Do you think free will exists” could, in fact, be small talk, if neither of you is particularly interested in the topic.
Indeed I can confirm.
Just a few days ago I pondered the life of plants and asked my wife how she thinks the death of a plant is defined if for animals (including humans of course) it’s mostly the heartbeat.
So when is a plant dead?
When you see its little planty soul waft up to heaven.
Talk about the stuff that interests you, you know, the small stuff
Small stuff doesn’t really interest me, or my partner.
Doesn’t mean we’re incapable of discussing dinner plans or cleaning schedules.
Was meant as a joke :)
For hours, every day, for years or decades? That has never happened.
No I think not. But the feeling of freewill do exist and seems universal. So if we have a fact based approach, it does not change much. I think there it a lot of proof that freewill is at least very weak compare to social determinism.
No, we just stfu when we don’t have anything interesting to talk about. It’s not complicated.
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.
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?”
“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.
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.
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.
