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Am I the Only One Who Hates Small Talk?
Words are both precious and powerful. They can create; they can destroy. We can use them to deepen relationships or damage them. We can use them to comfort or wound. When we engage in small talk, we have the opportunity to do a great deal, or very little. We take for granted our gift to use words.
Let me start by saying I’m an introvert. Talking only interests me when I am with people I appreciate, find interesting or know personally. I can get on a roll if you ask me about a topic I’m especially interested in (and you seem genuinely interested in hearing from me), but otherwise I’d just as soon sit in solitary silence.
During my life, I’ve discovered that people like small talk far more than I do. They use it as a means to break the ice, to strike up a conversation, over usually unimportant or random topics. Sports, shopping, the price of anything—all these are topics that people indulge in, just to be connected. They can go on for hours (yawn) and I generally look for an escape route. I’ve received the message that deep, meaningful conversation is either a mystery in that environment or undesirable. Time to move on.
I have qualifiers to my perceptions of small talk. When I was my husband’s arm candy—er, partner at company functions, I grudgingly engaged in a lot of small talk. It was my job. Eventually, I realized that I was getting pretty good at it. I even discovered that some conversations went deeper, talking about values, religion, ideas. But most of the time we covered the basics: how many kids they had, their hobbies, the weather, where they lived—you get the picture. When my husband and I retired, I had even less incentive to engage in small talk and found that as my introversion deepened, I was primarily interested in conversation that I found enriching. I guess that makes me a snob.
Now my attitude may have something to do with my being an introvert. I don’t crave talking with people. I don’t mind it when I’m with a small group of acquaintances who enjoy being together; I just listen. Usually, I limit my time, though. I wonder if extroverts enjoy or at least tolerate small talk better than I do.
I do engage in small talk in one particular environment: as a hospice volunteer, especially if a patient has dementia. It is a challenge to find things to talk about when a patient often has limited memory of the recent past. Sometimes they remember old stories, and we explore them together. The most important thing for me to remember is to meet them where they are, and sometimes to find alternatives to conversation.
Don’t misunderstand—I do share small talk with close friends. Often, we start out with small talk, like a person who takes the time to turn on the heater for a while in a car in cold weather before leaving home. But at some point, we usually go deeper. And all my friends have a sense of humor! So we must laugh together; silliness is acceptable small talk.
I think a big part of my preoccupation with small talk is that I will be 70 years old this fall. I’ve done many things that have enriched my life, and have known some special people, but I’ve lived more years than I have ahead of me. I want the years ahead to be meaningful, to not be wasted in the trivial, to be fun or enriching or in deepening relationships. I hope that’s not too much to ask or expect of life.
How do you feel about small talk?
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Published in General
I hate small talk. I have it in my head that one of these days, I’m going to learn the Art of Conversation so I don’t such so bad.
The Art of Conversation https://g.co/kgs/7jaZi6
Aren’t most people boring, kinda dumb and driven by superstition and dogma?
So I read the comments this time.
I think small talk and conversation are not natural skills, but that some people come by it naturally.
When I joined a sorority, we were coached on conversation for recruitment. The first rule was to compliment the person. I thought it was so stupid and inane and disingenuous.
Some 8 years later, I have a 5 year old girl bouncing up to another little girl in Denny’s (on a road trip), saying “I like your doll. She’s very pretty. Do you want to come play with me?”
Some kind of shock this mama felt. She made it look as easy as breathing. She did not get this skill from me, but thank the Good Lord in heaven she got it naturally, cuz I wasn’t gonna teach her that. Instead, I’ve been learning from her.
I don’t do small talk. I love to converse. For me conversation is the same whether the other person is senile or not. It’s one or two intensive concurrent investigations. “So what do you do?” “How many kids? “Where were you born?” “Which language do they speak there?” “What was your maiden name?” For me none of that is small talk; it’s the beginning of a new study.
I don’t know how you can be an edge person, which I am, but also have a compulsive need to converse. An edge person (I think this trait has been studied and that you know what I mean by it–I don’t know what the common term for it is) is withdrawn and introspective, almost an outsider even at a party. I guess sometimes you don’t want just to investigate, but also to be investigated, and whoever wanders over to the edge to talk to you must be interested: that one has passed the entrance exam.
I like to sit at a piano in the next room where it is quieter but I can still hear people being noisy and happy, and listen to my fingers playing. I don’t play the piano, and normally my fingers just do what I tell them to do, so everything comes out of the same old warchest, kind of like a Mozart symphony but with jazz chords. The IV minor sixths, the C in the bass walking up to E and then F as the chord goes to the subdominant, the penultimate dominant seventh with a flat ninth. I can figure out the chords to anything but my mind always plays them in the wrong position, no leading line, with too many of the notes filled in, too close together. The song’s hook, the one killer note from the chord that was on the recording, I never find.
But when I’m in the edge place my fingers always seem to want to play and they are amazingly good, creative even, or consistently lucky.
If someone walks away from the others and into the room at the edge to listen, that person wants to listen, and probably to be asked an endless stream of questions, and ask an endless stream in return.
I’m not good at this stuff, but I find myself wanting to know about people’s brothers and sisters, and their parents. I love an excuse to ask these questions even of people in their 90s. I sometimes like to know about their children, too, but it seems to me I learn more interesting things about them when I learn about the family they were born in, starting with their siblings. I don’t think everybody likes to talk about those things, though, so sometimes I’m hesitant. But when I do have an excuse to ask, that usually means learning where they’ve lived and lots of other interesting things.
Is there anybody else who feels compelled to learn about people’s siblings?
“Flaming introvert,” is how I’ve described it, and have been described. It only comes out when I’m alone, or working with someone one-on-one.
Scene: A party.
Me: “I see from your name tag that you’re Henry. Howdy, Henry, I’m Archie.”
Henry: “I’m guessing you’re boring, dumb, and driven by superstition and dogma.”
Me: “Well, I may be boring and dumb, and I’m guessing from that comment that you must be a Libra. But no, I don’t have any pets.”
[Henry tries to figure out how to exit the conversation, but Archie has (unwittingly, of course) blocked him into a corner.]
Me: “Aaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, did you watch ‘Star Trek [which he pronounces ‘Track’]: The Next Generation?”
Henry: “I-”
Me: “Well lemme tell you why I don’t think Data would really have freaked out when experiencing emotions for the first time. There are 31 reasons, but I’ll summarize ’em into only 17-“*
[Henry bites down on the cyanide tooth capsule and blissfully joins eternity.]
The End
*An actual argument I had with someone. I lost.
This one of the funniest things I’ve read this year. One slight exception though,
I do a pretty good job of hiding my misanthropy. Also, I would have loved debating Data and bringing up new insights into neurobiology as I’ve learned them from Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt.
I figured so, as you seem polite and well-mannered here, at least.
I realized as I wrote it that it wasn’t an example of small talk, but it was the first thing that popped into my head, so I went with it. We’ve all met That Guy (or Gal.) Sometimes I’ve even been him.
Prof. Stiles, who studied “listening” for about 50 years, talked about the importance of attaining balance in “the small talk of life”. He said the extremes were EAST- “excessive avoidance of small talk”, and WEST- “wildly excessive small talk”.
The right level is an important lubricant of interpersonal communications. When I get home after being gone all day, and Rubber Duckie has been by herself that whole time, she needs a little light banter just to re-establish the connection with another human; I need to respond or I am a sphinx. It doesn’t need to go on and on, but some conversation, regardless of content, is necessary.
It astonishes me that my wife can strike up a conversation with people in supermarket checkout lines. I have no trouble talking with people when there’s a reason to be talking, but just sticking me next to another person and expecting me to talk about something, anything – that’s hell.
A terrible trend at work is for people to ask on Friday, “So, any plans this weekend?” I know they’re just being friendly, but that feels unbelievable intrusive to me. Why should I tell anyone what I’m doing? I say something pleasant to answer them, but I’m cringing inside.
I didn’t get that question very often at work, but would get it from others. It always struck me as intrusive, too, but I usually try to adjust to strange social customs. Sometimes I would bite and sometimes I would direct the question back at the questioner.
INTP here, although the N and S are very close. I am a strong introvert, who dislikes small talk intensely.
I am much like Susan in this way. I am widely read so when I worked with psychiatric patients I could converse with just about any of them on some subject they were interested in. Many patients sought me out. It wasn’t small talk for either party, but mutual discussions about a wide range of medium and big topics. Push the right buttons and you could have an interesting conversation with me.
Definitely not the only one – my mother and I have had this very conversation.
I once read an essay or somesuch about chicken- horse- and elephant-talk, chicken-talk being small talk, elephant-talk being talk about, well, big things, and horse-talk being somewhere in between.
The author suggested that the degrees of talk are negotiated from small to large as a matter of trust-building, which to my mind involves small self-disclosure risks traded back and forth.
We avoid even small talk with people who seem unbalanced, and that if we observe in someone a sudden leap to heavy subjects we feel alarmed, or suspect that we are being played, or sold something.
Elephant-talk – truly personal information, big ideas, stuff that is rarified or high-fallutin’ – is the kind of pearls before swine gamble that can leave you wounded because your pearls weren’t appreciated, or them wounded because they feel like swine (perhaps we could call this swine-talk).
Where does Mr. Ed fit in?
Why does silence make many people so uncomfortable?
Because in silence you have to think.
This entire comment was so interesting, @robtgilsdorf, but I especially appreciated this line. I think it shines a light on the nature of small talk that I hadn’t considered: the importance of trust.
This would make a great post, @josephstanko! I think there are many reasons. My view is that we are so accustomed to any kind of noise that the absence of it seems odd and even threatening. People also think they have an obligation to fill up the space for the same reason. Others think without the noise, nothing is happening. But of course, a lot can be happening in those moments. Write a post!
As an aside, Leil Lowndes is noted for her work in “small talk”:
https://www.lowndes.com/
I have her book How to Talk to Anyone, and I recommend it to anybody who is required to do small talk because of business, or who has a spouse who drags you from one social gathering to another.
Ed’s horse-talk pretty much requires him to keep company with swine.
I had to pretend most of my life, long enough to see if the person had insights I could use. I was a diplomat, but as my knees got arthritic and my hearing left, I had to find others to sit down with. Dinners were better, less background noise, and less pain, but some folks just can’t do substance, but then there’s the kids to talk about and you take turns. Some don’t have kids or substance, so you enjoy the food.
I want to interject some thoughts about how I’ve come to some major realizations about myself, based on many insightful, thoughtful and candid comments from all of you. I realized that I didn’t know myself as well as I thought. I think part of the reason for that lack of self-understanding was due to the changes I’ve experienced over the last few years, good things I must say. The first comment that got my serious attention was by @rodin:
Is the objection really to “small talk” or to the placement in settings and with people where moving the conversation beyond small talk to more interesting topics is undoable? Fundamentally small talk is an opening, but a deeper connection is sought. That deeper connection is not possible with some people due to time, location, circumstance and just plain personality and outlook.
Yep. That was very true. When I find myself in a setting that will likely be limited to small talk, but not just due to the people. It’s due to many things.
Then @juliana got my attention:
A little small talk (rather than ‘have a nice day’) has truly enriched our lives. It doesn’t matter that it’s not deep and meaningful, but it is fun, and it makes someone else feel good. I don’t want to sound harsh, but I’m not much younger than you @susanquinn, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not all about me.
She was right. And more surprising, I realized that I willingly initiated small talk for the reasons she wrote. What was going on?
Then @amyschley made comment #38 that simply stated how important small talk can be. (The video doesn’t relate directly to the topic, but it is sensational. You should all watch it.)
Then the icing on the cake was when I went to the fitness club this morning. I stepped on a treadmill and found myself saying hello to the man (a stranger) next to me. He not only said hello back, but he was warm and friendly. We didn’t exchange more than a few sentences, but it was lovely. And I’d started it.
I think where I haven’t caught up with myself is that I didn’t realize I had become a person who cared about those sweet moments, those moments where we can connect, if only briefly. I remembered that I’ve learned, on my own initiative, the names of others at the fitness center, and it’s so nice to greet each other by name. I realized that we live in a world where there is so much separation and alienation that creating those interactions–whether at the fitness club, grocery store, dry cleaners–they are all a chance to touch each others’ lives.
I’m still processing all of this. It’s surprised me. And that is a good thing. And for all of you I didn’t mention–those who find small talk painful, enjoyable, difficult, easy–thank you. You’ve all helped me realize how valuable these discussions can be.
Good post Susan. For me it depends on the situation. If I’m the dinner table with my wife and son, I would like some level of small talk. It makes for human connection. If I’m with friends having a beer, then just about all of it is small talk and certainly welcomed. That too is a human connection. Where it gets me annoyed is at work. People who have nothing better to do but waste time seem to always want to get into a small talk conversation. I’m either very busy at work or I’m looking to goof off on Ricochet (lol), so small talk is rather irritating.
I made my comment just above before I read the other comments. Looks like a lively conversation. Perhaps my comment distilled it down.
When I go to the other room, far from the happy crowd at a party, and someone walks in and joins me in listening to my fingers mysteriously playing the piano, I guess the trust is already at elephant level, with no chicken and horse talk needed. That must be what motivates edge people. Efficiency.
I enjoy witty conversation. I don’t know if that qualifies as small talk or not.
I think it might be difficult to be witty and deep. But then, I’m no expert on wit!