this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026
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me_irl
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I'm utterly convinced that nobody actually dislikes small talk, they just redefine it to something different in their minds or imagine it was unenjoyable by definition. It's so common that you'll see people say they dislike small talk and the say something like "meaningless conversation with people they don't like." As if "liking small talk" somehow means you have to like it with everyone, which is something nobody has ever seriously said. It's just that small talk comes up in the context of strangers because generally those topics are more permissable with people you don't know (as opposed to big talk topics like "do you think free will exists").
Also I think a lot of people who claim they dislike small talk view the topics as exclusively things they dislike. As if it can only be about the weather and sports or something. Which, again, is not something anyone has ever said seriously.
It just feels very performative I guess? I'm not sure why it irks me I guess. Like they'll say "I hate small talk" then talk about a video game they've been enjoying with their friends. Like, what the hell do you think you're doing if not small talk? Talking about recent media you've enjoyed is small talk.
Or they just have to put in more effort to talk, form sentences.
fucking hate it. I'm here for the real depth of humanity, or to transmit and receive infodumping.
The rest of it is exhausting. Imagine if you had to manually discard every piece of meaningless information you had to listen to in small talk. I have to do that. It's annoying at the very least, and when you have to be in the room with people who LOVE small talk it's a nightmare.
But why do you think that you can't talk about things that interest you as small talk? Sharing interesting facts about stuff is absolutely small talk! You're saying you don't want to small talk, you want to info dump, but those aren't mutually exclusive!