Keep being you. Fight that feeling one person at a time, we should all follow that example.

You're not imagining things, the world is not just "getting weird" but division is sown our way from a multitude of places for their own profits and agendas.

Yet, we must be silenced. The people can not be allowed to speak. Even as dystopia gives the diseased members of the species ever more powerful and abstract tools to divide us, they still fear us talking.

That's because what you're doing is literally all it takes to begin eroding the artificial pen walls. We're made to communicate and tell each other stories, that's deeply ingrained.

What we're losing slowly and globally is our sense of cohesion. Neighbor to neighborhood, resident to city, citizen to country, human to human.

All of our innate mental structures that trend towards "making it all work, no matter who is helped because it helps me too" are constantly being twisted and attacked. But we are what we are, so keep fighting the good fight.

Before family events I grow a mustache, then I just get asked about the mustache the whole time.

Ohh, you made me remember that. And also never-ending flood of "Did you finally do your driving license?" is my personal hell

What's new?

Why are you doing this to them?

"If I tell you that'll make you an accessory."

That's a weird take on this. Not liking or being good at small talk does not equate with disliking the person. It certainly doesn't mean you "hate interacting with them".

I think the "Me" was saying that they've done literally nothing new or interesting and has nothing to answer the question with. The distress is from thinking about how little they are doing and feeling pressure to admit that to their friend, transforming a light conversation to a heavy one.

weirdly antisocial

Completely forgets (or ignores) the fact that some people just don't like their lives and avoiding thinking about it is what helps them get through the day. And that others legitimately have nothing new going on that they can discuss with those outside their inner circles. Like, I'm not going to tell someone I haven't seen in a couple years all about the adult novel I'm looking forward to releasing in December, or that time I moved and nothing about it went well to the point it was mildly traumatic, so yeah, they're going to get a "meh, not much. keeping busy. work and stuff. you?" at the most generous.

Look small talk is all well and good but don't keep pressing for info on what I've been up to because telling you all about how I've been spending most of my days as a puddle of self hatred on the couch doesn't make for good small talk

Just start with the topic you want to talk about. I would never message someone with small talk nonsense like "what's up" or "how's it going", etc, etc.