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me_irl (thelemmy.club)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/me_irl@lemmy.world
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[–] 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I would say that small talk is when you ask questions you don't actually care to know the answers to, just to fill the silence. "Did you catch the game last night?" is small talk if I'm talking to my coworker whose name I don't even remember, but it's not small talk when I'm talking to my friend who I know has been invested in the season, and whose opinion I actually want to know.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    It's small talk both times, you just don't like forced conversation with your coworker. And that's fine, but they're both small talk. And no, I strongly disagree that it's defined as answers you don't care about the answer to. Many people who describe themselves as enjoying small talk do care about the answers, or else they wouldn't be asking them or they'd be asking something else.

    I don't know why people have defined small talk as some exclusively negative thing. It'd be like someone saying riding a bike isn't exercising because it's fun.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    I don't believe that small talk must be exclusively negative just because you don't care about the answers. I don't think anyone can honestly claim that people ask things like "crazy weather we're having, huh?" because they genuinely want to know if you agree about the weather. They just like talking. They like hearing themselves and others make noise. Nothing wrong with that, but I think it's telling when the people I know who enjoy small talk rarely remember the things I said last time we engaged in small talk - they don't care about the answers, so they don't remember them. Again, nothing wrong with just enjoying passing the time with meaningless chatter, but I certainly believe that it is indeed the meaninglessness that defines whether it's small talk or not.

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