One of the worst takes I hear on a regular basis as an adult is “I hate small talk.”
Before you get defensive about how you hating small talk is actually a sign that you’re deep and good at relationships—hear me out. I used to be an “I hate small talk” person too. I thrive in 1:1 relationships. I place a tremendous amount of value on my friendships. Small talk has long felt difficult for me, and I reckon this is a problem common to many of us introverts.
I used to be an “I hate small talk” person too. It feels so awkward, talking about the weather with someone I barely knew. Maybe it was stiltedly exchanging information about our favorite TV shows. Or what we did for a living. Or if we watched the Grammys. There’s often a lack of comfort that comes with small talk. Avoiding it like the plague is a very natural response.
But at some point, we need to accept that we’re gonna have to eat our broccoli if we want to have strong bones. You don’t get strong bones without eating enough calcium, and you don’t get to have deep, fulfilling relationships without small talk. And I don’t just mean at the beginning of a relationship (platonic or otherwise). Small talk is the foundation that builds relationships, and it is the daily oxygen that keeps them going.
No one really taught me this though, I just sort of figured it out by trial and error. But if you’re someone who really hates small talk, let me convince you that it’s going to make your relationships better and it will help you make new friends, too.
Plus—if you’re like me and really find social interaction challenging, I’ll pass along lil tips I’ve learned over time that make all of this a bit less painful. Extraverts who find this shit easy—log off and come back next week. This one is for my socially awkward homies who are really trying to get better at this stuff.
How will you figure out what to have “deep convos” about? Small talk.
All my introvert homies (and extraverts too but I don’t speak for y’all) know there is something satisfying about having a long, deep conversation. You leave feeling more connected to the person you are talking to. You get to scratch that human connection itch that we all have. Maybe your worldview changes a little bit as a result of that conversation. Maybe you and the other person leave trusting each other just a little bit more. That is good shit.
Y’all, we can’t have those deep conversations without small talk first. Everyone is different, and everyone has a different level of comfort as to what topics they are comfortable “going deep on”. Additionally, “deep” conversations require trust between both parties. You build that trust by engaging in small talk. Here’s one example of that transition from my own life, somewhat fictionalized to protect the innocent. No one’s real names are used.
Scenario: Coffee shop chatter —> relationship with substances
I work at a coffee shop occasionally. One of the employees I get placed with regularly is named Jacob. He’s brutally efficient in the shop, and always moving a million miles a minute. I find coffee shop shifts sort of awkward when you don’t talk to the person you’re working with at all, so I’ve been trying to “crack” him lately with different approaches at small talk.
This most recent shift, I think I finally cracked him. I overheard him offering his “signature drink” to a coffee shop customer—drip coffee with cayenne pepper and maple syrup. This sounded wild to me, so I asked him if he’d make it for me. He did, and the drink did in fact slap.
I went off on several reasons as to why I liked the drink so much—a little bit of kick made the coffee less acidic somehow, it kind of tasted like a Mexican Mocha, the flavor was complex with every sip—there was a lot to love with that drink. He responded well to the praise, and told me all about his plans to offer this drink at the coffee truck he’s planning to open soon.
I think that first exchange about the Mexican mocha-style coffee finally made him a little more receptive to generic chatter with me.
Later in that shift, during a lull between customers, I tried one of our new bars from the bakery.
“I think this bar sort of looks like an oatmeal raisin rice krispie treat, but it’s pretty good.” I offered my review of the bar unprompted while he was in earshot.
“Man, I gotta really tone back my sugar intake,” he said.
“Ha! So do I,” I responded, finishing eating an undoubtedly sugary pastry.
“It’s like, I eat mostly plant based. I stopped drinking a long time ago. But sugar. It’s so hard to kick. I have such a sweet tooth.”
“Me too, man. I get it. But if sugar is your biggest vice right now, I think you’re probably doing just fine.”
“You’re probably right,” he smiled a little at this.
Where could we go from here in this conversation?
Okay kids—it’s time to make the leap from small talk to deeper talk. What does this small talk tell us about Jacob? What could we jump off of in this conversation to try to maybe take it a bit deeper?
I personally find conversations about our relationship to alcohol to be interesting. So I’d go with the mention of his sobriety. It would feel very natural at this point in the conversation to say something like,
“Yeah, I’ve been giving my own relationship with alcohol some thought lately. I’ve been experimenting with only drinking on the weekends, and I definitely notice a difference when I wake up for work having not drank anything the night before.”
Now—is that a guarantee that Jacob is going to bite and is going to engage in this deeper conversation? Of course not. He might not want to talk about his sobriety, and that’s fine.
But the important part here is using the small talk as a bridge to deeper talk. This is what I mean when I say eating your broccoli gives you stronger bones. This conversation happened after I worked probably 5 or 6 shifts with Jacob, each shift trying out different veins of small talk to see what he liked to chat about. None of them stuck, up til now.
Our attempts at small talk prior to this better conversation served an important purpose, too. I had to sort through each attempt and figure out what Jacob’s deal was. Maybe he just didn’t like me, and we’d have to tolerate each other when we worked together. Or, maybe he was just picky in what he wanted to talk about, or maybe I just needed to be persistent. I think it turned out to be a combination of the latter two points. Attempting small talk with him multiple times gave me valuable information about the type of friendship we could potentially have. Jacob is probably not going to be a close friend of mine, but we can talk shop about coffee, lifestyle, and music. Homeboy appreciates a good aughties throwback, and I love that about him.
I’d rather have clarity about how my relationship is going to be with someone than have confusion about them, or worse, the impression that they just don’t like me. Persistence with making good small talk can get you there.
Getting good at small talk is having a better imagination
It’s so fucking easy to have a conversation that’s a little bit weird with someone and assume malicious intent. Or that they don’t like you, or that they’re talking about you behind your back, or any other number of completely unproductive ways to think.
I’ve been in therapy long enough to know (at least in my head) that people are always more concerned with themselves than they are with you. But that doesn’t do much to get away from the gnawing feeling of “I am a freak and anyone who interacts with me is just doing so out of pity.” Believe me—when I’m in my worst mental states that is exactly what’s on repeat in my head.
If I’m really taking a hard look at this thought pattern though, I think it’s a failure of imagination. I also think it’s not fair or kind to other people to imagine them so poorly and assume such negative intent. Most people aren’t out to just watch the world burn in social situations, and I think we owe it to them and ourselves to imagine each other a little bit more complexly than that. (Shoutout to the vlogbrothers for coining that phrase. Source)
Getting better at small talk has been a great strategy for me to imagine other people more complexly. I have a few go-to starters that I’ll list for you down below, and why they help.
How is the week treating you so far?
This one’s for mid-week small talk. You can expand on this to get a sense of if they like what they do for work, or what gets them excited on a day to day basis.
Have you been watching any good shows or movies lately? Or reading any good books?
People love to talk about their leisure time! Most people have hobbies or interests outside of work. For me, that’s the number one thing that makes social interaction less intimidating. I find it endlessly adorable about humans that we develop these cute little special interests. Knowing other people’s interests makes me like them more and assume kinder things.
What’s on the docket for your weekend?
If you think it’s trite to ask someone about their weekend, grow up!!! People have hobbies and things they like to do on the weekend! What they choose to do with their weekend tells you a lot about who they are and where they’re at in life at the moment! Do they have exciting plans? Great! You now have the opportunity to figure out what their interests are on another level. Do they have a do-nothing weekend planned? They probably need a break and boy is it great seeing other humans giving themselves permission to rest.
(if there is notable weather or a seasonal change underway) So are we pro or anti the current {{weather event or season change}}?
Another one that people need to grow up about! Talking about the weather isn’t actually boring at all. Climate change is rapidly changing the weather that we’re used planning our years around. People have favorite and least favorite seasons. People also have a close relationship with the natural world around them, whether they consider themselves outdoorsy or not. Asking them about their weather preferences tells you something about their day to day interaction with the world. I find the mundane shit like that so beautiful.
Finding the time and energy to talk to people around you about their relationship to the mundane and the everyday is so powerful. For me, it’s a reminder that every single person’s interior life is so much more complex than I can possibly imagine. I can get a little window into it by getting better at small talk. I can remind myself that while my interior life is very important, I am not the only person with a rich interior life. Everyone else has complex motivations, desires, and histories, too.
All the world’s a stage—and it’s big enough to support several billion main characters.
See you next week. Tell your friends, don’t forget to subscribe. I’m like *this close* to 100 subscribers and I’d love the ego boost so if you haven’t subscribed already, help a sister out?
It’s funny, I actually envision conversation similar to a dag — like, everyone wants to get to the meaningful stuff (the semantic layer) but sometimes you have to do the boring stuff first (import your sources and declare them in the Yaml)
I find that people who “want to skip the small talk“ want the reward of intimacy without necessarily putting in the work — they microwave their conversations, wondering why it doesn’t taste the same as a nice slow cooked discussion