'I Hate Small Talk'

Small talk (n.): polite conversation about unimportant or uncontroversial matters, especially as engaged in on social occasions.

I cannot count the number of times I have heard someone say ‘I hate small talk’.

‘Small talk doesn’t interest me’ plastered on Twitter and Tinder bios. ‘Don’t DM if you’re going to have small talk’.

The phenomena of small talk was first studied in 1923 by Bronislaw Malinowski, who coined the terms ‘phatic communication’ to describe it. According to Wikipedia, a phatic expression is communication which serves a social function, such as social pleasantries that don’t seek or offer any information of value. Such as hello, how are you? and nice morning, isn’t it?

I want to emphasise two parts of that definition. One: small talk serves a social function. Humans are social beings by default, introverted and extroverted alike. It’s because minute interactions are what really make up the life we live. A single person cannot exist on their own because living requires a medium in which to live through: a community. People. An inter-web of relationships. 

And ultimately our most prominent tool of communication, which is the only way to foster relationships, is words. Simple words. Small talk. You can’t exactly foster relationships with conversations about Einstein’s relativity, Marxism or Plato’s cave.

Two: small talk doesn’t offer any information or value. It doesn’t need to; rather, it shouldn’t. Imagine the amount of distrust that would be instilled in our communities if every conversation being had was to give or get information from someone. There’s more to life than information. We’re not all businessmen trying to make deals with each other; truly, we’re all just trying to find deeper meaning to our lives.

Purposeless, frivolous talk for the sole sake of talking, for taking a breath, for discussing the most simple topics in one’s life. 

Petit and not demanding, hence, small talk. It’s the building block of big talk.

Some would argue that it’s not genuine, but it doesn’t really matter if your work mate actually cares how your weekend went. It matters that they cared enough to ask, to give you the chance to talk about something that might seem trivial in the grand scheme of things but after all, life shouldn’t be lived in the grand scheme of things. 

‘How’s the weather?’ isn’t just a bubble speech to break the elevator ride silence, it’s a question about your opinion, about how you feel. The weather is a part of your life, just as much as whether you believe in a god or not.

I realise I’m very altruistic, I find what people have to say interesting, I like to give them the chance to exhale their emotion in the most insignificant way possible: small talk. I enjoy all kinds of talk so maybe it’s unfair of me to force small talk on everyone. But the things is, it’s not forced if you don’t feel like there’s this superior power that screws everything up for you if you don’t engage in social pleasantries. 

The reason a lot of people feel forced to make small talk is because of set social rules. No one is really expecting you to ask them how their weekend went but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t make them feel better if you did.

Humans are weird beings, we feel forced to say hello and good morning and hate that we feel that way, even though we’re the ones who put rules for every goddamn social interaction.

Dictate your own social decisions, free yourself from the boxes you put yourself into. 

And make small talk, you fool.