Thoughts on why small talk is so uniquely painful

I'm old, but it took a lot of time to network/socialize. I know there's books/material to socialize now. I have learned to grey rock, and just go neutral with giving a response to most situations.

This is a learned thing. No one teached us this back in the 80s or earlier. Life isn't easy, we learn as we get older. Yes, it's hard, but if some random person asks about your day, just say "great, how about you?". Put the focus back on them. Let them talk. Just listen. Oh, their grandma passed away last week? "Damn, I'm sorry to hear that. Let's remember her legacy, and know that she lived to her fullest."

We are all still animals at the end of the day. You can make mistakes! Learn from them, and move on. Learn as you go.

I believe that part of the problem - at least in my case - is that typical person immediately sees 3-4 possible generic answers to such questions.

For me... It's like opening Pandora Box and have the brain flooded with not just answers but long chains of interactions, where none leads to anything positive. A "simple" question is like like an abyss that's gonna suck you down and exhaust you while you're trying to escape it so much, that you feel like lying down and trying to remember that air is meant to be inhaled again after it's exhaled...

There was this scene in the original Terminator movie, where the robot sees the spinning list of possible answers to "cat question". For me, this list doesn't stop. Even when the conversation is already finished, the list continues to spin.

I’m not neurodivergent, but small talk is fundamentally a conversation with no other purpose than to maintain, build and express social relationships. There’s no substantive information being passed. So I guess it is a concentrated dose of some people’s worst nightmare.

By the way - there’s nothing wrong in a brief truthful answer if you a feeling a bit down, or you pulled a muscle in your neck or whatever

I'm not autistic, but I got sick of this stupid expected "how are you?", "fine" nonsense. It's meaningless. Now I just give a quick honest answer. Nobody really finds it weird and it makes for much more engaging non-monotonous interactions.

You can even answer negatively if you manage to tone it right. "Eh, bit stressed", but then in a positive, non-confrontational, tone just add "but how are you?".

As long as you keep it brief, the other person can question it if they are genuinely interested, and then you can have actual conversation, or they won't if they're not really interested, it works fine either way.

I just answer honestly. I don't have time to be a fake person.

"I am functioning within established parameters."

I worked customer service for some jobs and have a system. If people ask how you’re doing, they don’t want an answer. They want you to say something corny and friendly, use the same tone and accent they do.

Now I understand why I don't have a problem with small talk. The people I make small talk with aren't assholes!

Serious question from a non neurodivergent. Why don't you tell the truth? What's wrong with that?

Sorry, just for me to understand because I have no experience

Here's my attempt at a hopefully helpful explanation:

Almost always the small talk itself isn't meant to be a "real" conversation. It's deliberately surface level and repetitive because of this. Think of it like a verbal handshake. A standard greeting that is essentially "I am initiating a conversation" but with an extra layer obscuring that because communication is complicated and there's a ton happening under the surface.

There's a little judgment step prior to engaging in actual conversation to establish that a conversation is or isn't about to happen, if this person is friendly, are they communicating on the same level, etc. The small talk has essentially lost its literal meaning entirely and is all subtext to establish these things. "How's it going?" is just them initiating the conversion protocol, and so taking it literally is like sending back an error message.

If you feel saying "good" to a question like "how's it going" is lying, it might be helpful to think of the question as not actually a question but just a collection of random sounds we've assigned to starting up a conversation and the replies are no different. They aren't actually asking, the words don't even mean that in their head, and your answer just needs to fall into the right parameters that show you're doing the same. Or just have a few "canned" responses that are ready to go so they don't need much thought or sarcastic so you don't feel like it's lying. I'm a fan of "oh you know, livin' the dream" or "I'm surviving" for these sorts of things.

If they actually want real conversation, it'll come after the small talk has established the connection.

It gets better over time. I think working on self awareness helps. If we have a better idea of how we actually feel we can at least answer honestly. It's a little trickier when concealing the truth is required. I had a boss who often paused for a moment and said 'I don't know' when people asked 'how are you?' It disarmed people and they tended not to ask. He made no effort to engage in small talk and that suited me. Looking back he must have been on the spectrum.

In Finland nobody asks you that and if somebody does, everybody gives a direct and correct answer. It is one of the perks in any Finn that makes it hard for us to discuss with Americans if we're not used to them.

Many people like Americans say as a trained friendly greeting "hi, how are you". Other people like Chinese say "hi, have you eaten (had rice) yet". They both simply need to be viewed as greetings. Neither actually want to know your full life story of your eating habits or the many bad things that may have happened to you in your day week or life.

Don't try it here in Germany. Often people will try and test you and tell you a long story of many bad things to see if you "care". But it is in fact missing an important cultural contex. It is not that they don't care if you have eaten or that your wife is dieing of cancer... It is that is not what they were truly asking. It should be interpreted simply as a friendly greeting such as good morning. It is as inappropriate to responding to good morning with, "no it isn't. It's a terrible morning. I had diarrhea this morning and my cat died". The lady at the grocery store doesn't need these details and was simply being nice.

For me, life isn't that difficult. I work construction, and apparently that is the world where it's ok to be weird. I answer honestly to every question I'm asked, and people either think you're joking or just appreciate the honesty. When I get the "how are you today", I normally respond "well I'm here, so not great", and that's totally fine

For me, I realize that I need to just say a couple of words to make it a pleasant exchange, but not being able to really share my feelings feels frustrating, kinda like how a kid feels frustrated when they need to moderate their feelings. A lot of the time I'm really exhausted and unhappy too so that makes it worse that I can't vent and have to moderate myself cuz I'm in a perpetual state of trying to keep my mask from slipping from burnout

ugh working retail this is the 'question' that bugs me the most. No, this customer does not actually care about how I'm feeling, they're just continuing a shitty tradition that I want no part in. By now I just straight faced, monotone 'I'm doing good how about you' in hopes that they understand that I don't care, finish the exchange and move on. On my worst days I just don't answer.

Hey there, how's it going?

"Good!" - feeling alright

"Hanging in there" - feeling a little rough but pulling through

"It's going" - bad/tired (existential)

Also it inflates the meaning of the question. It took me quite a lot of time to realize that my friends ask me how I am and really want to know it.

(I'm not autistic fyi.)

I hate smalltalk. It's a waste of time.

This is one of the main reasons I switched to saying Happy Saturday. No one really want to answer the "How are you" question and I probably don't really care unless you are family. Saying Happy Day is also passing on joy.

Honestly, I have had thoughts of just unloading any baggage on my mind onto the person initiating small talk, with the goal of making them uncomfortable.

Stranger: Hello sir, how are y-
Me: My day was fucking horrible. First, my car caught a flat tire, then my cat vomited all over my carpet, and then this random person on the internet who I don't know called me a jollock and blah blah blah...

It'd make them feel how I feel when strangers come up and talk to me.

Dan's final comment succinctly calls out the situations which irk me the most. You asked me how I'm doing. I answered honestly... and now you're going to judge me for that? Yeah, nah. I'd rather just not answer at all, thanks, instead of dealing with that bullcrap.

Which, over the course of time, led me to the analytical conclusion that more often than not, most people don't actually care how -- or even if -- I answer at all, unless I make the "mistake" of answering honestly when I'm not feeling perfectly peachy. That's why I almost always answer with something vaguely nonsensical when asked how I'm doing by random strangers, such as, "Howdy, howdy!" Most of them are so locked into their autopilot that they only ever hear that first syllable, and immediately think I just asked them how they're doing... so they reflexively toss back their obligatory, "Oh, I'm fine." Once in a blue moon, one of them will skip a beat and realize what I actually said just after their reply, making the passing interaction vaguely uncomfortable for them. Which, you know... is actually just fine by me, since that's how I feel almost all the time.

Ah, so fear of "accidental lying" isn't just me and is in fact an autistic trait?

Seeing all of these posts that I agree with in this community is really opening my eyes…

My 4 year old daughter was diagnosed with autism and I’ve been learning so much just through her and some of the readings I’ve done.

Excuse my ignorance, but is this a trait that is passed down? If so, I’m trying to figure out how did I make it this far in my life without the proper coping mechanisms.

I used to try (I can't always talk) and reply honestly and that made people treat me weirdly and try to take advantage.

I then tried making appropriate things up and that kinda worked but some people got angry and ended up calling me a liar and assumed a whole bunch of awful stuff on top of that, so ultimately it ended badly.

Now I just avoid people and conversation as much as I can and give vague, noncommittal and brief answers if anyone tries talking to me.

This works in the short term but anything longer than a few minutes has people assuming negative things about me, which if I have to interact with them again over time, means they can get emotional (angry) over the things they've assumed about me.

Life is so much nicer without involving other people.

Reading these kind of things always makes me think to see a doctor.. that has been way too hard for way too long.. too late anyway I guess..

Now I see these interactions as functions: it's not inviduals acting in those cases, just society going on. I stopped thinking about the person asking and now I see them like a traffic light going red and green: not a problem.

Am I still weird? Yes. Is that my problem? No.

since in most other languages people don't ask "how are you" would this problem exist in other languages?

I’m not neurodivergent, but small talk is fundamentally a conversation with no other purpose than to maintain, build and express social relationships. There’s no substantive information being passed. So I guess it is a concentrated dose of some people’s worst nightmare

This is why my default response is now either “alive”, or in the case of “how’s it going?”, “it’s going”

You could say "I feel the way I usually feel" (which is what I always say).

• It's truthful (probably).
• It confuses the other one, giving you a second to breathe.
• It could be perceived as funny (as unconventional) by others, making you be seen positive.

For me, I'm moderately ok with the whole task and "lying", though I'm in a "faint praise" culture where I can more or less express myself somewhat adequately through "polite faint praise".

The problem I struggle with is that I really have no idea if the "small talk" is going well or not. Just can't get a read on most people as to what they were hoping to achieve with the small talk and whether any of my actions were well received or came off as rude. So it's an anxiety minefield to start off any conversation where I often carry plenty of doubts into the rest of the conversation.

If people were more happily like "Actually I feel X because of Y ... but that's ok happy to get started with stuff now" then I'd be much better off most of the time.