Lets Kill Small Talk!
I have a suggestion for society. It is groundbreaking and would change the nature of communication as we know it… We need to completely do away with small talk. These conversations are so painful for me yet I find myself involved in them all the time at work or just with random people. Do we really need to be babbling 24/7 about some bullshit that neither party really cares about? I have a difficult time being really enthused about things that I ACTUALLY care about. For me to feign enthusiasm about someone at work who cornered me in the break room regaling me with a story about their weekend is a pointless endeavor for both parties involved.
I’m not trying to be pretentious or say that everyone is boring and my daily life is one fascinating event after another. I feel like there is no reason that we need to be communicating with each other all the time just for the sake of talking. I know that most people could give a shit about what I did this weekend, how work is going or what the weather is like. I am completely OK with not knowing things about someone who I am not really friends with and I am sure that they don’t want to hear my crappy story either. We have just been trained by our culture and society to feel awkward if we do not converse with someone when we are placed in certain social settings (running into an acquaintance in public, stuck in a elevator or the work break room). There are a few things that we can do to immediately cut down on this useless banter immediately.
- Unless you are a weatherman, farmer or tornado chaser discussions about the weather need to be abolished. I fucking hate talking about how good/bad the weather is yet I even bring it up to fill time. I challenge you Ultraparadoxical.com readers – go week without discussing the weather once – it is impossible.
- If you have never been out on a weekend with the person you are talking to do not ask them how their weekend was. You haven’t actually hung out with the person before – what is the point of hearing them tell you what happened to them?
- All sales people should be murdered. Just kidding – I don’t want to have to off myself. Seriously though, sales people are the main purveyors of useless conversations. I think I am going to put that on my resume – “Excellent interest feigning abilities”. I guess it just goes with the territory but 99% of sales activity is faking like you care. There is no sales major in college because the teachers would pretend to care about their students and vice-versa creating a bullshit vortex and the world would probably explode.
In order to help people transition into the elimination of small talk there needs to be something that bridges the gap from excessive useless communication to less more pertinent conversation. I propose that we introduce a signal to represent what would have been 5 minutes of conversation that neither side could care less about. Simply tap your nose twice and point at the person. It says “Hey – I acknowledge your presence, the weather is good/bad, I’m glad you had a good weekend all rolled up in one”. Are we any worse off as a people if we aren’t constantly being peppered with useless conversations? We are already being bombarded with a constant stream of information from telecommunications, the internet and television – lets lighten the load a bit and get rid of small talk.
For one thing, making this change will improve the quality of conversations that we DO have. If I don’t talk to someone for a while and they finally pipe up and say something to me I am going to be more inclined to hear what they have to say since I know that it will be something that they deem important. I think that this is something that 90% of people would be in favor of except it will never happen… one can only dream.
Maybe I can just move to Tibet and join one of those monasteries where they take an oath of silence… I hear that the weather is pretty nice out there?
*Sidenote* When I just Googled small talk to find an image for this post I found actual BOOKS on how to make small talk – kill me now. *End Sidenote*
Ummmmm…..there is a big difference between “Smalll Talk” and “Forced Conversation”. I think I dont mind small talk if it helps to pass the time…but there is nothing more brutal than being forced into a 1 on 1 convo with someone you barely know, or like…for that matter.
I guess that I feel all of small talk is forced conversation since no one cares what the other person is saying – I could do without the “filler” conversations – I think they are BS. There need to be better ways to not feel awkward than just rambling about bullshit.