Sometimes you don’t need to fill the silence with sounds. I’d rather be in a relationship with someone that we can sit down and be quiet together
Or you can use literal sounds instead of words. My spouse and I have this thing going on where we make this kind of squeak/baloon sound with our mouth which has the same effect as “hi, nice to see you”.
Oh thank god my partner and I aren’t the only ones. Don’t get me wrong, we know and like that we’re weird, but it’s nice to have company.
A few steps away from becoming furries.
/satire
Hahahaha I love hearing about other people’s microcultures
Me and my gf usually say Ahoozles (shortened from Anyhoozles) and just a way of saying “I want to talk to you, I just don’t know what I want to talk about
We just say “you know…” and then the other person will either say “yep/same” or “no I don’t know” depending on the mood. And if the cat makes noise we’ll also just say “I know buddy me too”
My wife and I do things in threes: three taps, three nudges, three blinks, three noises, whatever. It means “I love you”. It’s a nice way to say it when you’re too tired to say it. I think it originated when we’d say it as we were falling asleep.
Or fuck.
For most couples that takes up like 15 minutes once every 3-5 days or possibly much longer.
Longer than 15 minutes?
Longer than 3-5 days I think
I don’t know if I have the stamina to go for 3 to 5 days, let alone longer!
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They did say “sometimes”, but it seems like you took that to mean “all the times”?
Everything is a balance and people are different anyways. I don’t know many people who like any of the extremes. But it’s a different amount for everyone. And the “partner” thing is strange anyways. As long as you’re madly in love, you probably enjoy hearing about every pea in their canteen meal. That might fade after 20 years of marriage. Or a stressful day at work. Or with kids. Or it doesn’t. Both is fine. As long as it’s consenting partners. 😆
The key to understanding is finishing the sentence.
“I hate small talk… with people I have no reason to talk to and don’t care about.”
I love my partner, and even when it’s small talk I can listen all day, just to hear their voice and learn a little more about them, to feel closer to the person I married in many small ways.
But I don’t care about what Jim at the laundry mat did last weekend, or which machine he thinks makes socks dry faster.
I kinda want to know about the sock thing.
So you’re a small talk person
Sock drying speed is important information, not time filler like the weather or sports.
And Jim may have evidence to support his claim. This is important.
The weather is life and death info
Most people talk about how sunny it is today and not climate change
Unless the sport is competitive sock-drying.
But small talk is what got you your wife. What if Jim can be your future if you just gave him the time
Drag didn’t get drag’s dragon by doing small talk. Drag’s dragon fell in love with drag because it was impressed with drag’s magic.
Get yourself a girlfriend by impressing her with your arcane talents.
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But I don’t care about what Jim at the laundry mat did last weekend, or which machine he thinks makes socks dry faster.
tough. :) here’s what he (might have) said: it’s the 2nd and 3rd dryers from the left. the smaller ones. you also need to use the smaller ‘double load’ front-loading washers. those have an extra extract cycle and get the most water out. the dryers used to literally only cost 25c to dry most loads (an extra quarter for all denim or something), but they (new owners of the laundry) increased the minimum needed per-load to $1.50 (on top of more than doubling the washers’ prices). greedy bastards.
Its only “small talk” if you dont actually care about what the other person says. If you are genuinely interested, then its just a conversation. Thats how i see it at least.
Yeah, this. Talking small is faking interest. I’m not good at that. But when I actually care about the other person, “what have you been up to” is meaningful. Cause I actually wanna know.
Yeah but small talk can get the ball rolling on a real conversation. It’s just a way of initiating a conversation and it’s giving an opportunity for someone to talk about things they might be interested in.
“It’s nice day out today!” doesn’t literally mean that. It means “there’s an opportunity for us to do something outside if you’d like, but if not, perhaps you’d care to discuss something that’s important to you instead? Of course you you aren’t interested in having conversation or doing an activity, I’m perfectly fine with that too” but in a significantly more concise way. Sure you don’t really care about their opinion on the weather or whatever small talk, but it’s a completely open-ended expression of a willingness to have a conversation about something that matters to the other person. It’s opportunity to have a real conversation without any pressure to have a real conversation.
Also it’s not that hard to do.
Yeah but small talk can get the ball rolling on a real conversation.
It can also be used defensively to avoid having the ball get rolling on a real conversation. This is a key defensive use of small talk which can be deployed at occasions such as “Family Gatherings”, “Workplace Water Coolers”, “Sports Events”.
If you know your relative is a conspiracy theorist and will inevitably try to use a gap in the conversation to talk about how the Jews are using their Space Laser to Direct Hurricanes at Lithium Deposits to Remove the Lawful Inhabitants from their Rightful Land… deploy small talk to avoid this.
P.S. Avoid “the weather” as that’s an opening to talk about how the recent hurricane was controlled by Blackrock.
To be fair, had it been possible to control hurricanes, I have no doubt that Blackrock would try to use it to extract profit but they’re hardly alone in that.
Sure, but the real evidence that these conspiracies are bullshit is that it involves all these wealthy, powerful people working together. Sure, Blackrock would want to use weather control technology, if it existed, to clear people off land it wanted. But, there are plenty of other billionaires or centi-billionaire companies who would want to know about and use weather control technology. For example, Disney. They’re a nearly 200 billion dollar company that make a lot of their money from cruises, theme parks and resorts, places which are dependent on good weather. If there were any hint that weather control technology were real, they’d be using it to keep the weather good at their resorts. If Blackrock were using weather control tech in a way that might wreck things at Disney World, do you think Disney would just go along with it?
There are a few things that rich people agree on, like wanting to keep their wealth. But, mostly they got rich because they were incredibly selfish. The idea that they could maintain any kind of conspiracy to do anything other than keep taxes low is pretty insane.
“it’s not that hard to do” is absolutely giving never had a mental illness vibes
Completely this.
I mean that’s basically why a lot of us are great at small talk: we actually do care about the contents of that low stakes conversation with strangers.
Yup, the only two things small talk and conversation have in common is that they take a minimum of two people and involve spoken words.
If people small-talk in sign language, would it be called small-talk?
Your remark about “spoken words” made be think about this and I find it curious, since “small-talk” has become something of a fixed expression.
While words related to vocal conversations do appear in other phrases like “being left speechless” for example, I imagine “small-talk” to be more of a thing on its own in today’s usage.
That’s a good point - do we “speak” sign language? I’d never given it much thought. I think it was lazy writing on my behalf; the phrase “spoken words” could probably be tweaked to make it more obviously inclusive of all the signers out there.
Wife and I have a longstanding argument over whether free-will exists.
I say it does and she has no choice but to say otherwise.
and she has no choice
I am forced to see what you did there :D
Consider this, free will can still be pre-planned. We can choose what we want to do, so what if it was pre planned? I still chose it.
I like to change definitions to secure my position also
what definition did I change?
The meaning of free will.
The meaning of free will is exactly what people are discussing when they talk about whether or not it exists. What does and what doesn’t count as free will is what’s up for discussion.
I think free will as a concept is kinda stupid I’ve yet to talk to anyone who can actually give it a solid definition that isn’t something like “it means we can do what we want”
Either your decision is based on your personality, meaning it’s not free it’s a set calculation based on genetics and accumulated experience or it’s completely random meaning it’s not will at all
Free will as a philosophical concept has less to do with “I can do what I want” and more to do with “I have control over my actions/thoughts.” This gets into all sorts of interesting corners, such as:
- if God exists and is all-knowing, can God know what you’re about to do? If God does, is it really your choice, or just something God planned long ago?
- if God doesn’t exist, then we’re all products of everything that came before. Assuming that’s the case, a sufficiently powerful computer with a sufficiently large amount of data could determine what you’re about to do. If that’s the case, is it really your choice, or are you just a really complex automaton where the inputs (your life experiences and current situation) exactly determine your actions?
- in either of the above cases, if you’re unaware that another observer knows what you’ll do, do you retain free will? Does free will disappear the moment you learn of this observer? Can knowing about the observer change your actions in an unpredictable way, or can actions always be predicted?
And so on. There are some interesting discussions there at the edges, like at what point AI gains free will. That can have very real moral implications (i.e. when does AI get personhood?), so it’s not just idle chat.
Can your free will be restricted in any way? Someone in prison has less agency than you or I, if that means his free will is restricted then we have more free will than he does. Therefore it exists.
If you just start talking to some random person about it, then you’re unlikely to get a high-quality conversation; because most of the stuff people will say about it is inane or obvious or obviously wrong, etc. But there are definitely interesting discussions and thoughts that can be had about it. I’ve had countless garbage conversations about, and a handful of good ones. Probably my favoutite take is from Daniel Dennett’s book “Freedom Evolves”. He is very careful to build up a strong picture of what is it that we’re talking about and what the ‘obvious’ problems are, before then carefully and systematically showing those things aren’t really problems with what we were talking about anyway. Before reading that book, I was hard line in the camp of “obviously free will doesn’t exist; that’s a scientific fact”; but after reading it… well, I’d now say “it depends exactly what you mean, but probably the free will you’re talking about does exist.”.
Why do we need to bother executing it then? Choice has no value if agency to exercise it is revoked at any stage.
Not executing it would also be predetermined. The only thing you can do is pretend to choose.
that thought affects your brain, and therefore the future! :D
But you didn’t choose to have the thought did you?
Quick think of a city and then explain to me why you didn’t pick Cairo
speaking of brains, mine just exploded!
btw the text before the spoiler doesn’t show up on jerboa
if we don’t, then the predetermined outcome won’t happen!
How is it a choice if there is no other options?
/woosh
It’s really not much of a whoosh when some people hold that position legitimately
When I get my ballot with an uncontested seat, I can still choose whether to check the box. Even though it doesn’t impact the outcome at all, I still have the choice on whether to check the box. Even if I am completely restrained and my movements are forced, I still have the choice of whether to accept or resist that action, even if it’s just a mental protest.
So I don’t think there’s ever a case where there are no other options, but there are plenty of situations where there are no other good options (e.g. cake or death), but that doesn’t restrict your free will, it just restricts your options.
Free will exists because I can change my mind about liking or wanting something.
I want to rebuke you but you name is even more triggering. There is no linear chaos, you need non-linearities or discontinuities for chaos.
Glad I could be of use.
The concept behind linear chaos is that the chaos is bound at one point. The theoretical cone of influence can only move in one direction and widen at a set rate. Kind of a mashup of chaos over time.
Ah that’s really cool. So maybe similar to how turbulence can form at one point while the preceding flow remains laminar?
Yeah, chaos crops up in linear systems sometimes in unexpected places.
There are a couple of scientific papers on it, and at least one textbook. Even at that I’m not sure it’s a well-accepted theory, but the idea suits me.
One time I was talking about this with my friends. I said I believe it exists and they all laughed and said “particles have rules, you’re made of particles.” 🥺
I’m able to make smalltalk. I just don’t enjoy it, so I avoid it when I can.
And my wife and I don’t engage in smalltalk. We talk about what we actually care about. Seems to have worked fine for the past 24 years.
Pretty much.
I don’t wake up and ask my wife, “How’s the weather?” Or “Did you see that game last night?”
We talk about real shit. Like yesterday, we had a long conversation about what we would do with a tamed bear.
Like yesterday, we had a long conversation about what we would do with a tamed bear.
Well don’t hold us in suspense!
We’d have to reorganize the living room and we’d name her Halle Beary.
Sounds good. As long as Halle gets lots of bear pets.
You would want to keep it outside, bear shit is not a good house smell. It is better than cougar, so I guess there is that.
Yes. Non-verbal communication and silence work too.
Can confirm, I hold our evenings together laying in bed next to each other reading different books or whatever in high esteem. We’re not disfunctional, we’re just introverted, though we like each other’s company.
I thought I was in my messaging app when I read the first sentences and was confused. I thought I was included in the “our evenings” 😆
That sounds lovely and relatable. I let my affection show in glances etc too or a brief hand on the shoulder. Whatever feels authentic at the time.
It’s not small talk if you love the other person
It certainly can be.
If I’m making smalltalk with my SO, it’s because there’s something more weighty I want to discuss, but I’m looking for a way to broach that topic in a better way. So regardless of how I feel about them, it’s still an issue because it means I don’t feel safe to attack the topic head-on.
That feels like a communication strategy tailored to your relationship rather than small talk. small talk, in my opinion, is meaningless banter without motive. This may be pedantic, but I just don’t think I would classify that as smalltalk, since there’s an objective and I’m theoretically engaged, I personally would have no issue with it.
It’s when there’s seemingly “no point” that I consider it difficult
Comfortable silence. Learn to appreciate it.
“We still never talk sometimes” - Swanson
Someone quoting him on the internet like this would go against his whole philosophy
Good.
remembers Pulp Fiction scene least that’s what comfortable silence makes me think of, and yes I agree, it’s nice when a couple people can sit down and not feel like they have to say anything.
30 years ago today - some cinemas are marking the anniversary with a showing.
Holy crap I had no idea it was an actual anniversary! I just think in pop culture bits (memes). Neat. I so remember the first time watching it in the early teens, Tarantino can sure write fun random dialogue also sure was fun seeing Travolta be awesome again at the time after the baby movies. Not that I didn’t enjoy Look Who’s Talking,at the time, but who remembers those after Pulp Fiction for Travolta?
My wife is a VERY quiet person. She doesn’t say a lot but when she does it’s because she actually has something to say. This made me nervous when we were first dating but I’ve learned to embrace it. Silence is OK. She definitely talks more than she used to but we don’t have to talk all the time. Sometimes she just looks at me and smiles without saying anything and in those moments I know that I am loved.
She’s thinking of how she’ll dispose of the bodies. 😁
Drag doesn’t like jokes about how people who socialise differently are serial killers.
My interest in talking has more to do with who I’m talking to and less to do with the subject of conversation
Same! It isn’t so much the small talk, but being stuck making small talk with a stranger or coworker/distant relation or whatever that you have no interest in speaking to.
This is why I hate getting haircuts. I don’t have any personal relationship with the person cutting my hair. Maybe we’ll find a common interest, but if I could just wear earbuds the whole time and not seem like an asshole, I would. But instead I just shave my head when my hair gets long enough to annoy me.
I am right there with you. I get haircuts very rarely because of this.
Which… is pretty much the definition of small talk. If I’m making small talk, it’s because I don’t want you to feel awkward with the silence, which means I don’t know you well enough to know what you prefer.
Yeah, I agree. I’m more social than I was ~10 years ago but that’s because I’ve found good people to surround myself with. Back then I would’ve said I hate small talk. I didn’t hate small talk, I hated the people I was talking with.
Imagine going through a marriage like “how about that weather”
IIIIT’S LIKE RAAAAIIIIIIIIIN ON YA WEDDING DAYYYY
IT’S A FREE RIIIDE WHEN YOU’VE ALREADY PAID
Have you seen the weather, lately?
Lol - yeah, that would suck!
“And what is it with airline food?”
“Oh yes hurricanes every where”
Yeah, no wonder so many people get divorced…
Extrovert cannot comprehend being quiet.
Not just extroverts. I’m pretty introverted but I’m also the type of person who is very heavy on verbal communication and I tend to get a lot of my affirmation through words.
Being “still” is a learned skill for me.
Wonder if Twitter person who made that comment just has people who don’t want to have small talk with them
I’d like to have similar interactions with my significant other to the ones I have with my cats. You know, things like siting on the couch together… saying silly things in even sillier voices… staring into each other’s eyes while blinking slowly… yelling at her to get down from the cupboard…
If my partner can’t handle silence, then there’s something seriously wrong. We usually have something to do and if we don’t we just cuddle up. There’s no need for constant noise.
Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
What was Wenger thinking sending Walcott on that early?
The thing about Arsenal is they always try to walk it in!
Pretty sure being in a long term relationship means you’ve moved on from small talk a long time ago.
I don’t want to talk with my wife about the weather, we have more important shit to worry about unless we’re literally having to dodge a tornado.
Small talk is for strangers.
Yup. And if we don’t have anything more important to talk about, we’ll just cuddle. Silence is absolutely fine with people you’re comfortable with.
Huh.
Wife and I talk ALL the time about anything and everything, be it the weather, how weather works, of free will exists, the kids, if kids exists, you name it…
Maybe you’re both extroverts?
We’re both introverts, so we’re totally comfortable just sitting next to each other reading different books, or cuddling on a cold winter night. Sometimes we talk about random stuff, but quite often we’re exhausted from dealing with other people but still want that proximity.
She’s extroverted as hell, I’m introverted as hell. Put together though, we talk like there is no tomorrow
If you went outside and the weather was pleasant you’d never mention it to your wife? Never say anything like “have you been outside? It’s so nice today!”
Genuine appreciation for the weather enough to declare it to those around you isn’t small talk. Small talk is generic filler dialogue you do as a formality.
If you’re being that reductive about the definition of small talk then I don’t think small talk exists between couples who have known each other for a long time because you’re just regular talking.
Or from what this post is even if people are missing it just asking how their day was.
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