Nah, I don’t mind small talk. Small talk is fine. It’s easy, you just smile a bit, and say hi and make a joke about whatever the other guy said.
It’s the mid-size talk I can’t deal with. The kind of talk where the other person is just giving you clichés of normie chatter about politics you disagree with or car culture or reality shows and you’re supposed to just… keep providing valid responses and appear interested. I don’t see what’s small about that and it’s excruciating.
Nah, that’s great because you can so easily escalate to heavy talk. Disagree with the political opinion. Insist car culture is just pointless fashion fads. Dive into the morality of reality TV.
Either they disengage and you’re free, or you get to have an actual meaningful debate instead of echoing hollow platitudes.
Thing is, I just don’t care about your political opinion or your preferred fashion fad. I’m not going to either agree or disagree with you, I just don’t care about you and now that you keep talking I’m actively disliking you.
I’m not going to engage in stupid pointless arguments, especially with someone I have to work with again. I’m just going to smile, nod and leave.
While I definitely agree with this and encourage it, most often this happens at work. I got shit to do, I don’t have the time to debate politics with a random customer. Sometimes I’d love to, and some rare times I actually get to have a good long conversation with someone like that, but 99% of the time I really want you to just shut up so I can keep it moving. No matter how much I want to tell someone that Game of Thrones was a genuinely good show for 80% of its runtime, or that Joe Biden isn’t the literal devil.
I found this got easier as I got more comfortable with my own eccentricities, but it’s still draining after a while. I’ve just had to accept that some conversations will just not go well for me.
I think it’s one of the reasons a house party can be so draining, but a little dinner date can go down smooth - because the of the depth of the conversation you describe.
People are always really surprised whenever I give a presentation or something. I can actually be quite eloquent. I just choose not to be, most of the time.
“They pick 2 people…” only as a backup in case one of them dies
Two people? No I’m greedy, I need three so we have enough for boardgames.
I hate games that assume I have my shit together enough to know 3 other people.
Pokemon and some gameboy zeldas were not enjoyed to the fullest extent because I needed to not only have friends but friends with different versions of the game.
There’s the Pokemon Ultraviolet ROM hack for Fire Red that removes having friends as an requirement to 100%.
That’s what Sven in the basement is for. I assume his name is Sven. Might ask him sometime.
I feel so represented right now lol
Fucking seriously. I literally have 2 good friends and I don’t go looking to add more because conversation is exhausting.
I have two modes of talking: complaining and explaining something. Sometimes those are both the same lol
