Saw this elsewhere, thought it'd be a good to share here
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@Coffee @sharkNserg
Having an actual social interaction gives a lot more information to both parties. Any anti-social psycho can make cat noises.@ide so any «anti-social psycho» can talk about weather. And?
meowing IS a social interaction, too
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@Coffee @sharkNserg
Having an actual social interaction gives a lot more information to both parties. Any anti-social psycho can make cat noises.@ide@masto.ai @sharkNserg@plush.city @Coffee@toot.cafe antisocial psychos who make cat noises,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
@mo@mastodon.ml -
Saw this elsewhere, thought it'd be a good to share here
@sharkNserg this is how I talk to all the men I deliver parts to despite hating talking to men.
Works almost every time B3
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Saw this elsewhere, thought it'd be a good to share here
@sharkNserg our little introduction rituals
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A not so secret trick to small talk is to ask the other person about themselves with open questions, imho.
People like to talk about the stuff they care about, and just having an active listener makes them feel seen.
@billiglarper @adar @sharkNserg Any tips for making it sound less like an interrogation?
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@sharkNserg Okay, but why can't we just meow at each other? It would make things so much easier...
@Coffee @sharkNserg i think just walking up to someone and meow will work too.
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Saw this elsewhere, thought it'd be a good to share here
@sharkNserg when people rail against small talk I'm always left internally asking myself "so, what, like a psychopath or something?"
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@sharkNserg
Should have read this disclaimer before replying l, thanks.As small talk usually is an amazing downer for me, it's good to know this.
Knowing this, it might be OK to not engage and instead try to do a friendly checkin, possibly by opening up sharing your own state first?
@janneke that's reasonable enough!
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@sharkNserg when people rail against small talk I'm always left internally asking myself "so, what, like a psychopath or something?"
@PetrichorSquirrel it's fine to not like it and be bad at it and wish you didn't have to do it, honestly, I just wish it didn't so often turn into pathologizing people that *are* okay with it
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@janneke that's reasonable enough!
@sharkNserg
I was going to say, why don't they teach this sort of stuff in school or so, and then I wondered, how come typical folks somehow all know/learn such unwritten, amazingly silly, rules? -
Saw this elsewhere, thought it'd be a good to share here
Based on my replies, I get the feeling people on Fedi are more likely to feel attacked by this, so, please take my reassurance:
It is ok to not like small talk, it is okay to be bad at it, it is okay to wish you didn't get put into situations where you feel like you're forced into it
All this post is for is demystifying why others do it and why it's not bad or shallow that they do it
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@sharkNserg
I was going to say, why don't they teach this sort of stuff in school or so, and then I wondered, how come typical folks somehow all know/learn such unwritten, amazingly silly, rules?@janneke Honestly, if you asked people that are good at and like small talk why they do it, most of them aren't going to explain it like this post does, because it's probably not something they ever really thought about
And, I would say school *is* the place where a lot of this is learned; not formally or with lessons, but just as part of socialization and (hopefully) with teachers or other leadership that take an active interest in helping kids get along
Doesn't always work, of course, but...
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@Coffee@toot.cafe @sharkNserg@plush.city If the purpose of small talk is to make friendly noises, then meowing is also a form of small talk
@Stephanie This is precisely my point.
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@Bumblefish meowwww
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@Coffee @sharkNserg
Having an actual social interaction gives a lot more information to both parties. Any anti-social psycho can make cat noises.@ide Wait wait wait. Are you telling me those clickbaity articles I have been reading all my life -- claiming that 90% of NT communication is nonverbal+subtext and words barely matter -- are wrong?
Conversely, do you understand how much _subtext_ a single meow can hold?
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if you dislike small talk: this post isn't to convince you to like it
It's only to explain, if you have ever thought "small talk is so pointless and I don't understand why people do it", well, why they do it
Yeah, and even if you don't wanna do it yourself, knowing what the purpose of it is might inform what you do instead.
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@Stephanie This is precisely my point.
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Saw this elsewhere, thought it'd be a good to share here
@sharkNserg So funny (possibly) story, an old acquaintance of mine used to hame Strong Opinions about “small talk” that were in line with your comments - they are “polite noises” that we are set in our ways to both state and reply, and the *content* of the reply doesn’t matter, it’s that there *is* a reply that makes the other person feel seen and recognized and the lack of a response comes across as cold, caring, and inhuman, and likely is someone you would otherwise want to avoid.
To prove that the ‘response’ to small talk was itself irrelevant, he used to reply to canned small talk comments by *quacking*. Almost nobody ever mentioned it, they took the response - any response - as an acknowldgement.
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Saw this elsewhere, thought it'd be a good to share here
I like to make eye contact, yawn broadly and then walk away. This shows that we aren't threatening to each other!
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Saw this elsewhere, thought it'd be a good to share here
@sharkNserg I love this - it's really helpful to me because I also have terrible difficulty with small talk. This makes me think there's perhaps a point to it.
