Comment by allenu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by allenu | Hacker News Reader

I sympathize with the author. I'm in my mid-forties now and have recognized that I haven't been great at maintaining friendships. I think I've experienced something similar during the quarantining portion of the pandemic, where I didn't really interact with anyone directly, at least not in person.

I had a job, so did interact with people over Zoom, and I will admit that that helped. A few months ago, however, I quit my job and now I don't have that regular human interaction. It's been quite an eye-opener to realize that this situation (not having friends to spend time with) is something I've passively allowed to happen. Many friends have started families or moved away, but I do recognize there were some I could have continued to cultivate.

I've worked on learning more about myself in the last few months and I've come to recognize that a lot of this situation is due to social anxiety and other behaviors that I've developed over the years. I also recognize that it's something I can actively work on improving. It's important to believe that you can be flexible enough to change your own behaviors or ways of thinking that lead you to be alone.

So, I say to this poster, it's true that things like idle chitchat may not be your cup of tea, I think it's important to realize that many people don't enjoy it either but just use it as a social grease to move into more deep conversation or connection. I might be mistaken, but the post makes it sound like the author is already set in his ways and that it's unfortunate that the world doesn't adjust to his preferences. Anyway, my advice is to not give up on human connection and be flexible enough to recognize that maybe your own limiting thoughts are preventing you from connecting.

> So, I say to this poster, it's true that things like idle chitchat may not be your cup of tea, I think it's important to realize that many people don't enjoy it either but just use it as a social grease to move into more deep conversation or connection.

it took me probably 7 years after moving out of my parent’s place to learn that “smalltalk” and “idle chitchat” are not necessarily the same thing. the “aha!” moment was attending a conference with a much older coworker and seeing him strike up conversations with the people sitting next to him which in the course of 15 minutes went from surface level to incredibly personal, sometimes philosophical things that i would never have thought a stranger willing to discuss, prior to that.

in my taxonomy, “idle chitchat” is talking about things. “smalltalk” is learning about each other. “the weather sure is nice today, isn’t it?” => idle chitchat. you’re not likely to understand a person from that starting point, except that “wow look, we both like the sun”. “where are you from? what brings you here?” => smalltalk. you’re encouraging the person to reveal some small amounts of information about themselves which you can use to probe further and hopefully find something fascinating (about them, about a topic you haven’t thought much about, or about yourself and how you relate to something in contrast to them).

now i take conversations with strangers (or anyone really) as a sport, as a challenge. “how can i use these precious moments we strangers share to discover something new? to leave one of us pondering something novel later in the evening”. sometimes these lead to lasting friendships, usually not. but still frequently beneficial to my life. important to identify the situations where smalltalk has the possibility of going beyond surface-level things though. an elevator ride — probably not. a conference, a party, a group activity, anything where people have already put themselves out there more than normal — seems to select for people more likely to “get” smalltalk, or maybe it primes them to open up more, idk.

Your comment has inspired me to change my outlook when participating in “ephemeral” conversations (conversations with people that I likely won’t ever have a chance to see regularly)

A couple of people I’m close to have always relished these conversations and I’ve never understood why until now. Thank you!

My wife is much better at initially talking and connecting with people. Last evening, she got the cook at our table (one of those places where they show off with spins, tosses, and such). He loves old westerns and samurai movies and will now be watching Paint Your Wagon upon our suggestion to see Clint Eastwood sing. Learned he is a stamp collector and rent is steep and that his son is in the navy. It was much better than just watching him twirling spatulas

I too treat it like a minor sport. If you do it repeatedly to the same people it can flower into a a more meaningful relationship.

Some people don't have strong relationships in their life and even strangers making an effort can brighten their week.

the race to find a good question :) Nice framing

> I think it's important to realize that many people don't enjoy it either but just use it as a social grease to move into more deep conversation or connection.

I disagree. I'm like the author, but I do make sure to always listen when I'm with a group or if I'm around people. And either they're really good at hiding the deeper conversation, more interesting from me, or they just tend to smalltalk for the sake of smalltalk.

You're not wrong. Chitchat often isn't started with the intent to move into deeper topics. Maybe a better way for me to phrase it is I think small talk is a social convention we use to open up ourselves to the possibility of more connection.

Talking about the weather to a stranger in the park is a low-risk way to connect. Once we're talking, maybe we'd both find something else we have in common and go from there, or one person isn't interested in going further, so we part and feel like we've lost nothing. It wouldn't be as effective, I think, to go in with the intent of talking about philosophy with a total stranger.

Quick aside: I went on a first date with someone once who told me she wasn't interested in small talk and preferred deeper topics. She broke out a notebook and started asking deep questions about me, which I found really off-putting. It didn't feel to me that we had progressed to that level yet. There's something about human nature where, to most of us, we feel the need for some ceremony of going from mundane topics to get comfortable, and then eventually deeper ones. It felt like she violated that rule, in a sense, which threw me off.

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