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I always find "What did you do over the weekend?" type stuff insanely boring. I imagine a website that generates random plausible answers to this question - ho
by ALittleLight 5y ago
I always find "What did you do over the weekend?" type stuff insanely boring. I imagine a website that generates random plausible answers to this question - how much time would I spend generating and reading random responses? Answer: Enough to see whether and how well it worked, and then never again. Why would I care about what my coworkers did over the weekend? It's like using that website for fun. When people ask me this question I always say "I didn't do anything at all" and then fall silent. My hope is that the awkwardness of this response will encourage them to stop talking to me.
In my view this over-familiarity with coworkers is partially a consequence of individual atomization in society. People who have moved across the country to a new city where they have no friends or family try to find surrogates in their company and companies, trying to encourage worker loyalty and sacrifice, promote the idea of being friend or family like. I don't think of my coworkers as friends and certainly not family. My coworkers are strangers who happen to work at the same company. I have to interact with them to do my job but that requires only polite communication about work. I don't need to know anything about their personal lives and prefer not to know.
- emaginniss 5y agoYikes. Some of us are just friendly.
- ALittleLight 5y agoSmall talk enjoyers have the advantage that they can nonconsensually initiate small talk and it's rude for small talk dislikers to even express their dislike. I don't see how unilaterally engaging people in an activity that only you like is "friendly".
- skeeter2020 5y agoHow about because an individual puts themself out there to try and build a relationship around shared values, activities, joys? If it's not reciprocated they try something else, or eventually move on. I think you're using "small talk" pejoratively, but all big and deep things start off small. Example: I met my wife of 20+ years eating lunch at a picnic table over casual conversation, so I'm all-in on small talk.
- ALittleLight 5y agoI met my wife when we were both posting on a forum about how we wanted to get married and have kids. We didn't start off with small talk and are now married and have kids, so I think that disproves your notion of "all big and deep things start off small." Perhaps always starting small is one approach, but it's not a universal one. As another example, I'd point to this conversation. You and I don't need to engage in small talk here to share our thoughts on some subject. I directly state my opinion and you state yours and we can discuss. At no point do I need to ask how your day was, about the weather, or what you did over the weekend. I am interested in discussions (that's why I participate in them online) but I don't care about any of that banal stuff. I hope your weekend was great, but I don't need to know about it.
- ineptech 5y agoYou're missing the point of small talk, which is largely nonverbal. Is it wise to assume an API that returns an empty message body is broken, or to look for useful information in the response code and the headers?