> However, I often found myself answering the same generic questions that didn’t really help me understand if someone shared my values and interests. People lo

> However, I often found myself answering the same generic questions that didn’t really help me understand if someone shared my values and interests. People love to complain about small talk being meaningless, but I think it’s essential. It’s how you establish a baseline rapport before you can get into the heavy stuff. I’m not going to get into a deep conversation with a random person, they need to earn my trust and demonstrate that they have conversational basics down first.