Small talk is an essential skill - eviltoast
  • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    Yeah but small talk can get the ball rolling on a real conversation. It’s just a way of initiating a conversation and it’s giving an opportunity for someone to talk about things they might be interested in.

    “It’s nice day out today!” doesn’t literally mean that. It means “there’s an opportunity for us to do something outside if you’d like, but if not, perhaps you’d care to discuss something that’s important to you instead? Of course you you aren’t interested in having conversation or doing an activity, I’m perfectly fine with that too” but in a significantly more concise way. Sure you don’t really care about their opinion on the weather or whatever small talk, but it’s a completely open-ended expression of a willingness to have a conversation about something that matters to the other person. It’s opportunity to have a real conversation without any pressure to have a real conversation.

    Also it’s not that hard to do.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Yeah but small talk can get the ball rolling on a real conversation.

      It can also be used defensively to avoid having the ball get rolling on a real conversation. This is a key defensive use of small talk which can be deployed at occasions such as “Family Gatherings”, “Workplace Water Coolers”, “Sports Events”.

      If you know your relative is a conspiracy theorist and will inevitably try to use a gap in the conversation to talk about how the Jews are using their Space Laser to Direct Hurricanes at Lithium Deposits to Remove the Lawful Inhabitants from their Rightful Land… deploy small talk to avoid this.

      P.S. Avoid “the weather” as that’s an opening to talk about how the recent hurricane was controlled by Blackrock.

      • Pelicanen@sopuli.xyz
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        2 months ago

        To be fair, had it been possible to control hurricanes, I have no doubt that Blackrock would try to use it to extract profit but they’re hardly alone in that.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          Sure, but the real evidence that these conspiracies are bullshit is that it involves all these wealthy, powerful people working together. Sure, Blackrock would want to use weather control technology, if it existed, to clear people off land it wanted. But, there are plenty of other billionaires or centi-billionaire companies who would want to know about and use weather control technology. For example, Disney. They’re a nearly 200 billion dollar company that make a lot of their money from cruises, theme parks and resorts, places which are dependent on good weather. If there were any hint that weather control technology were real, they’d be using it to keep the weather good at their resorts. If Blackrock were using weather control tech in a way that might wreck things at Disney World, do you think Disney would just go along with it?

          There are a few things that rich people agree on, like wanting to keep their wealth. But, mostly they got rich because they were incredibly selfish. The idea that they could maintain any kind of conspiracy to do anything other than keep taxes low is pretty insane.

    • yokonzo@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      “it’s not that hard to do” is absolutely giving never had a mental illness vibes