"Sincereman51, I suppose if I were really confident about myself, which I'm not, I could just as easily turn your question around and ask why people are so shallow and ignorant that they don't want to talk about the theory of relativity"

hmm, how you could turn my question around is really beyond me lol. But I guess from seeing saturnswirls answer, I guess you know what you're talking about so good work.

So if you can pull of the deep convo on the first contact with the ladies LOL go for it. GOODLUCK!

geeze I have typos today. I must be slipping

Most people don't understand the theory of relativity well enough to discuss it, though. So that becomes more off-putting than useful.

When I'm in a situation where I don't WANT to be bothered with somebody's idiocy, I will raise the issue of Hubble Volumes and recent theories on parallel universes. 90% of the time, they will wander away looking puzzled. The other 10% actually want to know more about the subject. Now I know I'm dealing with a questioning mind, which is something I find attractive.

But I don't mind small talk at all, in most situations, generally -- provided it doesn't degenerate into blathering moronosity. I was married to that sort of person once, already, and enough is enough.

Well said Lex.

This topic has me cracking up because I am imagining sitting on the bus next to someone and just turning to them and asking them some really deep question just to see what they would say.

I've started coversations in the grocery store. "Have you ever tried this stuff before"? It doesn't matter whether it's a guy or a girl. You'd be surprised at what that can lead to.
Mind you, Im open to talking about any subject with anyone and I do like people. Just don't be full of sh!t.

Starting a conversation in a grocery store is just the sort of thing that I think I would do. The context provides relevance to the discussion.

At the bar or on the bus, though, conversation with a stranger does not seem like an organic part of the context. Thus, the subtext of the message ("I am interested in you.") drowns out the text of the message ("Do you think that the Indians can beat the Rockies?")

When conversation is integral to the situation, it comes quite naturally to me. I thrive when the topic of discussion is relevant and interesting to both parties. When I'm trying to mask my interest with a thin veneer of conversation, I feel like I'm full of ****. It feels dishonest to pretend that I want to talk about the weather.

agreed it's a fallacy
sometimes the fallacy go further, over a few weeks of talking sweet, and then just vanished

it's a little too much bs for some

but i suppose kinda like marketing, like your selling voice or manner of presentation

i.e. phony lol

I think the point I was trying to make was missed by some. Nothing phony about meeting people and striking up a conversaton.
I guess it also depends on your intentions and the way you approach others. If you are out to "sell" yourself then I think most would pick up on that immediately. That's not what I meant at all.

I think if you can't muster a few minutes of pleasantries and are just so above idle chat in the beginning stage then you aren't going to have much luck.

How do you talk to someone you've just met? Do you say "Hi" and launch into a discussion about the French Revolution? You have to have some kind of segue. You chat about your pets if you're at the dog park or ask about the book the other person is holding in their hand. Small talk isn't limited to the weather or sports. You have to start in a comfortable place and get the other person to feel like they can open up and get into more intimate conversation. If you go all Rambo into some intellectual conversation without taking the time to get there you are going to come off like a weirdo.

Hey I am new here. And throwing in my two cents. If you come at people to deep and serious too soon, I think, it puts them off. Sometimes people just want an easy no pressure kind of conversation. Deeper conversations can be for those one on one moments. Don't ya think?

If it was not apparent previously, I wish to disclaim that I AM sort of a weirdo. Lex Fonteyne mentioned the "inertia of social convention" which is definitely a focal point in my thoughts about this topic. Although I am not exactly a nonconformist, I try to avoid conformance-by-habit.

So yes, I understand that if I try to strike up a conversation about Machiavelli's "The Prince" with a complete stranger, most people would not respond favourably. What I fail to understand is why social convention discourages more academic topics in the first place. I don't see anything about philosophy or literature (for example) that makes them intrinsically more awkward than any other topic, yet I have a notion that approaching somebody and asking, "Heh, have you read anything interesting lately?" would generate a less favourable response than, "Heh, did you see the Red Sox trounce the Tribe last night?"

Incidentally, I want to clarify that I am not disputing the fact that academic topics do not make good smalltalk. I am trying to gain a deeper understanding of WHY one topic is preferred over another.

One likely explanation is that most effective smalltalk topics are those with which the greatest number of people are conversant. This is sensible, but I don't think that smalltalk is wholly so utilitarian. My experience with smalltalk is that it really is a tool for the enforcement of conformity.

If I try to strike up a conversation about "The Prince," for example, the person to whom I'm speaking might tell me that they've never read it. Fair enough, we talk about something else or part ways. Note that nothing in my response to this situation suggests that I have a lower opinion of the other person for not having read "The Prince." On the flip side, my inability to discuss more traditional smalltalk topics may make me seem like a nut case, a weirdo, a freak, or an embarrassment (all terms that have been used in the course of this discussion.)

Even within a collective of words one can convey parts of their personality.

What may appear to be mundane and trivial, (smalltalk) is inbuilt with a set of subtle cues for both conversants...humour, cultural differences, how they veiw the world, both internally and externally, and surprisingly personalities do shine through their written word.

Finding the commonalities in a subtle way, ie, smalltalk, is a far more appealing and sociable way, than the self focussed 'sledgehammer' approach.


ok, I'm all out of intelligent things to say, I've exceeded my quota, and need to go dumb down somewhere..

Well, I think the social convention has an inherent linearity to it. And I'm not saying that's good or bad, necessarily, but there is a common sense aspect to it, in that it has its roots in a sort of "lowest common denominator" foundation.

For example, I read a lot of Nietzsche. If I just met somebody for the first time and said, "Oh, by the way, what did you think about that part in Zarathustra where the serpent bites him and then apologizes for it?" -- I think I've only met 3 or 4 people in my entire life who have read it, and only one who actually understood it -- the reaction is almost certainly going to be along the lines of "Nice talking to you, I have to go to the bathroom" or something.

So, while this could be seen as a faster and more efficient way of eliminating people from consideration, the downside is that maybe that person has 79 other areas of common ground with me. I can't know that from asking about Nietzsche, or Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, or the archaelogical evidence that the early Hebrews actually "borrowed" their god El from the Canaanites.

I guess I would see small talk as the big end of a funnel -- more people can talk about the weather or last night's TV than the more esoteric (but inherently more interesting) subjects --with the gradual and eventual process of learning more and more about someone (and their areas of commonality) as a "narrowing" function. At the pointy end of the funnel, there are fewer people left, but presumably there can be enough mutual interests, etc., to sustain things.

The social convention then becomes nothing more than a traditionally accepted and universally-understood "gateway" into this eventual narrowing process.

I think we're dealing with a couple of different issues here. One, is small talk efficient? Not if your goal is to eliminate people from consideration as quickly as possible, no. But, Two, is it fair (I'm not even sure what "fair" means in this context) to base an entire evaluation of a person on one or two admittedly esoteric areas of knowledge?

See, this could go the other way, too. I don't know anything about cooking. Every time I have ever tried to cook anything, there have been fires and explosions. So, if someone comes up to me and says "How do you like to cook your ________?" I am basically out of the loop. If it doesn't go in a microwave, I can't use it. But do I want someone to consider me as "unworthy" because of it? Well, I probably wouldn't dwell on it a lot, but there would be a brief sense of "that's a bit snobbish" anyway.

And the fact is, there are people who will believe that you have a lower opinion of them because they don't know about Machiavelli, even if you do absolutely nothing to convey that message. It's built-in, for a lot of people.

I totally agree with you that small talk is a tool for the enforcement of conformity. But so are our public schools, our media, and business in general. Small talk is a drop in the bucket.

i HATE talking on the phone......am I strange?