thoughts about small talk

08-Aug-2025

I’ve described small talk as a laborious routine. But recently, on a family trip to China, I’ve found myself unable to communicate as fluidly as usual (my Chinese is elementary at best). In turn, I’ve gained an appreciation for what I once considered a chore. Below are some short defenses of small talk that I’ve considered while abroad.

To Inculcate Humility
Perhaps my irritation at small talk is indicative of misanthropy I ought to address—I would never deny that—but if so, it also functions as the precise means of addressing such tendencies. Every mundane exchange serves as a gymnasium to challenge our less generous impulses; without judgement, make it through a conversation about weekend plans with colleagues or weather observations with strangers. Each interaction is a decision: Will you engage with your fellow man with genuine interest or dismissal?

A recent anecdote is apropos: A coworker near my desk was loudly chatting with some friends about a video game I’m passingly familiar with. My first instinct was to ignore them and focus on my assignments. Instead, I struck up a conversation about the game. To my surprise, the conversation quickly transitioned into something meaningful—a discussion about how Napoleon is portrayed in 19th-century Russian literature.¹ What initially seemed like pointless chatter revealed someone better read than I was, offering perspectives that illuminated my own shortcomings.

Approaching these conversations with authentic curiosity builds humility, the implicit belief that the person you’re speaking to may know something you don’t. Admittedly, this is particularly challenging when we’re tired, stressed, or arrogant but that is more reason to maintain this practice. The cumulative effect transforms not just how you converse, but how you move through the world. Instead of viewing most people as obstacles to navigate around, you begin seeing them as repositories insight, each with something to teach if you’re willing to listen.

To Humanize Others
In an increasingly divisive age, it is far too easy to burn bridges for the most minor offenses. Most apparently, the means to do so are simpler than prior eras—“block buttons” allow for simple separations from anyone who irks you, the rise of textual digital communications coupled with decreasing media literacy fuels miscommunication and constant perceptions of slights, and the ease of finding new communities through social media encourages friend hopping. However, underscoring the newly available means to cut ties is the desire to do so. Our common culture weakens, radicalism and discontent are surging, and ideological purity tests are increasingly popular.² Simultaneously, the adage remains true: being “wronged” is quite pleasurable. It provides us with moral superiority—to believe resentment is justified.³

Against this backdrop, small talk is a valuable counterforce. We all operate from incomplete information when forming impressions of people through their digital presence, professional roles, or brief encounters. Small talk—when approached with genuine curiosity and willingness to revise our priors—reveals how wrong these initial impressions often prove to be.

We tend to construct “complete” narratives about people from fragmentary evidence. We attribute malice and distribute sin where convenient, castigating those we find annoying as evil. Small talk disrupts these simplified narratives. It may very well be that the arrogant colleague struggles with imposter syndrome or that the ostracized misfit suffers from severe social anxiety. This isn’t to argue that you must be their close friend, but at the very least, we have an obligation not to needlessly villainize them. Once you talk to them with an open mind, you’ll likely realize that they are very much comparable to you or someone else you care for.

Community Building
Casual conversation creates invisible bonds within groups. Every community—professional, academic, geographic, or cultural—develops its own conversational ecosystem, complete with inside references, specialized terminology, and shared assumptions.

For example, some pure math/computer science communities often use “non-trivial”—a term borrowed from mathematical proofs—to describe any moderately challenging task, whether household chores or academic work, rather than more “common” terms like “difficult" or “hard.”

It may seem silly, but these conversational patterns are essential. They provide an acknowledgement of some experience and more broadly, connect us to a living culture. The slang, expressions, and descriptive patterns that emerge in casual conversation are built on perspectives generation over generation; they reflect specific ways of understanding the world. Small talk is essential for such participation. Through seemingly mundane exchanges, you absorb not just vocabulary but entire frameworks for interpreting experience. Without casual conversation, how else could you access these inherited ways of thinking? Formal instruction can teach you the explicit rules of a community, but only through informal dialogue do you learn its unspoken assumptions and emotional rhythms.

Final Thoughts
Without the ability to participate in casual exchanges, I find myself linguistically isolated and psychologically adrift. The fluency I had taken for granted went beyond communication—it was vital for maintaining the social connections that anchor us in community. What appeared superficial has been revealed as essential, visible only when absent.