Thoughts on why small talk is so uniquely painful
Thoughts on why small talk is so uniquely painful
Image text: @agnieszkasshoes: "Part of what makes small talk so utterly debilitating for many of us who are neurodivergent is that having to smile and lie in answer to questions like, "how are you?" is exhausting to do even once, and society makes us do it countless times a day."
@LuckyHarmsGG: "It's not just the lie, it's the energy it takes to suppress the impulse to answer honestly, analyze whether the other person wants the truth, realize they almost certainly don't, and then have to make the DECISION to lie, every single time. Over and over. Decision fatigue is real"
@agnieszkasshoes: "Yes! The constant calculations are utterly exhausting - and all under the pressure of knowing that if you get it "wrong" you will be judged for it!"
My addition: For me, in addition to this, more specifically it's the energy to pull up that info and analyze how I am. Like I don't know the answer to that question and that's why it's so annoying. Now I need to analyze my day, decide what parts mean what to me and weigh the average basically, and then decide if that's appropriate to share/if the person really wants to hear the truth of that, then pull up my files of pre-prepared phrases for the question that fits most closely with the truth since not answering truthfully is close to impossible for me.
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I’m not neurodivergent, but small talk is fundamentally a conversation with no other purpose than to maintain, build and express social relationships. There’s no substantive information being passed. So I guess it is a concentrated dose of some people’s worst nightmare.
By the way - there’s nothing wrong in a brief truthful answer if you a feeling a bit down, or you pulled a muscle in your neck or whatever
I am neurodivergent, so maybe you can explain for me how a conversation devoid of content builds a relationship.
"How are you?"
"Good/fine/ok, how are you?"
"I'm good."It's the same forced, templated script everyone uses 100 times a day just to navigate being alive, and will be forgotten as soon as you walk away.
It made more sense when I started thinking of humans as animals. In that context it's like dogs sniffing butts or ants touching antennae when they meet. I eventually settled on a few generic responses that felt less fake than "fine" (idk why "fine" rankles me so much but "not too bad" doesn't, but eh) but didn't elicit further questions, and that made it slightly easier.
For me, fine would be my preferred generic response to these questions because that's generally how I actually am.
To me, good means actively happy. But generally speaking I'm more neutral. If there's nothing that has made me actively happy at that moment, and I'm also not actively annoyed or upset about something, then I'm just existing, neutral.
But people tend to question you when you do that. "Fine? Not good? What's wrong?🤔🥺" Which is annoying because I thought we were playing the game where you ask a question you don't want the answer to... But they want you to answer in very specific socially acceptable ways and fine is apparently negative to NT.
My favorite response is in Russian. Im Not Russian and don't even know if this is actually culturally accurate but being taught Russian in America we learned: "как дела?" (Kak Dela?- how goes it?) "нормальный" (normal'nyy - Normal¯\_(
~)_/¯)Does "Fine, thanks, and you?" sound negative to native English speakers? That was the standard phrase we were thought since primary school as the standard response to "How are you?", so it's surprising to hear that it's not the standard response (maybe it's a US vs UK thing, since I was taught British English at first). relevant video
My answer in Turkish "Aynı" (the same) when asked by friends and family sounds similar to the Russian answer you mentioned. Also it's more acceptable in informal settings to give an answer like "yuvarlanıp gidiyoruz" (literal translation: we're rolling; actual translation: it's going) or "sürünüyoruz" ("we're crawling", but a more relevant translation would be "struggling").
"Fine, thanks, and you?" Sounds fine (ha) I think but "I'm fine" leaves a lingering doubt like you're holding back from saying something negative for some reason. And heck, maybe I'm the only one who was harassed for saying that, but I get this anxiety now every time I'm inclined to use it that the person will ask me what's wrong that I avoid it to my own annoyance.
I love learning languages, thank you for sharing the Turkish! That's really interesting