asperger's and chitchat?

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Interesting - I think I'm quite similar to most of what's been said here. I am quite capable of sustaining small talk with someone, especially if it's someone I know well and am comfortable with, though it's usually brief, not especially satisfying to the other person and usually pretty dull. I realise that pointless discussions about the weather are really about a sense of camaraderie, shared experience and generally required to not seem rude, and I've usually got enough in the tank to keep a conversation like that going for the requisite amount of time. However, if I find a person in any way interesting, then all I really want to do is talk about very big, very controversial issues, religion, politics etc. I can't really understand why people have the facility of speech if they don't want to explore the big issues of humanity to the very limit of their capabilities to understand. I like nothing more when I find someone who's actually capable of a truly objective look at something important and has something relevant to say on it that changes your whole perspective. It always seems impossible for me to get to the point I was going to make before being interrupted, due to a desire to qualify what I'm about to say and include all relevant detail. Argument is important, but people always seem to want to take sides right at the beginning of a discussion and I sometimes long for conversation which is just about trying to mutually understand a subject better. The other person almost always seems to assume you're thrusting your opinion down their throats, and argument is only good when you really understand why the other person holds the views they do. I probably come across all wrong to them, but it's hard to spend all your time thinking in an unnatural way without ever being yourself.

On the subject of empathy, I think I frequently miss reading and comprehending why the person is experiencing the emotion that they are feeling, but I don't usually fail to understand what that emotion is. Other people's emotions tend to leap into me in an involuntary way at times. If I see someone I know crying, I feel tears coming into my eyes and a sense of grief without feeling any actual sense of sadness coming from anywhere, if that makes sense, no actual change of mental state, just like a veneer of emotion without the actual root of it that you'd feel if something bad had happened to you to make you cry. I do sometimes feel nothing when most people would be expected to feel something, though, usually when I can't figure out the logical basis behind an emotion someone is expressing.

when talking to people i normally dont talk to its hard.
its actually really awkward for me.

I guess that it helps that I am really a weather geek. I'm not being fake when I talk about the weather. I am God-honest boring. And I am truly boring-stuff-oriented. (Ask my family and friends.) I am notoriously boring.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I don't really have deep and meaningful conversations with people in real life. My friends wouldn't be able to follow.
I've been getting used to participating more in small talk, but sometimes I can't follow when they talk about guitars or their jobs, so I just sit that one out. A lot of the time they talk about things that don't interest me or I can't relate to.
I'm not the best speaker, so I choose to say very little. I'm much better at communicating through my written words.

I'm an over talker(Mainly oneway conversations) and try to engage in chit chat all the time. After a while the other person must be thinking , "What have I got my self into".

Wish I could chit chat, but I'm terrible at it, take over and talk about something inappropriate or self interested. My single most impairment when engaging in conversation is becoming to intimate/personal with the other person. Have no awareness of boundaries and can conduct a conversation as if I'm relationship building when that is not my intention. I do not distinguish the difference between talking to close family-aquaintences-friends and a retail store attendant.

Prototypically, someone with Asperger's will only really be able to talk to someone about their area of interest, and all in a one-sided manner (lecturing). Using rote-memory to remember phrases and such is possible, and probably the norm for very simple give and take, really. Mechanical interaction with clear questions and answers, like with a doctor, shouldn't be too hard either.

Think of the communication style of someone with [prototypical] AS as an advanced form of echolalia.

A lack of empathy is related to this above, but also other things.

I cannot spontaneously initiate conversation unless with someone as close as a first degree relative. In such cases, it has a purpose or will be about what interests me.

With one of my partners I was particularly comfortable around, my speech consisted of mechanical answers, rarely asking about them (and they didn't mind because they accepted me), asking repetitive questions (related to anxiety), and singing or repeating made-up words or phrases in their presence that communicated particular moods or answers to familiar questions. I never made small talk with them and found it frustrating and painful when they attempted it with me; I'd indicate this clearly and they'd stop. They loved my communication style.

When engaged in exchanges with people such as doctors, supervisors etc., I'll be rigid and unexpressive, constantly checking my body-language so that it's not too odd, trying to remember to give some eye-contact, and trying to process their words, so it gets very draining. I'll find it too unnatural to reply to "How are you?" with the same question or wish them a nice weekend (I'll just reply "OK" or "You too", or nod when they say it to me). Without these gestures in verbal and non-verbal form, it's hard to create rapport, and I rely on the others' social skills to reach me. Some are successful.




I cannot maintain or begin small-talk. It's about connecting to others in a way that's thoroughly unnatural to me. Connecting via interests or deep topics is more natural. Small-talk involves social/emotional bonding words of a sort that make me cringe; like giving cards (and other social gestures).

Typically, such an exchange involves something like what I observed recently between person A and B:

A: Oh, hello B! How's it going? Nice to see/hear from you! Lovely weather isn't it?

B: Yes, isn't it lovely. Let's hope it lasts! I've been catching up on the gardening. [blah blah]

[Conversation continues with persons A and B giving the latest news on family members, empathizing with one another, and joking.]

A: Well, lovely to see/hear from you B! You take care now and [something jokey.]

B: [Laughs.] OK love, nice to see/hear from you! Will speak to you soon!


This is something I've never managed and would not want to because it's not me. (Aside: It seems this communication style involves some form of echolalia too.)




Rarely. I feel compassion and can be triggered to feel certain emotions under certain circumstances, but when it comes to exchanges where others are confiding in me, I won't feel their emotion or pain. I will usually be the one spending hours trying to figure out a solution to the problem, while others are expressing empathy. I sometimes feel concern, rather than empathy.

The few times I can feel empathy are when I'm reading about problems I've experienced myself (such as here), but I have to be in a particular mood as well.

Small talk is something I absolutely cannot do. I can respond to a question I'm asked, but I have no idea what to say in return or how to continue the conversation. If I'm required to engage in small talk for more than a minute or so, things just lapse into silence.

I find it very difficult to make friends, because friendships always seem to need to begin with a great deal of small talk.

There was an excellent post on here recently that pointed out that by beginning with small talk, NTs get things the wrong way around. It's after someone has captured your attention and made you wish to get to know them better by talking about more serious issues that you are likely to be somewhat more interested in hearing about their family life/etc., because by then you care about them as a person. Hearing about how many children they have and where they're going on holiday is highly unlikely to be particularly gripping to you if they are, at that point, a virtual stranger. For instance, if I already know well and care about A and their brother B, then A telling me that B has a new job may be of some interest to me. If, however, I only know A on an extremely casual or professional basis and have never even met B, whyever would A think I would be remotely bothered?

What I find so particularly frustrating, though, is that it is not even as if they just require the small talk as an 'opener' but after a while can then move on to a proper 'topic', which would be a little more understandable to me. A great many of NTs don't seem to want anything but small talk. They're content to prattle pointlessly about nothing for an hour at a time, but if you attempt to discuss anything in detail, they try to either escape or move the conversation back to small talk at the earliest possible opportunity. I had considered in the past that the problem might stem from my talking about things they were simply not interested in... so I attempted, difficult as it sometimes was, to create the topic by elaborating on things they had mentioned. Virtually the same thing happened. The vast majority still did not want to do more than skim across the surface of any subject.

i define "small talk" as conversations that are designed by the initiator to last less than a few minutes.
small talk is just a superficial glossy time filler that people do, and they display their "emotions" in the gap while they talk small.

so when someone says "the weather has been strange", they are giving me fodder to talk about, and if they seem interested i will start talking about my idea of the thermal dynamics of global warming etc. usually, they just want to be seen to say something "friendly and normal", and they smile while saying it, and if you start to actually analyze the weather, the friendly expression drops from their faces and they look at their watch and say things like "that's super mark!! keep up the good work!!" and they look for some other person who will dance more un-tetheredly in social conversation with them.

true small talk is talking about famous people and fashion and sports results and things that people want to spend only a few minutes talking about.

it is the mind of the talker that is small rather than the subject they talk about.

for example, a woman came into the tea room after arriving late at 11:00am (when i went in to the office a few times ago) and she said "god!! the traffic is awful on that new road!" (there was a new highway opened a week before that replaced the old road to my work).
she went on to say " i never thought i was going to get here".

i drove there also that morning on the same road, and i noticed the RTA programmers had not sequenced the traffic lights yet, and there was an inordinate amount of "green light" time allocated to otherwise empty cross streets. i speculated that there was a bug in the original sequencing program (driven by data from pressure plates in the roadway) and i wondered how stupid they have to be to open the highway without a proper traffic control sequencing program.
i wondered much about that on the way to work that morning.

when the lady said she had a lot of trouble on that road, i was happy she introduced an interesting topic to talk about, and i contributed my thoughts about my trip to work, but she did not want to listen.
she said "oh i'm sure there's some reason!! ! i hope it's fixed by tomorrow".
i tried to continue about the traffic light sequencing problem and she left the tea room saying "yep! i think you've nailed it there". she was not interested in the slightest.

she was talking small, and i was talking big, and we were talking about the same thing, so there is no such thing as "small talk" really.
small is the mind of the initiator of a sentence if they are just using words as a social grace to "bond" or whatever they do with their "knowing looks".

oh well, i was glad she did not want me to expand upon my observations because i was otherwise busy.

People attempt small talk with me but it's weird, man. I often wish they would say nothing or just "hi" because most the time it seems like they don't want a response. It's so weird. I really dislike talking to people. I am very stoical. Unless it's on the phone. Then I have no problems telling it all.
The thing that makes communication difficult in person is people asking something then acting like they don't really want a reply. I end up thinking why they ask in the first place?
My way is to ask something I want an answer for or just not ask, period. It's hard for me to relate to someone asking a question and not really wanting to hear an answer. I don't get that because I would elect to not ask in the first place, but that's just me.

I have gigantic problems with smalltalk. Its pointless and shallow and whenever someone starts doing it to me i just answer short and unintrested with a "Yes." and maby nods. I do nothing to keep the conversation alive.

The worst thing is that some of the jobs i apply for are consultant jobs and social skills are a part of the job and i have to put ut with more of that crap .

So - what about the person who speaks in jokes and rhymes and one-liners. I've been thinking about this. I have heard that Robin Williams is a rumored aspie. I saw RV the other day (which was funnier than it looks) with this in mind.

I can't say I am as funny as Robin Williams, but my mind and mouth work like his. I don't process conversation like most people (NT's?) and my mind jumps to other associations - sometimes barely related to the topic at hand - in the form of one-liners.

More often than not, people "get me" and laugh. If not - if I lose them or go over their head - I'll soften it. If that doesn't work - I'll panic and get the hell out of there.

Is this aspie behavior? I don't necessarily dive too deep - of if I do, its a little nugget at a time.

B9 ^ That lady just sounds like a rude b***h. Especially since she was late. She just sounds like she's inconsiderate by nature. Your conversational tidbits were perfectly justified and relevant. Its not as if you were yammering on for five minutes non-stop about the signals.

I choose to feel that I'm not a slave to my AS characteristics.

Life is a series of choices. I can choose to make small talk or not. It bores me & seems pointless - but here's where empathy comes in (at least, my version of it): I understand that small talk is an essential need that NTs have. I have to deal with NTs in my life (for instance, if I want to keep my job) - so it's important to me to allow them to feel relatively comfortable around me. So I will chit-chat with them from time to time.

I can talk about much more than my area of interest - and I often do. Or maybe it's that I'm interested in much more than just my "special" interests. I can curb my impulses to lecture - and even when lecturing, I've learned to be engaging & even entertaining (that's because I have training as an educator & performer.)

I think I can (and do) make AS work for me - and at the same time, I think I can choose to defy my initial impulse in any given situation.

Sounds like me, too. I don't relate to being all-consumed by my areas of interest. I have such a VAST range of interests, I can talk about pretty much everything. Maybe that's the ADHD + life experience.

I also agree with you on the performing side. I think its something we older aspies did to compensate. The term class clown come to mind. Some people use humor to compensate for size or other physical "differences". We've used it to make up our intellectual "differences" as a means to fit in and assimilate into society. Since humor takes intelligence - being a funny aspie seems a natural. And the mixed up brain wiring helps to make it original. Also - cracking jokes keeps people from asking you random personal questions. Its a way of steering and controlling the conversation.

I've always had a problem speaking out of turn. Still do it. But I've learn to do it with witty one-liners so people don't mind and its allowed me to excel in business!

PS: I can't tell a joke - to save my life. I can't remember them. But I can tell a funny story and whip out one-liners with super human strength.

That's totally the way I am! I've never been able to tell jokes (even if I COULD remember them) - but it's always been incredibly easy for me to think of humorous things to say.

b9, I think that woman was rude. You weren't even just elaborating on a topic she herself had started, you were attempting to offer her an explanation of something that had caused her a problem.

Have you noticed, though, that even when the subject itself is acceptable, there still seems to be an 'unacceptable' way to talk about it? It's perfectly alright, for instance, to make a few comments about a certain actor that don't go beyond what one can glean from a solitary feature in the latest gossip rag, but if you happen to actually know quite a lot about that actor and make this clear by your conversation, most people start to look decidedly confused/uncomfortable. And once again, the subject is quickly dropped, lest it actually turn into a proper discussion.