Why...when it comes to social chit chat...

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Moondust is entirely correct about the function of social chit-chat. Since it serves an important function to they (us, since I am one) it will not disappear anymore than the visual arts will disappear for sighted people (an excellent analogy that Moondust made). NTs who are attempting to have a conversation with a person they know to have AS can suppress this in the same way that sighted people can suppress the urge to use visual descriptors when talking to a blind person or say "look at this and I will show you how it works". Two things have to be in place in order for that to happen:

1)The NTs need to know that social chit-chat is counter-productive in a conversation with an AS person. While this may seem obvious on WP, it is actually one of the features of AS that is least known to the general public, even to those who have some familiarity with the subject. Not understanding social rules gets the most press and is what the general public is most likely to know if they know anything at all. Sensory sensitivities and meltdowns get the second most press and will be the next most likely thing for the general public to know. Since not understanding social rules is the feature NTs are most likely to know, AS dislike for small talk will probably get miscategorized by the NT as not knowing how to do it. Inherent dislike of social chit chat (rather than simply disliking it because of not being able to do it well) is something it took me awhile on WP to realize and is something NTs are unlikely to realize unless they are married to, best friends with, or otherwise closely related to an AS person or at a PhD level of researching AS. It will take considerable education until this feature is well known. And there will be a lag period when inherent dislike will be taken as dislike for a skill not yet acquired and therefore difficult.

2)And now the truly hard part which Moondust has also talked about: the NT person has to be motivated to adjust their conversation style when talking to an AS person. They (we) are motivated only to the extent that a conversation with an AS person is necessary or desirable. If (when?) it becomes widely known that AS people dislike social chit-chat, most NT people will simply not talk to AS people unless absolutely necessary because the need that social chit chat fills (as correctly described by Moondust) will be unfilled. To a great extent this is already happening even in the absence of that knowledge. As long as the number of people who need social chit chat (which includes BAPs) greatly outnumbers the people who need to not have social chit chat, this will continue.

Framing this as a social justice issue whereby AS people have just as much right as NTs to have their needs filled is one way to go about this. But the solution will be social isolation for anyone who doesn't present as somebody that NTs really need to talk to. As long as NTs greatly outnumber AS people, the logical way for an NT to fill an AS person's need for no social chit chat is to not talk to them unless there is a requirement for information exchange. If AS people greatly outnumbered NT people, NTs would abide listening to boring monologues on special interests just to have their need for social contact met. But as it is now, any NT can have their need for social contact met by the 99% of people who are also NT and share the need for social chit chat. The AS person gets shut out of purely social conversation because of the radical mismatch. You can (eventually) change society enough that it is common knowledge that AS people dislike social chit chat and should not be engaged in it. Then NTs will know not to try and the ones adhereing to this new PC tenet will do their utmost to not engage an AS person in social chit chat. However, meaningful conversations will not rush in to fill the vacuum unless there is a shared interest or another compelling reason to have a meaningful conversation. NTs will just practice conversational avoidance of AS people as currently already happens a lot.

Options:

1)have kids with other AS people in the hopes of increasing the AS population

2)seek out other AS people in real life and make the sort of conversational compromise that goldfish earlier describes

3)become a lecturer/academic/field expert so that others will want to hear all you have to say on the topic

4)become close friends/partner with an NT (or NTs) that are somewhat quirky- they will still initially need the social chit chat (for reasons explained by Moondust) but will ultimately be able to dispense with it to make a specific accomodation for you because they want to be with you (does it actually work that way? Only AS people who have done this will know). This is what I was talking about with initial points 1) and 2). Friendship/partnership provide the motivation to make this accomodation. It could and should also happen in professional situations such as with doctors, educators, therapists familiar with this need for no social chit chat. Does it happen this way?

5)other things I haven't thought of

Not An Option:
NT society will change so that nobody will engage in anything but a meaningful conversation. That won't happen.

Why am I expected to spend hours listening to inane social chit chat that I am not interested in when they are not willing to spend time listening to me rattle on about my latest fascination.

It does not seem fair that I am frowned upon for wanting to chat about my interest when I am supposed to accept that it is normal for them to torture my brain for hours with their need for pointless nattering about nothing of any real substance at all.

I am told off if I bore them by going on about my favourite subject, but they don't care if they bore me with their incessant chit chat.

[...]

My question is:

When it comes to societies tendency to insist that we must spend time making social chit chat rather than talking about our interests do you think it is a bit of a double standard?

At what point does social chit-chat become not social chit-chat though?

If an atomic bomb was dropped somewhere and it came up in conversation as chit-chat, would talking about the effects of radiation poisoning on people make it not social chit-chat?

Can you give me an example of how a social chit-chat type conversation about an atomic bomb being dropped would go?

Stop with complaining:

Hang around with neurotypicals and you'll learn to talk about nothing.
In the mean time, use your intelectual brain for reading about social books, etc.

Janissy when you state your "not an option" piece. I think our best bet is to follow some of Harry Browne's Tenets. What do you think?
http://eiiiforum.com/picsfromusers/howifoundfreedom.pdf

I think we're dealing with human nature. As an example, on ebay rules were passed that people are not allowed to sell coupons. People are able to do so anyway. How do they do it? They do it by selling the service of cutting them out not the coupons.

My point is one can pass laws and rules but in the end the law and rule is as only good as it is enforced. I believe we're fighting human nature which is a losing battle. I think Harry Browne's doctrines is our best bet, what do you think?

It stops being social chit-chat when something serious with profound effects has just happened. In the event of an immediate emergency, people dispense with social chit-chat entirely for safety's sake. "FIRE" or "SHOOTER" will be yelled without preamble. When something serious has just happened social chit-chat stops being social chit-chat and becomes a way to process what just happened.


When something serious has happened, what would otherwise be social chit-chat morphs into a way to process what just happened. Talking about the effects of radiation poisoning on people who are currently dying is no longer social chit-chat. It's a way to process what just happened.




I can't because my grandparents are no longer alive. If they were still alive I could ask them (after some social chit-chat of my own to lead up to the question) since they were adults when that actually happened and they might remember. People tend to remember really serious things and the minutiae that surrounds them. I haven't watched any World War II movies recently but there must be several that give dialogue examples of how the scriptwriters envisioned small talk morphing into processing the event after it happened.

However I can give you a related example that I personally remember because people tend to remember such things. I am in the US and 9/11 had a similar effect on small talk. I was in a grocery store when it happened. The store manager wheeled a TV out of the employee break room and to the front of the store. I stood around the TV watching it with employees and other customers. We didn't watch in silence. We would turn to each other and say "Oh MY God!! ! That's horrible. Did you SEE that? Oh my God! What's going on? Who did this?" That isn't scoial chit-chat. It's what social chit-chat morphs into when something serious has happened. It isn't information exchange because of course we all did see that since we're all looking at the same TV. But it serves the function of processing the event.

Afterwards I went home and watched more on TV but eventually the need to converse with other people to process it overcame me. I went outside and just walked until I randomly saw another person. Our conversation went something like, "Did you hear what happened? Can you believe it? Who did this?" This wasn't typical social chit-chat but it served the need to connect that social chit-chat serves. The need to connect was particularly intense after that happened and it is not surprising that the very first person I ran into had that same need.

I just skimmed(it's a long pdf) but it looks like his overall message is that you live your own life the way that best fits your needs rather than getting angry that other people's human nature puts them in conflict with your needs. That sounds like a good idea. It is also what other posters have advised in this and similar threads.

No one's complaining either

However I can give you a related example that I personally remember because people tend to remember such things. I am in the US and 9/11 had a similar effect on small talk. I was in a grocery store when it happened. The store manager wheeled a TV out of the employee break room and to the front of the store. I stood around the TV watching it with employees and other customers. We didn't watch in silence. We would turn to each other and say "Oh MY God!! ! That's horrible. Did you SEE that? Oh my God! What's going on? Who did this?" That isn't scoial chit-chat. It's what social chit-chat morphs into when something serious has happened. It isn't information exchange because of course we all did see that since we're all looking at the same TV. But it serves the function of processing the event.

Afterwards I went home and watched more on TV but eventually the need to converse with other people to process it overcame me. I went outside and just walked until I randomly saw another person. Our conversation went something like, "Did you hear what happened? Can you believe it? Who did this?" This wasn't typical social chit-chat but it served the need to connect that social chit-chat serves. The need to connect was particularly intense after that happened and it is not surprising that the very first person I ran into had that same need.

Hand-shakes are a remainder of an era when men used them to show they were not carrying a weapon - a friendly move. Chit-chat fulfills a similar role between NTs. Calling what we don't understand "pointless" is no less prejudice than we Aspies are subjected to.

Knowledge is power. If you're content calling them "stupid/shallow/selfish/etc" and search no further for what's really going on, you disempower yourself. Meaning you're much less apt to cope with reality and succeed in your goals.

You assume we've got NTs to 'hang around with' in the first place - I haven't

and that we even want to learn to talk about nothing - I don't

No one's complaining either

If you don't want to give (compromise), you can't realistically expect anything in return.

If you don't want to learn to make social chit-chat you can't reasonably expect NTs to learn to listen to your special interest monologues.

If you find NTs interolerable chances are they feel the same about you.

Certainly from my own experience most NTs never move beyond that, so they really are stupid, shallow and selfish - I can see exactly what is going on and it doesn't disempower me. The main benefit from learning how to chit chat would be to "fit in", but this "fitting in" just involves even more chit chat! So unless I learn how to chit chat, I won't be welcome to join in the chit chat. Forgive me for not wanting to waste my life....

I was at home when I heard of that, and after finishing feeding my pet, I turned on the TV. And watched it for the rest of the day. My mother kept saying "This is so unreal. It is completely unreal, don't you think?" I was anything but unaffected by what I saw, but I didn't have the need to go on about how unreal it was. In fact I wasn't even ready to. I needed to internalise it, react to it inside myself, before I could even start to think about talking about it. (Not that I ever did, a few comments online years later, and a few comments to my mother was pretty much the gist of it. It surprised me that I reacted so much, because human tragedies just don't affect me usually. I'm very indifferent to people beyond family. Anyway....) All I could offer was a shocked nod.
A day or so later as I walked my pet, I noticed a strange atmosphere. People just acted differently, like we were all connected and knew each other, and for the first time I understood what my grandparents' generation meant when they talked about the feeling of union in the population. It's the first time I felt any type of connectedness at all (family not included), of being on the same wavelength, and shortlived though it was, it was an interesting experience.
Do you think my need to process it internally while you needed to talk about it is due to aspie/NT differences or intro/extro-vert differences?

The only other human not personal thing to hit me that hard was the terror we saw here 22nd July 2011, which was strengthened by close proximity and the fact that I both felt and heard the bomb go off. Luckily everyone I love were with me or nearby so I knew I hadn't lost anyone. At the time I was chatting with someone in Australia and he kept nagging at me for details. When he logged off due to time differences I was relieved because I found him asking to be a bit of a nuisance. I did have some more meaningful exchanges with my parents this time, maybe because it was close at home, and maybe that was part of the reason why he annoyed me more than was helpful, he was too far away and he wasn't Norwegian, so it didn't affect him other than how it affected me. He's never been here, while I saw the streets I know so well looking like a war zone. Streets we use when downtown, so there was a very strong sensation of "it could have been any of us". This time I was the one to say how unreal it was (not copying my mother from 10 years prior, but because I meant it). We went downtown to see for ourselves (I especially needed to in order to understand and process it), and pay our respects. I have never seen so many people in one place be so quiet. It felt very dignified and solemn.
Anyway, what I was trying to say was that that one made me feel like talking more about it. It took me a little while before I opened up more and talked about how much it affected me, which surprised me since I wasn't directly affected and I thought I couldn't be shocked like that again. I thought it would only happen once.

I wonder why I had the need to talk at all after 22/7 (and I also processed it a lot online), while I didn't 10 years earlier. Do you have any idea why they were different?
If I didn't have anyone nearby this time, I think I might have needed to go out, too, like you did, because I needed someone. But I wouldn't be likely to want to talk, I think I'd just want to not be alone atm. I would definitely have participated in the public gatherings that followed if I didn't have my loved ones to be with.


Sorry to go off topic I just really wanted to ask since it came up.