Ecessive Small Talk

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Small talk often be described as repetive conversation relating to the weather and on anything that leaves a feeling that you havent learned anything from the conversation and that it was a complete waste of time listening.

Well small talk is used more frequently than just the weather, in fact I hear it all the time in the news and on the tv or on the bus!! In fact I have decided to add some of the boring and useless conversations dominated in the UK today, perhaps you recognise some of this?

Weather
Parking Tickets and traffic wardens
Speed Cameras
Slimming and dieting
news about the US and not Europe
Reality TV shows.
Well, I'm having difficulty finding any more, but you know about this stuff anyway that seems to circle around the news everysingle week, it is boring and I want to here about the news outside the UK. Interesting cultures for a change!! !

Another annoying fixation of the tele is reality TV, dancing, singing, Big Brother, skipping, walking, IQ, it is complete horse radish. Why would BBC or Itv1 show such a thing? I don't have any interest in how good people are at singing or dancing it is completely boring, and I'm beginning to think I have wasted my money on the TV.
My mind disagrees with British culture and our world inside this small island. Europe is next door and we don't pay any attention to it. We just talk about the boring activities within and lock and choose to ignore the more interesting and DIFFERENT activities and news outside.
I am really annoyed and bored of the repetivness of teenagers, oh yeah I'm learning to drive, taking my A levels and enjoy football and drinking, your no different to the next 10000.

So after my release of my anger with sameness, what annys you about small talk and everything that is boring you about your culture or country and the people advertising your place of birth?

thanks for posting this. I feel the same way, but im an american high school student. Here in america, the only thing everybody at school talks about is PS2 and video games, Football and baseball and sports and gerneral and gossiping about who is gay. Since i dont like or talk about this stuff everyone calls me a "nerd". Everybody is like a sheep cause sports and stuff its all they talk or care about. if you dont talk about that stuff, you're seen as an outcast by everyone else. It really gets old. On american tv, all the news stations(fox, abc, cbs,nbc, cnn)sound the same. Every night on the news they talk about bush and iraq, and gasoline, and dogs and cats for adoption. we talk about the rest of the world thoggh even though we like to think were the best country in trhe world, but were not.

What aggravates me most about small talk, is when for example in a large store the cashier asks semi-cheerfully how you're doing while they're wrapping up your purchases. This happened to me a few weeks ago in a toy store. There was a huge line of people behind me, and the cashier smiles at me pseudo-friendly and asks in a semi-cheerful voice "How are you?". As if they care. I don't even think she would have noticed even if I had said "I'm terrible, I'm going to die soon"; she would probably have smiled and said "That's nice to hear", totally unaware of what I just said.

That's the kind of small-talk I dislike the most. Or when you're standing in an elevator and someone says "The weather is terrible today, isn't it?", while that person probably doesn't really give a damn what you think about the weather. Maybe it's just that silence makes some people feel awkward or anxious, and therefore they feel compelled to say something - anything. But not me. I'd rather say nothing than say something completely pointless...

Small talk is not about transferring information, but about greasing the gears of society.
It may seem pointless, but have it's purpose in making people like you, and people who like you are more likely to do good things to you, perhaps if you need their help, for example.

That's funny because I was about to make a post on the same topic. Someone in my office is a small-talk "addict". I feel bad because she is a nice person and she's just trying but I think she will eventually lead me to snap. She cannot walk by my desk without some sort of innane comment/question: "It's much warmer out today", "going out of town this weekend?", "did you drive today or take the bus?"... Come on, really what is the point? Are people supposed to be receptive to this??

I used to talk excessive smalltalk when I was excessively nervous... I think I was kind of hoping for someone to see that I was trying to make friends with them and want to be friends with me too, and say "It's okay, you don't have to talk all that excessive smalltalk... let's have a REAL conversation!"

If you look at a network card on a computer that is not being used or a router on a network of computers that aren't being used, you'll see that there is occasional traffic. Sparing the technical details, that traffic often amounts to, “Hey, I’m still here. You still there?”

In many ways, I think this is the equivalent of small talk. The point is not to exchange the overt information. When the clerk at the grocery asks how you are today, he/she really means, “Hey, I’m engaged, even if only to a small degree. You have my attention.”