27 Aug 2009, 3:49 pm
CyclopsSummers wrote:
I dislike talking about the weather... Here in the Netherlands, the weather is everyone's favourite small talk topic. Everyone will talk about the weather to break the ice. It does sometimes come up when I'm in a store, but I'll just nod in agreement when they say something like 'nice weather'. The main 'problem' I have with talking about weather is that I seem to disagree with most people that sunny weather is supposedly 'nice' weather, while rain or cold are 'bad weather'. 
Those aren't bad things, actually.
Since it's someone I never expect to talk to more than a couple times in my life, and for not much longer than a couple minutes each time, it's not like I am committing myself to talk forever about a subject I'm not interested in (and I am only rarely interested in the weather.)
It's the same here in Kentucky - many people talk about the weather to break the ice. I bet it's the same for most people around the world, in fact. It's so common, it's an easy way to try on a little "normal" for a while.
Around here, saying something positive about rain and cold seems to surprise most people, but it doesn't ruin the conversation - it actually seems to make what starts out as a standard ice breaker a more interesting conversation for them.
It seems to me so far that the key to making small talk work is to avoid spending more than maybe three sentences on any particular subject.
I have in the past (before I started actually experimenting with small talk) been doomed to listen to one or two people talk almost forever "to" me about the weather in a one-sided conversation, but it hasn't happened in a long time. In retrospect, they might have been Aspies with a weather obsession or something.
The other stand-by ice-breakers around here seem to be to talk about work, about mutual acquaintances, and about sports. Work seems to work well if at least one party knows what the other does for a living, but mutual acquaintances is difficult for me (as I don't know very many people), and sports are impossible as I don't really understand them.
