Mutual hobbies or forced interaction.
If I’ve got a hobby in common with someone, then usually we can talk. I’ve worked with my teammates for 2 years now, and I faked being pleasant until I actually started to like them.
Otherwise I just really don’t like talking to people I don’t know. The people I do know know how to take what I say, so I’m more at ease with them.
Who says we do?
I don’t want to get to know most people… and for those I want to get to know, I know where to go. I’ve enjoyed the company of fellow nerds in a few cocktail parties but, you see, they were nerds-only parties (IT personnel in a chemical company, Chemistry faculty and students for a couple colleges). In most cocktail parties, I just can’t bring myself to give a flat fart about the intestinal state of someone’s pouch poochie (although, apparently, I can simulate interest quite well, having been trained in the Art by two insane grandparents and an insane mother).
I said I didn’t like it, not that I didn’t do it. I have quite a few close friends, and don’t generally feel the need to deliberately expand my social circle. I meet people at work and through other friends, but I generally don’t enjoy small talk, unless something clicks, and we start having a real conversation. I differentiate that from small talk.
I like chatting with strangers - people in the supermarket queue, someone I invite to share my table at lunch, the person serving me; but I hate it when I am talking to people I know or work with…it’s just wasting time.
I chat with everyone…every chance I get. I work at home so I miss the small talk around the water cooler. I love it! I could chat a suicide off a ledge.
I’m with the pro-crowd. I enjoy it and find it useful to practice. Since I’m not a naturally social person, it’s definitely a skill I’ve had to acquire over the years.
I didn’t use to enjoy it that much when I was younger. I’m glad I changed my mind–there really are a lot fewer boring people in the world than you might think–it’s mostly a matter of digging (carefully) until you find the interesting bits.
Failing that, I also like to see if I can make people laugh hard enough to snork water out their noses. Good way to pass time on dates. 
Depends what you mean by “small talk”.
I enjoying conversing with strangers at parties. I rarely consider it “small” talk however. Where they’re from, what they do. . .I usually find that interesting.
In which direction?
I like it on my own selfish terms. I find small talk is worth it just to get in there and see if someone has something more interesting that they want to share. I really enjoy it when you’re seated across from a near total stranger at some dinner party, invest five minutes in mindless chatter and then you’re drawn into the first intellectual conversation you’ve had in weeks about global politics or world economics, or whatever. Those are the conversations worth having, and they make a genuine and long-lasting impression on those that have them.
But small talk for the sake of just social flitting is tedious and annoying. If all anyone has to talk about is the neighborhood they just moved into, residential land values and where they’ve sent their kids to school, then I just kind of nod my way through it.
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. It depends on my mood. I’m somewhat of a reserved man and often like to be left alone. But sometimes I enjoy meeting people and chatting with them.
I find it absolutely painful. When in such situations, I am regularly impressed at how much my opinion of myself lowers as I find myself unwilling or incapable of exchanging pleasant meaningless banter with people I don’t know. Especially when I compare my discomfort with the glib ease exhibited by most folk around me.
Which is odd, because among my friends I have a rep of being downright loquacious.
That all depends on their ability to small talk!
Exactly! It’s not that I don’t like talking to people I don’t know. I just don’t like “small talk”. I don’t like talking for the sake of talking. To me, that is what “small talk” is. I would much rather converse about a common interest where an intelligent discussion ensues.
I’m not painfully shy, I can strike up conversations with complete strangers. In fact I like it. The OP was about small talk, which I despise.
People that want to chat about bullshit bother me.
But isn’t that what 90% of this message board is? Take a look at some of the thread titles in MPSIMS and Cafe Society!
Probably. But what I consider bullshit and what you consider bullshit may vary widely. An occasionally there is some really funny shit on this board.
I hate small talk. I’m an introvert and enjoy having a few close friends (usually in one- or two-person doses at a time, though I don’t mind up to four or five if they’re all good friends) but I absolutely despise the whole “chit chat about useless information for five minutes and then flit over to the next person to exchange equally useless information”…later, rinse, repeat).
That’s why I don’t enjoy parties. I like to get to know people one-on-one. If I like somebody, I want to make a deeper connection with them than “Nice weather–how many kids/dogs/cats do you have–where do you work?” If I don’t like them, even that slight bit of interaction is more than I have energy for.
Note that I’m not cold or rude with anybody, even if I know I don’t like them or that we have absolutely nothing in common. I try to be as polite as I can. But small talk is draining for me. Particularly tough for me is that, as a female, I often get corralled by other females, most of whom have and are interested in talking about kids–a topic that I have absolutely no meaningful contribution to (nor interest in).
At parties, which we rarely attend because most of our friends are nerds too and don’t throw them, I usually end up in a corner with the spouse and maybe a friend or two, chatting about geek things and wondering when would be the soonest we could politely leave.
No, I despise it. I have a very low tolerance for social situations and usually I don’t care what other people have to say. Most of the time I spend socializing I am thinking about how much I’d like to finish the book I’m reading instead, or trying to play with the host’s pets, or just wishing I could sit in a corner until it’s time for me to leave. I can fake being social fairly okay, but it knocks me the hell out.
Thank god for the invention of the board game. The only way I feel at all comfortable at parties is if there’s a structured activity to do, so I can focus on that instead of “oh shit, did I look interested enough, when are they going to stop talking, everyone here hates me don’t they?”
No, I don’t much like it. I don’t like most social situations. I’m very, very self concious. This is why I drink.
Mostly being in the right place at the right time around the right person, which doesn’t happen often.
I made 1 friend in 3 years of college, to give you an idea how often that works.
I’m not a fan of small talk, either, for many of the reasons already listed - however:
a) I do get a happy feeling when I feel like I managed to pull it off without flubbing it all to hell. Kind of like how I don’t like to go to the gym, but as I’m walking away after a good workout, I feel very kick-ass and lovely.
b) I suppose it depends on the topic. I mean, if the small talk turns to, say, the latest episode of Ice T’s Rap School - which I’d say is definitely still in the realm of “insignificant chatter” - then it might be more interesting to me. Because come on - who doesn’t love Phil the Agony?