As a writer/poet, the hipster small-talk-hating thing really baffles me, because they completely miss the significance that’s woven through small talk with someone you’re close to, or even a random stranger. 

There’s an incredibly moving poem called The Lanyard by Billy Collins and in talking about it, he describes how you have to take on the large topic of a mother’s love with a smaller point of entry, a more manageable, concrete image – he uses a seemingly insignificant anecdote about making a lanyard at summer camp as a child to sculpt this all-encompassing description of what motherhood is like, and the sacrifices involved, and the disconnect between mother and child – the child as the recipient of her boundless, unconditional love, who does not realize that the mother receives very little in return for this sacrificial gift. 

In poetry, that point of entry to the deeper topic can be an image – in conversation, it is small talk. 

There’s something short-sighted about saying that you hate small talk and want to talk about death and the universe, without realizing that small talk is the universe and that it’s a way of probing around possible topics to find an access point to the next level deeper of conversation, and then from there you go a level deeper and so on until you’re at the heart of the shared experiences and beliefs and humanity between the speakers, and you’ve gotten there using the map you got during small talk. 

Maybe I’m just not disillusioned with small talk yet and in a few years I too will be groaning about how I’m done talking about the weather and ready to jump right into discussion of solipsism or whatever, who knows. I just think people tend to undervalue it.