Flashback... January 2003 Smalltalk, much ado about nothing.

This is something I wrote in January 2003... I think it's one of the funniest things I've written, and I actually laughed out loud when I was reading it. Your sense of humor may not allow you to respond in such a hilarious way, but anyway, I digress... for your reading pleasure (Maybe My visitor from Jakarta will actually post):
(note: edited only for spelling errors and clarity.)

smalltalk - Much Ado About Nothing

Smalltalk... what is it? It’s a common word. In fact, it’s actually a real word. There’s even a dictionary entry which says: “light or casual conversation. See CHITCHAT.”

Now I’m not usually one to disagree with Mr. Webster and his word definitions, but this time, I take exception. According to Mr. Webster a conversation is : “oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas”

So how can smalltalk be considered "conversation?" It can't. Smalltalk is none of these. Therefore, it should not be considered “conversation.”

I sense, however, that some of you disagree. Some of you perhaps think that asking
“What’s New?” or
“How are you?” is technically expressing a “sentiment. Let me correct you here, and set matters straight... These are not sentiments. They are filler. They're like the sawdust they put in McDonalds cheeseburgers. No nutritional value.

Oftentimes, we ask:
“How are you?” and expect the answer to be
“I’m fine, everything’s hunky-dory, how are you?”
No one actually wants to hear that you’re a sniveling bag of sickness, though we will sympathize with you. In the end, we’ll say something painfully trite like “hang in there,” or “don’t worry, you’ll be fine” and promptly look for an exit. Don’t get me wrong, we CAN show true concern; just don’t lacquer it with the ugly banality of smalltalk.

Sometimes in smalltalk we make an observation and... well that just gets you in trouble. Imagine making an observation on someone’s shoes or the wonderful scent they’re wearing. You ask the name of the scent and then either forget its name or put it on your shopping list and then you’re now out of material to talk about. The worst-case scenario is that they say they’re not wearing anything scented and so you're forced to therefore conclude it must be the smell of their underarm deodorant. imagine how THAT conversation would continue:

“...so, then it’s your deodorant that has that lovely smell.”
“Yes, I suppose so, I do wear the stuff.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest that you didn’t!” You reply, and fumbling for words you utter:
“So then is it the winter fresh or the spring meadows scent, and what brand do you wear?”
After realizing that you are now staring at their underarms, they utter:
“I really don’t know… it was on sale”

After 2 or 3 minutes of discussing whether stick or roll-on or spray is better and arguing over whether anti-perspirant causes Alzheimer’s disease or not, you realize you’ve just had a small conversation about masking unpleasant body odours. And you also feel like you should be on a Consumer Reports user survey Panel.

As far as I have discovered, smalltalk is just that… small insignificant talk uttered in rapid succession, according to a tried and tested formula that will elicit the standard formulaic response. It’s like practicing math equations with friends. You say something like “how are you”, add a question mark and it equals what you thought they were going to say anyway: “I’m fine.” When they do actually say something you don’t expect like, “Oh, I’m horrible,” your mind goes into jeopardy mode:

bzzzzt, wrong answer, lets go to friend number 2, please pick a topic.
"I'll take proper answers to smalltalk questions for 400$, please"

Conversations should be like game shows, at least we’d come out with some money at the end of them.

So why do we do smalltalk? I suppose it’s because we’re social animals… [yes, we’re animals, no laughing you at the back] If we weren’t, we’d be more like cats [Don’t believe Disney, cats are loners] or lizards.

We also wouldn’t care what others thought of us. We’d eat, we’d sleep, hunt mice, bask in the sun and mind our own business. Hmmm… doesn’t sound so bad, come to think of it. ;-)

I recently stumbled onto this interesting tidbit on the web:
“a Scientific American article once [said] that chimps have a whole part of their brain devoted to the activities of social grooming—which is essential to maintaining good social relations and a healthy simian psyche. That same structure in human brains is devoted to "small talk." Apparently humans have much larger tribes than chimps by an order of magnitude or two, and we don't have the time to groom everyone we know on a regular basis. So we have evolved to chitchat and send little notes. Not to mention emails. All of which is our way of maintaining our personal network of friends, relations and acquaintances; telling them "I value you and hope you value me too." That's why we try to act cooler than we are and why we get stage fright and buy expensive clothes or cars because deep down, just like Sally Field we all hope that everyone really likes us.”

So there you go, now I just have to accept it as social grooming, the necessary method of connecting us all. Hey, what chimp can’t pick out their own fleas, anyway? Trivial or not, smalltalk seems to be all about basic human interaction. Maybe it is all about the human psyche, keeping it all healthy and trimmed and feeling happy and good. Maybe there is some deep-rooted need for useless banter that eludes me, some basic need to ask rhetorical questions that Mr. Spock would deem as not only useless but also inefficient. Of course, Spock was half human and let’s face it, he doesn’t really exist anyway, as he was the creation of a smalltalking human mind, so that puts to rest any Vulcan ideas, doesn't it?

Whatever the case, I can’t seem to get away from it, and I as much as I find it revolting, I sometimes resort to the soothing melodic formulaic rhythmic undertones of smalltalk. I get caught up in its wake, and taken for a right on the rhetorical chitchat train…

So ask me how am I doing... I will respond :

“Oh I’m doing fine, thank-you very much, how are you?

But please call it what it is, "social grooming," you pick my fleas and I'll pick mine, and then maybe after some good flea picking we can actually have real conversation.