I do honestly think the basic point about smalltalk is that you typically don't really need it with people who you can easily get to 9-10 with. Sometimes there is a natural chemistry and you can just keep escalating and it works great and someone is telling you about their relationship with their in-laws even though this is really your first 1:1 conversation and now you have plans to go to a play next month.
And other times, you can progress to talking about how they like raising kids in the city at a surface level and realize that's probably as deep as your relationship can ever be.
I think the main thing that I realized about smalltalk, is that even though I value the first kind of relationship 100x more than the second kind, you actually still need to have some of the second kind. Like you're not gonna become best friends with every single coworker or every single friend of friend or every single receptionist at your pediatrician's office. But it's still better to have pleasant interactions than unpleasant ones.
Definitely agree with all of this - it’s great to have natural chemistry with folks, but it can be extremely valuable to be able to move just 1-2 points up with folks that you find more difficult to relate to! I’ve heard it quoted by organizational psychologists and the like that these “weak ties” are often where we find out about jobs, apartments, other opportunities
and agreed, being ‘chill’ with your neighbors/coworkers/mailman is a healthy + positive social habit that makes your life nicer in lots of small ways
I need to write about this at some point but networking made much more sense to me once I learned about the friendship paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox, basically that "on average, an individual's friends have more friends than that individual"). The amount of guys you can reach through your network goes up a TON the more guys you know because chances are the guys you know know even more guys than you. Hope this makes sense lol
Really great info, thank you! I’m such a nerd and need to hear these things.
I’m really weird. I can be quite personable and considerate in conversation but need to be in a good place mentally. I think a lot of us nerds derive much self worth from our intellectual abilities. So when we’re feeling insecure socially, we can tend to lean on doing things that make us feel good about our smarts. But I’ve found over the years, this is very off-putting to normies in conversation. If people detect I am saying something just to sound smart, or I correct people (even when they are actually wrong), they tend to turn cold immediately. No one likes a know-it-all. And not everyone is devoted to the truth. So accepting a little BS or ignorance without too much pushback, I have learned the hard way, is an important part of the lower levels of small talks.
And also, I’m struggling to learn to resist the urge to finish sentences. People hate this even if it communicates you’re listening. When I just say “yeah” in agreement while the other person is talking, works so much better,
I can do these things so much better when I’m feeling secure and good about myself, in a comfortable environment. Much harder to do when I’m going through a tough patch or in a stressful situation, and that is just when I need connection most.
All that is to say, laying out the specifics in detail is really helpful to overcome this.
I’m glad you liked it! And yes, giving people the opportunity to waffle about (whether that be meandering sentences or being kinda wrong about things) is a good signal of tolerance, whereas cutting people off or “Um ACTUALLY”-ing them can often be taken as a signal of “this person has no chill and is no fun.” Also I really feel your observation about social insecurity and intellectual abilities; I’ve always thought that people who are genuinely secure in their intelligence and self-worth would not feel the need to broadcast it constantly.
I have spent a lifetime struggling with NOT jumping to level 8 directly after getting a positive signal from level 2. I have observed that it comes naturally to a lot of people, the effortless glide across the various stages. If it is not innate, then it is a constant and draining struggle to keep calibrating in real time. In a big party, where you are expected to conduct several of these implicit negotiations, it can be exhausting. Can this skill be learned? I think so. I have got better at it with age and also after I stopped caring. Hope this helps a lot of people, there should be live classes for this where people can try it out with flash cards with numbers on them “Hey can we please move to stage 4 :). “
I also got better about this with age, but particularly once I found a stable group of friends. I think people who don't have close relationships struggle to find that in-between because they're always looking for a close friend to vent to, and it's really difficult for them to get past stage 4 without trying to go all-in on one person. (Alternatively, some people struggle to talk about their truly held beliefs or opinions without being incredibly emotionally invested in them / getting defensive, which is probably an insecurity thing.)
Are you actually running the game I wanna be Hamilton and also I think everyone should be a bard so that we can half play half karaoke to Hamilton songs
tbh i think it might work best as like a one-shot where the continental congress gets attacked by british werewolves or some shit... idk if i want to run karaoke
really informative post! I'm just now realizing just how hard I've been fumbling, haha. I really like the small talk example, but it seems a bit robotic—it'd be really informative to see this sort of play-by-play analysis of a natural/real conversation.
Thank you! And maybe I should've said this explicitly, but I think it's okay to be a little robotic in those early stages, especially if you're still getting used to it--people don't mind a little bit of scriptedness if the script is "be kind and warm and friendly," especially if you go past the scriptedness relatively quickly.
And re: the small talk example, yeah I feel you. I kinda wrote that as a model conversation because IRL conversations very rarely progress so quickly or linearly, but a longer conversation would be hard to compress into a single blog post + real conversations are altered by individual idiosyncrasies. Still, I would be down to do something like that one of these days. Did you have a model conversation in mind?
I do honestly think the basic point about smalltalk is that you typically don't really need it with people who you can easily get to 9-10 with. Sometimes there is a natural chemistry and you can just keep escalating and it works great and someone is telling you about their relationship with their in-laws even though this is really your first 1:1 conversation and now you have plans to go to a play next month.
And other times, you can progress to talking about how they like raising kids in the city at a surface level and realize that's probably as deep as your relationship can ever be.
I think the main thing that I realized about smalltalk, is that even though I value the first kind of relationship 100x more than the second kind, you actually still need to have some of the second kind. Like you're not gonna become best friends with every single coworker or every single friend of friend or every single receptionist at your pediatrician's office. But it's still better to have pleasant interactions than unpleasant ones.
Definitely agree with all of this - it’s great to have natural chemistry with folks, but it can be extremely valuable to be able to move just 1-2 points up with folks that you find more difficult to relate to! I’ve heard it quoted by organizational psychologists and the like that these “weak ties” are often where we find out about jobs, apartments, other opportunities
and agreed, being ‘chill’ with your neighbors/coworkers/mailman is a healthy + positive social habit that makes your life nicer in lots of small ways
I need to write about this at some point but networking made much more sense to me once I learned about the friendship paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox, basically that "on average, an individual's friends have more friends than that individual"). The amount of guys you can reach through your network goes up a TON the more guys you know because chances are the guys you know know even more guys than you. Hope this makes sense lol
Really great info, thank you! I’m such a nerd and need to hear these things.
I’m really weird. I can be quite personable and considerate in conversation but need to be in a good place mentally. I think a lot of us nerds derive much self worth from our intellectual abilities. So when we’re feeling insecure socially, we can tend to lean on doing things that make us feel good about our smarts. But I’ve found over the years, this is very off-putting to normies in conversation. If people detect I am saying something just to sound smart, or I correct people (even when they are actually wrong), they tend to turn cold immediately. No one likes a know-it-all. And not everyone is devoted to the truth. So accepting a little BS or ignorance without too much pushback, I have learned the hard way, is an important part of the lower levels of small talks.
And also, I’m struggling to learn to resist the urge to finish sentences. People hate this even if it communicates you’re listening. When I just say “yeah” in agreement while the other person is talking, works so much better,
I can do these things so much better when I’m feeling secure and good about myself, in a comfortable environment. Much harder to do when I’m going through a tough patch or in a stressful situation, and that is just when I need connection most.
All that is to say, laying out the specifics in detail is really helpful to overcome this.
I’m glad you liked it! And yes, giving people the opportunity to waffle about (whether that be meandering sentences or being kinda wrong about things) is a good signal of tolerance, whereas cutting people off or “Um ACTUALLY”-ing them can often be taken as a signal of “this person has no chill and is no fun.” Also I really feel your observation about social insecurity and intellectual abilities; I’ve always thought that people who are genuinely secure in their intelligence and self-worth would not feel the need to broadcast it constantly.
I have spent a lifetime struggling with NOT jumping to level 8 directly after getting a positive signal from level 2. I have observed that it comes naturally to a lot of people, the effortless glide across the various stages. If it is not innate, then it is a constant and draining struggle to keep calibrating in real time. In a big party, where you are expected to conduct several of these implicit negotiations, it can be exhausting. Can this skill be learned? I think so. I have got better at it with age and also after I stopped caring. Hope this helps a lot of people, there should be live classes for this where people can try it out with flash cards with numbers on them “Hey can we please move to stage 4 :). “
I also got better about this with age, but particularly once I found a stable group of friends. I think people who don't have close relationships struggle to find that in-between because they're always looking for a close friend to vent to, and it's really difficult for them to get past stage 4 without trying to go all-in on one person. (Alternatively, some people struggle to talk about their truly held beliefs or opinions without being incredibly emotionally invested in them / getting defensive, which is probably an insecurity thing.)
Are you actually running the game I wanna be Hamilton and also I think everyone should be a bard so that we can half play half karaoke to Hamilton songs
unfortunately that's a question for Charlie
tbh i think it might work best as like a one-shot where the continental congress gets attacked by british werewolves or some shit... idk if i want to run karaoke
really informative post! I'm just now realizing just how hard I've been fumbling, haha. I really like the small talk example, but it seems a bit robotic—it'd be really informative to see this sort of play-by-play analysis of a natural/real conversation.
Thank you! And maybe I should've said this explicitly, but I think it's okay to be a little robotic in those early stages, especially if you're still getting used to it--people don't mind a little bit of scriptedness if the script is "be kind and warm and friendly," especially if you go past the scriptedness relatively quickly.
And re: the small talk example, yeah I feel you. I kinda wrote that as a model conversation because IRL conversations very rarely progress so quickly or linearly, but a longer conversation would be hard to compress into a single blog post + real conversations are altered by individual idiosyncrasies. Still, I would be down to do something like that one of these days. Did you have a model conversation in mind?
This post was written for me