this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
923 points (96.5% liked)
memes
18014 readers
3139 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not OP but mine are, anything wrong with it? Communication aims at information exchange, if you wanna say hey just say hey, we don't need to waste away doing empty, false gestures at each other. You want to learn something I know? Happy to help! Vice versa? I hope you also don't mind.
Wanna waste air with saying empty words, devoid of any actual meaning? You'd get the most appropriate version of "Yeah" and a stare urging you to get to the point.
Metadata is data. Skipping small talk is exchanging less information.
I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but it clashes with my personal strategy. I call it greasing the wheel : exchanging small talk and trivial common experiences with someone is a great way to prepare the channel for high density information exchange. It's really a small setup investment that more than pays for itself in the long run.
I would also speculate that your own position is not as clear cut as you think. You probably hate small talk for your own reasons, and then rationalize that as an utilitarian point. People who rely on high-density information exchange are generally pretty good at small talk, and they'll invest a lot in low-stakes, high-noise low-signal interactions.