me_irl

You've been making an argument against the idea that people shouldn't talk about things they don't want to then be upset and say they like dislike small talk when I suggested they should instead either say nothing or talk about a topic they actually want to. You said you were answering the "if you really don't care, why ask" part, and when I clarified that I was specifically saying to instead pick something you do care about the answer to (instead of picking something you'll hate talking about and then complain about it, which is what that post you replied to was saying). I even reiterated. You even said it's not something you want to do. So, I don't really understand you when you say that you believe you've never made a big deal about hating small talk. The whole time I've been saying to just pick something you wanna talk about instead and you have disagreed with it as well as said you don't want to do it. To me that certainly sounds like you're saying you dislike small talk.

Maybe work on communicating your thoughts more clearly, because I don't know how you expected me to think anything differently from the course of this discussion. It sounds like we agree, but you're just intent on making it into a disagreement for some odd reason. It's like you only read the first part of that first post and ignored the end and wanted to make me out to be someone who thinks they're above talking to blue collar workers.

I've never suggested people shouldn refuse to engage in small talk, only that if they genuinely hate small talk, they shouldn't feel obligated to strike up a conversation, or that they should actually choose a topic they want to talk about instead of choosing ones they don't want to talk about and then complaining that they're talking about something they don't want to talk about.

Talking to someone about a topic you specifically say you don't enjoy talking about only for the hopes that they'll give you freebies isn't nice, it's actually pretty shitty. Like you view the purpose of a social interaction as a gamble to win a prize. Mind you, if you didn't make such a fuss about hating the process of small talk, I wouldn't think that, but because you say it's something you don't want to be engaging in, I don't see how else to view what you're saying as some strange transactional thing instead of human to human connection.

And no, I don't refuse to speak to cashiers. If they talk to me, I answer. If there's something I actually want to say, then I say it. I follow blue collar workers around my house so I can learn about what they're doing because I'm curious. Don't frame this as some sort of elitist snobbery when all I said was that if you don't want to talk to someone about something that you either shouldn't talk at all or choose a different topic you actually want to talk about.