ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
How good of a friend are we talking? I care about my roommate’s nephew. I know his sister, and we’ve played D&D with his brother-in-law. The baby is, like, a relevant part of being friends with them. Similarly, if he went on vacation I’d want to hear about how it went, especially if anything interesting happened.
On the other hand some of my coworkers at my last job liked to talk about this kind of stuff, and I didn’t really care, but it was nice to have something to talk about while I was setting up a new printer for them, or whatever.
ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I don’t feel like it makes much difference whether the person is close to me or not. It’s not that I don’t care about what happens to these people, but a huge part of the topics people generally small talk about are the kinds of mundane things I have almost zero interest in discussing. For example, if something interesting happened to you over the weekend, I assume you’re just going to tell me about it - I would. But I sometimes feel like people expect me to ask about those things, and when I see others do it, I’m often a bit skeptical about whether they’re actually interested or just going through the motions. Thus this thread.
TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 2 months ago
If you call “mundane” creating new life and welcoming a new person into the world, or exploring new corners of this tiny world that we are confined to, then I would really love to see what you consider fascinating.
VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Asking questions is how most people show interest. That doesn’t mean it’s disingenuous. Conversations are not events where people take turns talking at each other, they’re back-and-forths.