I told a complete stranger a secret. From now on, I’m sticking to small talk

Want to play two truths and a lie?

Of course you don’t. No one in the cursed history of workplace icebreakers ever has. So, I’ll just give you two truths: I’m a bit emotionally tapped out right now. And, paradoxically, I miss small talk.

A few weekends back, I was chatting with another mum I’d just met at a backyard get-together.

She kicked things off by announcing, “I hate small talk – let’s just get real”. And look, I’m a pretty open book. When I’m vibing with someone, I’m more than happy to get “deep”. But we’d hardly established how many kids we each had (me: one, her: three) before my new friend explained how she believed that behind my smile, I was holding back a silent grief about not being able to have a second child.

Let’s just say the phone number I gave out that afternoon could use some fact checking.

The fact is, she wasn’t entirely wrong. But I was puzzled by how I’d found myself talking to a perfect stranger about something I hadn’t yet broached with my best friend, let alone a therapist.

This particular brand of immediate and unearned intimacy makes me feel exposed. It raises my hackles in the way that hearing “I’m an empath”, at a dinner party has me hoping I’ll be seated at the opposite end of the table. And I’m encountering it more and more.

Indeed, small talk appears to be on life support, and allegedly Gen Z are the ones pulling the plug. There’s the TikTok-viral Gen Z stare (a deadpan, unblinking response to surface-level chatter), and new research finding 74 per cent of young people prefer digital communication over face-to-face action.

But I think our new tendency to skip from “So, where did you go to school?” straight to “What was the last thing that made you cry?” crosses generations, at least in part thanks to our problematic bestie: social media.

In an effort to upgrade from the shiny, happy, highlight-reel style posts of circa 2015, our feeds are now filled with TikToks of strangers divulging their deepest traumas (often while teaching us how to contour).

And it seems this “cut to the quick” approach has bled out into IRL meet ups, where we jump right into the meat of it without any (shudder) icebreakers easing us in.

Of course, there’s good science to support the idea that deep conversations are ultimately what deepen relationships. And like I said, I love to get “deep” – under the right circumstances.

Speaking with neurodivergent folks about this is also really illuminating. Many of my self-described “neurospicy” friends find small talk incredibly grating, and I do get that mine is a very neurotypical perspective. I like the idea of people coming together over a shared disdain for small talk whether IRL, on internet forums or in real life, with Skip the Small Talk dinners popping up throughout the US and Europe.

I like it because it implies a certain level of mutual permission, rather than diagnosing strangers with repressed trauma or immediately mining for intimate secrets on a first meeting.

I’m certainly not suggesting we should start on the surface and stay there. In fact, I often find the opposite happens. As someone with a condition that makes me struggle in hot weather, even a simple “How about this heat?” has sparked deeper connections with passing acquaintances.

To me, small talk is like a conversational handshake. You know those people who squeeze your hand so hard you wonder if they’re trying to prove a point? Small talk can be like that too. It can signal a safe space, or just as importantly, that this may not be someone you want to expose your soul to.

It’s the ticket to subtly mining a stranger’s personality and consequently, your compatibility – a fertile ground upon which deep and loving relationships can then be built.

And in an increasingly polarising ecosystem, I find small talk useful for gently exposing another person’s world view, without having to jump straight into heated debate. Learning that a stranger’s favourite podcast is The Joe Rogan Experience, for example, is often a good indicator of where our conversation might be headed.

So, tell me all about that guy clipping his nails on your commute and let’s bond over our hatred of people who use communal microwaves to heat up fish.

Please don’t skip past the small talk. We’ll get to the big stuff, I promise.

Hannah Vanderheide is a freelance health writer and actor based in Victoria.

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