I thought that the reason people made small talk, you know, like standing in line at the grocery store, and, “oh, nice day today”. I thought that the reason people did stuff like that was because they had nothing interesting to think about inside their heads.

So, I thought that most of the rest of the world were a bunch of idiots with no thoughts.

If somebody was friendly and said like,
“Oh, what a nice day!” - sometimes I’d just be like,
“Mm-hmm, yeah.”

I just didn’t see the point in carrying on a conversation when this person was being really rude. They’re interrupting my thought process. I had interesting things going on up here. You know, they want to talk to me about the weather? What?

And then someone explained to me, people get little positive vibes from interacting with other people, even strangers, and even on really benign things.

“It’s like when you play the Sims and they get little plus signs above their head when they talk to each other.” And I was like, “Huh.” So that was why people did that.

I was like, I don’t feel like I get little plus signs above my head when I talk to people. And I still don’t, but I now understand that other people do.

So now I don’t dismiss small talk the way I used to, because I respect other people, because I’m understanding their behaviour.

And I no longer think that people are idiots.