How would you define small talk?

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I will occasionally do small talk as a means to reach a meaningful conversation but do not really like it at all. One example that stands out in my mind was a time a little over a year ago when I was trying to start a conversation with the Aspie who later caused me to find out that I am an Aspie too. He has very long hair and had just cut it back by 4-5 inches a few weeks earlier. He has severe speech problems and I could not think of any way to start a conversation. So I walked past him one day and said, "you cut your hair"! ! He said, "yes" (obviously a scripted response). Then I went on to say, "it must have been hard to cut it as long as it took to grow that long". He did not understand and quietly asked me, "what did you say". I repeated it again and he replied, "well, maybe" and walked on. He had not understood anyting I had said to him but it meant nothing anyhow because all I was trying to do was to start that conversation. Small talk sometimes works as a means to an end, but is so meaningless in itself.

The difficulty is a combination of not knowing what to say and not being able to fake interest in boring and mundane talk.

Small talk:

A bunch of blabbing of the mouth that ends up always affecting my mood.

Gibberish that takes a good moment and turns it's into an almost unbearable situation.

Small talk to me is stuff that feels like a huge waste of time. I don't want to make small talk with other people because then I would be wasting their time as well as mine. It is, yes, 'conversation' with little or no actual information, or things that are obvious, like that it's hot outside or that cold weather sure is cold, isn't it.

Small talk from anyone always strikes me more as a nervous attempt to talk about something, anything, rather than a genuine attempt to connect with someone or share anything meaningful. Rather than go along with the insanity I'd rather just .. not. However, I also tend to be very nice, because I don't want to offend people unnecessarily, and small talk is, after all, deliberately harmless.. to a point. I'd rather not stand around and yak it up about nothing if I can think of anything more interesting to do, which I generally can.

I can engage in small talk well enough, though. I smile and laugh and make little jokes and everything. If the other person is an attractive woman that might help, although generally not much.

I've tried to spice up small talk with various bits and pieces before but it just never seems to work. People really want to follow that small talk mechanic, I guess. Bringing up anything that requires thinking is too out of order. However, thinking logically, it should lead to less small talk with the same person later.. mmm.. I'm a genius. Thank you all.

For me small talk can be defined as a conversation without purpose, full of questions you don't care about and answers you don't want to give with someone you have no desire to talk to.

Most introverted people hate small talk.

Small talk is the basic weather information or asking someone what they're doing after work. Well, at least from my understanding. My brother is an extrovert, but he hates small talk as much as I do (I'm an NT). I understand what small talk is and the purpose, but it's so damn boring that my mind goes to autopilot and I start to think about more interesting things. I consider anything that isn't very engaging small talk.

Even if I have a crush on a guy, I still kinda zone out during small talk. It's just hard to pay attention since it's so boring.

It's a way to fill awkward moments with non-relevant conversation.

Small talk is talking in order to talk, because society and people expects you to talk, instead of talking about something.

I HATE small talk. People say the topics that interest me give them a headache. I, however, feel like my brain is being sucked out my skull with a drinking straw every time I'm forced to engage in casual conversation.

I'm curious, what else does one say to such a statement?

It involves being asked many questions. I don't like answering questions about myself. It's so boring! I prefer talking about my fictional world.

But then, some aspie (males, especially, but sometimes even females) have their Special Interests in "normal" fields like sports or cars. You can tell them from the NTs interested, though, because the Aspie can quote all the major league baseball statistics from the last 111 years, or identify some hunk of metal as being from a 1920 Stutz Bearcat.

I've said very similar. I find it fairly painful to engage in this kind of conversation, I always end up pushing it toward something I'm interested in that is at least relevant. I prefer conversation that involves exchanging or relaying information, and small talk is not about information, it's just about talking for the sake of talking. It does have social purposes (such as signaling to people that you are friendly, etc) but I try to avoid engaging in it whenever possible.

I used to live with my grandmother, and she'd engage in small talk all the time. She'd talk about things that were painfully uninteresting and cause that brain through a straw feeling - and she was one of my favorite people in the world at the time.