The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 71 - Why Introverts Hate Small Talk

Episode Date: July 27, 2018

For a change of pace from the heavier topics, let's talk about the most misunderstood group in human society: introverts. We are often accused of being "anti-social," and "hating people," and so on, but none of that is true. We just have no need for, and do not enjoy, constant noise and pointless chatter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So this topic will be maybe a little bit of a change of pace. A couple of days ago, at the end of the show, I mentioned a horrific encounter that I had in an elevator. And it was a horrific encounter because someone spoke to me. Someone made small talk. And that's a horrifying thing. There's nothing worse than small talk in an elevator because it's this enclosed, quiet environment where you cannot escape. Sometimes you can't escape for up to, you know, 20 to 30 seconds, and that is 20 or 30 seconds of torture. Now, I said that when I am dictator of America, I will impose a new regulation forbidding any conversation of any kind in an elevator upon penalty of death and also requiring that elevator music must be played in elevators so as to alleviate the awkwardness of the silence.

Now, some people emailed me after that discussion, and they were very confused, and they said, they said, you know, what's the matter with small talk, Matt? Are you shy? Are you antisocial? Do you hate people? Why do you hate small talk so much? It's pretty rude. Seems like a pretty rude thing for you to not want to make conversation with a person. It's pretty rude that you don't want to talk to somebody on an elevator, so on and so forth. Now, what you find in these responses is something that people in my community, that my people, okay, that would be introverts, deal with every day. We are painfully misunderstood. And that's even though, I assume, half the country is probably comprised of introverts, or at least a very large percentage, even so, we happen to live, we live in a culture and a society.

that is designed for and by extroverts. And so they get to define everything, and they get to define us. And their definitions and their perceptions of us are wrong. So what I want to do for a little bit of a respite from the heavier topics is talk about this strange sort of person called an introvert and how they operate, you know,

what it means to be introverted, and why we hate small talk, because I think this could be useful. Half of you watching this will think, well, this is a stupid, useless topic. But the other half will think, yes, thank you. Finally, someone is explaining them. The first thing is this, on a personal level. Yes, personally, I am an introvert through and through.

Yet, I give my opinions publicly for a living. I travel around the country. I give speeches in front of crowds. And I don't dread, I don't dread public speaking at all. In fact, I really enjoy public speaking. It's my, it is my favorite thing that I do professionally without question, um, in spite of the fact that I would certainly qualify as an introvert. Now, this is only surprising to people who don't understand introversion and confuse it with shyness.

I'm not shy at all. I have no shyness to speak of, which is why I can get up in front of 500 people and talk to them and not only have no problem with it, but enjoy it. Uh, so there's no shyness yet there is introversion. In fact, if we're standing in a crowd of 500 people and you said, Matt, I need you to go and mingle and make a small talk with like five or six of those people, that's what I need you to do. If you told me to do that, I would dread it. I would refuse. I wouldn't want to do it. But if you told me, Matt, I need you to get up in front of all of these people on a stage and talk to them for an hour. I would say, great. I'd be super excited to do it. It reminds me of something that, it reminds me of something that Jerry Seinfeld.

once said, while he was on stage doing stand-up, he said, I can talk to all of you, but I can't talk to any of you. And that's kind of what it's like to be a non-shy introvert. Although there are shy introverts and there are just like there are shy extroverts, as a matter of fact. Being an introvert, and if you think about the term introvert, it kind of makes sense. being an introvert means that you draw energy from quiet, from solitude, from being alone with your thoughts and your imagination. You like silence. You like to think. Interacting with people drains you. That doesn't mean that you hate interacting with people or that you never want to or that you want to be a hermit out in the woods, although there's a certain part of me that would find that appealing. But it doesn't mean that you don't mean. that all introverts would like to be hermits. It just means that you have a very limited supply of interacting energy.

You have a finite supply of that kind of energy for the day, and so you prefer to use it wisely. You'd rather use it on, for instance, one three-hour in-depth conversation with a friend or maybe giving a speech in front of a crowd or something like that. You'd rather use it that way, then on 95 different small talk exchanges with strangers on elevators and elsewhere. Now, on the other hand, an extrovert draws energy from interacting with people.

An extrovert feels most at home talking to people. He feels most energized mingling and chatting and interacting and so on. My wife is this way. My wife is the prototype of an extrovert. She loves talking to people. She makes friends everywhere she goes. she'll go to the grocery store and she'll come back and tell me, oh, you know, I met a woman there. She has twins, too, this is the same age as ours.

We're going on a play date on Tuesday. And I'm like, what? You made a friend running errand? You made a friend at the grocery store? You were gone for 32 minutes and you made a friend in that time? How? Why? How could this possibly happen?

To me, it's totally foreign. That would never happen to me, ever. but it happens to her all the time. So I'm married to an extrovert. I respect extroverts. I feel that I understand them. But I don't think that the extroverted approach is the only acceptable one, even though our society is kind of set up demanding that of all of us.

I don't think it really is the only acceptable approach. And the idea that it's rude or bad or wrong to not be completely sociable all the time is just ridiculous. The idea that you're required to talk all the time to everybody, everywhere you are, I find that to be a ridiculous idea. There are introverts are just different sorts of people. And to us, to me, speaking as an introvert, now you might think it's weird that, well, why wouldn't you want to talk to people? It's a weird thing. to me it's weird i hear people that say oh you know that that um to them the worst thing in the world would be to go to a restaurant and eat by themselves at a table like they think that's the weirdest

most uncomfortable thing to me it's weird that you think that's weird i do it all i'm out traveling all the time i'll go to restaurants i don't care i'll go to a restaurant i'll get a you know it's not even like i'll go to the bar i'll get a table and sit by myself if i'm traveling at a sit-down restaurant and eat. It doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I like it. It gives me time to just eat and drink and think. But there are people who can't stand the idea that they would find that horrific to just be by themselves eating somewhere. So not everyone's the same way. Everyone has different personalities and different approaches. Now, let's head back to the elevator. The question is, why don't introverts in general, if I may speak for all introverts, why don't we enjoy small talk on elevators and elsewhere in life?

And I'm going to try to explain that now. I'm going to explain why small talk is the bane of an introverts existence. There are three reasons, okay? Number one, most importantly, and this is really the main thing. It feels insincere. And as introverts, we absolutely loathe insincere conversation. We hate it. We absolutely hate it.

We're very bad at it. We have no interest in it. We don't like to talk to someone who we know isn't really interested in the discussion. And if the discussion is about the weather or about traffic, or some other banal thing, then we know that you, the other person in the conversation, that you are about as interested in what we are saying as we are and what you are saying, which is neither of us are really interesting. So to us, this feels like a wasted interaction.

Our finite amount of people energy is being depleted by this completely useless exchange that is of no interest to anyone concerned. Now, here's the thing. Despite popular belief, it's not that we hate talking about it. We enjoy conversation. We enjoy meaningful conversation. So we want to get to know.

In a conversation for us, like, we want to get to know the other person. We want to hear their thoughts and their perspectives. We want to get an insight into who they are. We're very interested in that. but if they are not invested in the discussion and they don't care what we're saying and we don't really care what they're saying because it's just it's a it's a you know pointless then we kind of shut down and we say well there's just no point in this conversation the same

thing can happen even in an even in a non small talk discussion if we if we think we're having a meaningful discussion, but then we look like we're talking to you and we think it's a meaningful conversation and then we start sharing our point of view. And then we look at you and we see that just dead eye expression that kind of, I don't care at all about what you're saying expression. Or we get that or we start to get the feeling. It's one of those, we get we start to get the feeling that really this is one of those conversations where you're just waiting for your turn to talk and it doesn't really matter to you what we're saying. the moment we start to sense that,

then we just shut down. We don't want to have the conversation anymore. Because it's not that we're offended or our feelings are, but it's just, to us, it's pointless. Like, okay,

well, you know, no hurt feelings, nothing personal, but let's stop talking now. There's no point of us talking. Now, you might say,

well, you need small talk in order to transition into the deeper subjects. I hear that all the time. Well, this is a, This is a necessary transitional thing to get into deeper. You need the small talk portion of it. But no, see, that's not how we work.

That's how you work as an extrovert, maybe, but we don't. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts,

we alert you right away all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash special offer. Terms apply. We would have no problem whatsoever just jumping right into the deeper topic. We would jump right into politics or religion or whatever without the transition. The transition from our perspective, the small talk part of it, that in, feeds conversation and gets in the way of and puts off and interferes with the more meaningful

interaction. And if we're in an environment where no meaningful conversation could possibly occur because there's just no time for it or it's not the place for it like an elevator, then we just as soon stay silent because there's nothing can really come of the discussion anyway. Second thing, we are up in our heads all the time constantly. And we like that. You know, we like to be there thinking and imagining and wondering whatever. It's not a self-absorbed thing. It's not like we're always thinking about ourselves. We could be thinking about anything. We could be thinking about the news or about a family member or about God or about walruses. I mean, really, who knows? We could be thinking about anything. But if you rip us out of that,

then we'd prefer it if you have a good reason. The moment we start talking to us, you have ripped us out of our thought process. And I don't think it's unreasonable that we would prefer if you're going to do that, that you have a reason for doing it. And so if you have to relay important information to us, that's a reason.

If you want to have a real, meaningful conversation, that's a reason. But if the reason is just to make an observation about the weather, if the reason is just to say, oh, it's raining outside, well, then maybe we're a little put off by that. We know you didn't mean anything by it. We know you're trying to be friendly, but we see friendliness in different terms. So for us, it could be friendly to not say anything to a person and just let them continue along with whatever thought process they're following at the moment. for you, you're being friendly by talking about the weather, but for us, we're being friendly by

not talking about it or not talking to you at all and not bothering you. To us, that's friendly. Third thing, I've already explained that we're up in our heads all the time, and that means that we're very analytical about things. So we analyze everything, we especially analyze human interactions. So we will leave every small talk conversation analyzing and assessing our own performance in the exchange. While the extrovert may leave the exchange and just go about his day and not think about it anymore, for us, we're left thinking about it, inspecting ourselves, giving ourselves a grade on the whole thing. Usually it'll be a pretty poor grade, although sometimes we'll walk away saying, oh, you know, wow, well done me. That was a B plus small talk performance. Well done.

And then we have to go take a nap because we're so drained and exhausted by it. But we prefer to avoid this. We prefer to avoid what to us is kind of a high pressure situation that will lead to a very tough self-analysis. So while silence may be painful to you as an extrovert, it's not to us. pain starts when you break that silence. And that's the difference between us. And personally, I don't think that one is wrong and the other is right. It's just, it's just, these are just personality types. That's all. Now, of course, this doesn't mean that we can avoid small talk all the time. It's a necessary evil, especially in our society. I think we all understand that It's a necessary evil on the job.

It's a necessary evil if you're like on the dating scene and in many other situations. But it's work for us. It takes effort and it's exhausting and we don't like it. It doesn't come naturally. So kind of if you're an extrovert, imagine how you would feel as an extrovert if you were forced to sit alone and eat. eat by yourself at a restaurant. Or if you had to sit in a quiet room alone for an hour and talk to nobody, nobody around, and nothing to do. You just have to sit there. Or imagine how you would feel, even if you had to read a book by yourself all afternoon or something like that. Imagine the

discomfort and the exhaustion and the wanting desperately to get out and to get into your natural environment. That's how you would feel, and that's how we feel during small time. I don't think it's rude. I don't think it's not shy. It's nothing like that. It's just this is just our personality. Okay. Hopefully, that will help you to understand a little bit. 50% of the people that you share a society with. All right. Well, now I'm exhausted. Thanks for watching everybody. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.