Skipping Small Talk with Complete Strangers (For Fun and Profit)

[In the belly of the beast]

Ex. "Ever wonder whether inflation is much higher than the officially reported figures?" (to the checkout cashier).  "Do you think Social Security will collapse within the next generation or less?"  "Would't it be cool to be a sentient machine capable of augmenting your own intelligence?"  "I wonder if mechanical kidneys exist, and how their performance compares to dialysis?" (To be fair, this last question was posed to a small group of medical students.)

Anyone ever do this on occasion for their own amusement, and gotten interesting results?  So far it's mostly WTF looks and noncommital or generic replies in my own experience.  Hope springs eternal however.

Sometimes, when talking to regularly seen acquaintances, I want to just say: "Let's skip the whole 'feeling each other out' with boring small talk and dive right into the meat grinder!  You don't seem like a human predator from what I've observed of your eye tracking and overall facial movements, so I'll start off with a completely tangential topic as a show of good faith..."

But most of the time I return to the old "How was your weekend?" approach to things.

[ribuck]

I used to do this when I was a teenager and worked in a shop for a while. However, nothing interesting came out of it.

The function of small talk is to work out whether there is common ground between two people, and where that common ground lies. Then you can advance to meaningful conversation.

Unfortunately, for most people, small talk seems to be something they see as worthwhile in its own right, and they cannot move beyond it.

[Rick Horton]

I do this constantly. I love it. It really tells me whether a person is of my ilk or not.