The Matt Walsh Show - July 27, 2018


Ep. 71 - Why Introverts Hate Small Talk

Topics
introversion and small talk
Hosted by
Matt Walsh
Mentioned
Matt Jerry Seinfeld Godspeed
Ep 70 - Inventing Another Fake Environmental Crisis Ep. 72 - Voters Should Be Required To Take A Civics Exam

Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

163.99

Word count

2,846

Sentence count

200

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Matt talks about what it means to be an introvert and why we hate making small talk in elevators and how to deal with the awkwardness that comes with it. Introverts are a strange group of people, and we often get the wrong idea about what they are like.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So this topic will be maybe a little bit of a change of pace.
00:00:03.880 A couple of days ago, at the end of the show, I mentioned a horrific encounter that I had
00:00:10.160 in an elevator, and it was a horrific encounter because someone spoke to me.
00:00:16.620 Someone made small talk, and that's a horrifying thing.
00:00:19.740 There's nothing worse than small talk in an elevator, because it's this enclosed,
00:00:25.780 quiet environment where you cannot escape.
00:00:28.520 Sometimes you can't escape for up to 20 to 30 seconds, and that is 20 or 30 seconds of torture.
00:00:36.600 Now, I said that when I am dictator of America, I will impose a new regulation forbidding any
00:00:42.240 conversation of any kind in an elevator upon penalty of death, and also requiring that
00:00:47.400 elevator music must be played in elevators so as to alleviate the awkwardness of the sounds.
00:00:53.840 Now, some people emailed me after that discussion, and they were very confused, and they said,
00:01:00.560 you know, what's the matter with small talk, Matt?
00:01:03.820 Are you shy?
00:01:05.140 Are you antisocial? 0.93
00:01:06.660 Do you hate people?
00:01:08.820 Why do you hate small talk so much?
00:01:10.320 It's pretty rude.
00:01:11.920 It seems like a pretty rude thing for you to not want to make conversation with a person.
00:01:16.580 It's pretty rude that you don't want to talk to somebody on an elevator, so on and so forth.
00:01:20.640 Now, what you find in these responses is something that people in my community, that my people,
00:01:30.080 okay, that would be introverts, deal with every day.
00:01:34.660 We are painfully misunderstood.
00:01:37.100 Even though I assume half the country is probably comprised of introverts, or at least a very large
00:01:46.520 percentage, even so, we happen to live, we live in a culture and a society that is designed for and
00:01:52.360 by extroverts, and so they get to define everything, and they get to define us, and their definitions
00:01:59.260 and their perceptions of us are wrong.
00:02:00.900 So, what I want to do, for a little bit of a respite from the heavier topics, is talk
00:02:06.880 about this strange sort of person called an introvert, and how they operate, you know,
00:02:14.020 what it means to be introverted, and why we hate small talk, because I think this could
00:02:18.520 be useful. 0.98
00:02:19.020 Half of you watching this will think, well, this is a stupid, useless topic, but the other 0.92
00:02:23.420 half will think, yes, thank you, finally someone is explaining this. 0.98
00:02:26.940 So, the first thing is this, on a personal level, yes, personally, I am an introvert through
00:02:35.520 and through, yet, I give my opinions publicly for a living, I travel around the country,
00:02:42.400 I give speeches in front of crowds, and I don't dread, I don't dread public speaking at all.
00:02:48.880 In fact, I really enjoy public speaking.
00:02:50.220 It is my favorite thing that I do professionally, without question.
00:02:56.940 In spite of the fact that I would certainly qualify as an introvert.
00:03:00.420 Now, this is only surprising to people who don't understand introversion and confuse it
00:03:04.580 with shyness.
00:03:05.700 I'm not shy at all.
00:03:07.280 I have no shyness to speak of, which is why I can get up in front of 500 people and talk
00:03:10.800 to them, and not only have no problem with it, but enjoy it.
00:03:15.120 So, there's no shyness, yet there is introversion.
00:03:17.460 In fact, if we're standing in front, if we were standing in a crowd of 500 people, and
00:03:24.520 you said, Matt, I need you to go and mingle and make a small, make small talk with like
00:03:28.960 five or six of those people, that's what I need you to do.
00:03:32.380 If you told me to do that, I would dread it.
00:03:34.160 I would refuse.
00:03:34.860 I wouldn't want to do it.
00:03:36.080 But if you told me, Matt, I need you to get up in front of all of these people on a stage
00:03:39.840 and talk to them for an hour, I would say, great, I'd be super excited to do it.
00:03:44.400 It reminds me of something that, it reminds me of something that Jerry Seinfeld once said
00:03:50.040 when he was, while he was on stage doing standup, he said, I can talk to all of you, but I can't
00:03:57.440 talk to any of you.
00:03:58.520 And that's kind of what it's like to be a non-shy introvert.
00:04:01.940 Although there are shy introverts, and there are, just like there are shy extroverts, as
00:04:06.800 a matter of fact.
00:04:07.380 So being an introvert, and if you think about the term introvert, it kind of makes sense.
00:04:13.820 Being an introvert means that you draw energy from quiet, from solitude, from being alone
00:04:21.880 with your thoughts and your imagination.
00:04:24.560 You like silence.
00:04:25.900 You like to think.
00:04:28.680 Interacting with people drains you.
00:04:32.560 That doesn't mean that you hate interacting with people, or that you never want to, or that
00:04:37.320 you want to be a hermit out in the woods, although there's a certain part of me that would find
00:04:42.220 that appealing.
00:04:42.780 But it doesn't mean that everyone wants, that all introverts would like to be hermits.
00:04:47.160 It just means that you have a very limited supply of, of interacting energy.
00:04:52.820 Okay.
00:04:53.180 There's a, there's, there's, you have a finite supply of that kind of energy for the day.
00:04:56.860 And so you prefer to use it wisely.
00:04:59.260 You'd rather use it on, for instance, one three hour in-depth conversation with a friend,
00:05:06.140 or maybe giving a speech in front of a crowd or something like that.
00:05:10.080 You'd rather use it that way than on 95 different small talk exchanges with strangers on elevators
00:05:18.800 and elsewhere.
00:05:20.360 Now, on the other hand, an extrovert draws energy from interacting with people.
00:05:26.200 An extrovert feels most at home, um, talking to people.
00:05:30.620 He feels most energized, mingling and chatting and interacting and so on.
00:05:34.620 My wife is this way. 0.84
00:05:35.800 My wife is, uh, is the prototype of an extrovert. 1.00
00:05:39.180 She loves talking to people.
00:05:40.820 She makes friends everywhere she goes.
00:05:43.040 She'll go to the grocery store and she'll come back and tell me, oh, you know, I met,
00:05:47.140 I met a woman there. 0.59
00:05:48.140 She has twins too.
00:05:49.160 This is the same age as ours.
00:05:50.240 We're going on a play date on Tuesday.
00:05:53.220 And I'm like, what?
00:05:54.740 You made a friend running errand.
00:05:56.980 You made a friend at the grocery store.
00:05:59.880 You were gone for 32 minutes and you made a friend in that time.
00:06:04.160 How, why, how, how could this possibly happen?
00:06:07.960 It's it to me, it's totally foreign. 1.00
00:06:09.740 That would never happen to me ever, but, um, but it happens to her all the time. 1.00
00:06:15.220 So I'm married to an extrovert.
00:06:16.700 I respect extroverts.
00:06:18.040 I, I, I feel that I understand them, but I don't think that the extroverted approach
00:06:24.200 is the only acceptable one.
00:06:25.800 Even though if our, even though our society is kind of set up demanding that of all of
00:06:29.540 us, I don't think it really is the only acceptable approach.
00:06:32.680 And the idea that it's rude or bad or wrong to not be completely sociable all the time 0.77
00:06:39.320 is just ridiculous.
00:06:40.720 The idea that you're required to talk all the time to everybody, everywhere you are. 0.98
00:06:48.060 I find that, um, that to be a ridiculous idea.
00:06:53.520 There are introverts are just different sorts of people.
00:06:58.300 And, um, and to us, to me, speaking as an introvert, now you might think it's weird that,
00:07:03.120 well, why wouldn't you want to talk to people?
00:07:04.720 It's a, it's a weird thing.
00:07:05.800 Um, to me, it's weird.
00:07:08.200 I hear people that say, oh, you know, that, that, um, to, to them, the worst thing in the
00:07:14.240 world would be to go to a restaurant and eat by themselves at a table.
00:07:18.460 Like they think that's the weirdest, most uncomfortable thing.
00:07:21.500 To me, it's weird that you think that's weird.
00:07:23.400 I do it all.
00:07:24.060 I'm out traveling all the time.
00:07:25.560 I'll go to restaurants.
00:07:26.360 I don't care.
00:07:27.300 I'll go to a restaurant.
00:07:28.240 I'll get a, I'll, you know, it's not even like I'll go to the bar.
00:07:30.120 I'll go, I'll get a table and sit by myself.
00:07:33.000 If I'm traveling at a, at a sit down restaurant and eat, it doesn't bother me at all.
00:07:37.540 In fact, I like it.
00:07:38.760 It gives me time to just eat and drink and think, but there are people who can't stand
00:07:43.380 the idea that they, they would find that horrific to just be by themselves eating somewhere.
00:07:48.880 Um, so not everyone's the same way.
00:07:51.820 Everyone has different personalities and different approaches.
00:07:54.680 Now, let's head back to the elevator.
00:08:00.580 The question is, why don't I, why don't introverts in general, if I may speak for all introverts,
00:08:08.260 why don't we enjoy small talk on elevators and elsewhere in life?
00:08:14.420 And I'm going to try to explain that now.
00:08:16.780 I'm going to explain why small talk is the bane of an introvert's existence.
00:08:22.820 There are, there are three reasons.
00:08:24.440 Okay.
00:08:25.500 Number one, most importantly, and this, this is really the main thing.
00:08:31.020 It feels insincere.
00:08:34.680 And as introverts, we absolutely loathe insincere conversation.
00:08:41.140 We hate it.
00:08:42.660 We, we, we, we, we absolutely hate it.
00:08:45.600 We're very bad at it.
00:08:47.200 We have no interest in it.
00:08:48.540 We don't like to talk to someone who we know isn't really interested in the discussion.
00:08:55.500 And if this, if the discussion is about the weather or about traffic or some other banal
00:09:02.240 thing, then we know that you, the other person in the conversation, that you are about as
00:09:08.860 interested in what we are saying as we are in what you're, what you are saying, which is
00:09:13.740 neither of us are really interested.
00:09:15.520 So to us, this feels like a wasted interaction.
00:09:19.580 Our finite amount of people energy is being depleted by this completely useless exchange that is of no
00:09:29.120 interest to anyone concerned.
00:09:31.080 Now, here's the thing, despite popular belief, it's not that we hate talking about, we enjoy
00:09:39.720 conversation.
00:09:40.400 We enjoy meaningful conversation.
00:09:42.580 So we want to get to know in a conversation for us, like we want to get to know the other
00:09:47.680 person.
00:09:48.140 We want to hear their thoughts and their perspectives.
00:09:51.360 We want to get an insight into who they are.
00:09:55.240 We're very interested in that.
00:09:57.440 But if they are not invested in the discussion and they don't care what we're saying, and we
00:10:06.780 don't really care what they're saying because it's just, it's, it's a, it's a, you know,
00:10:10.480 pointless.
00:10:13.880 Then we kind of shut down and we say, well, there's just no point in this conversation.
00:10:18.140 The same thing can happen even in an, even in a non-small talk discussion.
00:10:23.460 If we, if we think we're having a meaningful discussion, but then we look like we're talking
00:10:27.540 to you and we think it's a meaningful conversation.
00:10:30.140 And then we start sharing our point of view.
00:10:32.820 And then we look at you and we see that just dead eye expression, that kind of, I don't care
00:10:38.260 at all about what you're saying expression, or we get that, or we start to get the, the
00:10:42.400 feeling it's one of those, we get, we, we, we started to get the feeling that, that really
00:10:47.120 this is one of those conversations where you're just waiting for your turn to talk and it
00:10:52.300 doesn't really matter to you what we're saying.
00:10:55.500 The moment we start to sense that, then we just shut down.
00:11:00.460 We don't want to have the conversation anymore because it's not that we're offended or our
00:11:03.880 feelings are, but it's just to us, it's pointless.
00:11:05.660 Like, okay, well, you know, no, no hurt feelings, nothing personal, but let's stop, let's stop
00:11:10.640 talking now.
00:11:11.120 There's no point of us talking.
00:11:14.140 Now you might say, well, you need small talk in order to transition into the deeper subjects.
00:11:24.020 I hear that all the time.
00:11:25.280 Well, this is, this is a necessary transitional thing to get into deeper.
00:11:30.380 You need the small talk portion of it, but no, see, that's not how we work.
00:11:35.280 That's how you work as an extrovert, maybe, but we don't.
00:11:40.640 We would have no problem whatsoever just jumping right into the deeper topic.
00:11:47.040 We would jump right into politics or religion or whatever without the transition.
00:11:53.060 The transition from our perspective, the small talk part of it, that impedes conversation
00:11:58.520 and gets in the way of and puts off and interferes with the more meaningful interaction.
00:12:05.940 And if we're in an environment where no meaningful conversation could possibly occur because there's
00:12:13.440 just no time for it, or it's not the place for it, like an elevator, then we just as soon
00:12:18.360 stay silent because there's nothing can really come of the discussion anyway.
00:12:23.520 Second thing, we are up in our heads all the time, constantly.
00:12:32.340 And we like that, you know, we like to be there thinking and imagining and wondering, whatever.
00:12:36.780 It's not a self-absorbed thing.
00:12:38.520 It's not like we're always thinking about ourselves.
00:12:41.600 We could be thinking about anything.
00:12:43.460 We could be thinking about the news or about a family member or about God or about walruses.
00:12:48.540 I mean, really, who knows?
00:12:50.640 We could be thinking about anything.
00:12:52.780 But if you rip us out of that, then we'd prefer it if you have a good reason.
00:13:01.440 The moment you start talking to us, you have ripped us out of our thought process.
00:13:08.460 And I don't think it's unreasonable that we would prefer, if you're going to do that,
00:13:12.300 that you have a reason for doing it.
00:13:13.800 And so if you have to relay important information to us, that's a reason.
00:13:19.180 If you want to have a real meaningful conversation, that's a reason.
00:13:23.380 But if the reason is just to make an observation about the weather,
00:13:27.560 if the reason is just to say, oh, it's raining outside,
00:13:31.480 well, then maybe we're a little put off by that.
00:13:35.500 We know you didn't mean anything by it.
00:13:37.740 We know you're trying to be friendly.
00:13:39.200 But we see friendliness in different terms.
00:13:43.340 So for us, it could be friendly to not say anything to a person
00:13:46.960 and just let them continue along with whatever thought process they're following at the moment.
00:13:53.160 For you, you're being friendly by talking about the weather.
00:13:56.720 But for us, we're being friendly by not talking about it or not talking to you at all
00:14:03.480 and not bothering you.
00:14:05.260 To us, that's friendly.
00:14:06.540 Third thing.
00:14:11.520 I've already explained that we're up in our heads all the time.
00:14:14.120 And that means that we're very analytical about things.
00:14:18.520 So we analyze everything.
00:14:20.340 We especially analyze human interactions.
00:14:24.640 So we will leave every small talk conversation analyzing and assessing our own performance in the exchange.
00:14:35.320 While the extrovert may leave the exchange and just go about his day and not think about it anymore,
00:14:42.100 for us, we're left thinking about it, inspecting ourselves, giving ourselves a grade on the whole thing.
00:14:48.000 Usually it'll be a pretty poor grade.
00:14:50.080 Although sometimes we'll walk away saying, oh, you know, wow, well done, mate.
00:14:54.300 That was a B plus small talk performance.
00:14:57.840 Well done.
00:14:58.220 And then we have to go take a nap because we're so drained and exhausted by it.
00:15:03.860 But we prefer to avoid this.
00:15:06.360 We prefer to avoid what to us is kind of a high-pressure situation that will lead to a very tough self-analysis.
00:15:15.200 So while silence may be painful to you as an extrovert, it's not to us.
00:15:21.620 The pain starts when you break that silence.
00:15:26.020 And that's the difference between us.
00:15:29.520 And personally, I don't think that one is wrong and the other is right.
00:15:34.060 It's just, it's just, these are just personality types.
00:15:36.260 That's all.
00:15:36.600 Now, of course, this doesn't mean that we can avoid small talk all the time.
00:15:42.620 It's a necessary evil, especially in our society.
00:15:45.880 I think we all understand that.
00:15:47.520 It's a necessary evil on the job.
00:15:49.600 It's a necessary evil if you're like on the dating scene and in many other situations.
00:15:57.420 But it's work for us.
00:16:00.300 It takes effort and it's exhausting and we don't like it.
00:16:04.820 It doesn't come naturally.
00:16:07.600 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 by yourself at a restaurant.
00:16:19.000 Or if you had to sit in a quiet room alone for an hour and talk to nobody, nobody around, and nothing to do.
00:16:26.520 You just have to sit there.
00:16:28.920 Or imagine how you would feel even if you had to read a book by yourself all afternoon or something like that.
00:16:35.220 Imagine the discomfort and the exhaustion and the wanting desperately to get out and to get into your natural environment.
00:16:46.680 That's how you would feel.
00:16:47.640 Well, and that's how we feel during small time.
00:16:51.400 I don't think it's rude.
00:16:52.820 I don't think it's not shy.
00:16:54.780 It's nothing like that.
00:16:55.600 It's just, this is just our personality.
00:16:59.720 Hopefully, that will help you to understand a little bit the, you know, 50% of the people that you share a society with.
00:17:14.560 All right.
00:17:16.960 Well, now I'm exhausted.
00:17:18.980 Thanks for watching, everybody.
00:17:20.120 Thanks for listening.
00:17:20.920 Godspeed.