A situation I run into frequently when trying to make small talk is this:
Me: So what are your interests?
Them: Gaming
Me: Cool, me too. What games?
Them: Call of Duty, what about you?
Me: Dwarf Fortress
Them: Never heard of it. What's type of game is it?
At this point I'm basically deadlocked because explaining the game would take longer than their attention span. I feel I probably made a mistake earlier which led to this situation. How to do better?
@secretmousealias@actuallyautistic
It sounds like a normal dialogue so far as I can judge it. I don't know the game, but I guess you can assign it to some genre or mixture of genres. So just drop that and if they have further interest you could expand on it ig.
@Dr_Obvious@secretmousealias@actuallyautistic I think there are two options from here that would work. There's the short summary ("oh it's an RPG on mobile, it's got really smooth gameplay that makes it really addictive" - note I made this up, I don't actually know the game!), or there's the changing the topic back to the other person ("Actually I was thinking of trying that, what's it like?")
Best tactic depends on whether you feel like talking or listening.
Small talk is a bit like roleplaying for me (well, it's part of "masking"...).
Imagine you are playing the role of a fantasy world medieval peasant.
"Good day to you, sir. I am a humble cabbage farmer. I can tell you a lot about cabbage."
Of course you wouldn't use any actual knowledge you might possess about cabbage, more like... faking knowledge on an obviously level.
"Did you know that cabbage grows better in wet soil?"
I mean, the Wikipedia definition of "Smalltalk" more or less states that it is "talking about nothing": No politics, no controversal topics, only stuff that is boring.
Like that time you found a snail near your cabbage.