This isnt small talk, this is a survival mechanism to figure if the person will enact violence on you or not. Optimally you want the response to be empty words, grunting, or being told to fuck off.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Optimally you want the response to be empty words, grunting, or being told to fuck off.

US/DE/both, did you mean?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

I was referring to US culture. The most exposure to Deutsche culture is through part of my family culture and that ancestor left back when the HRE was still in living memory and not even old living memory.

[–] PugJesus 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

A friend of mine, married to a European, said that I should have been born in Europe, not the US, due to my hatred of small talk.

[–] Aceticon 3 points 6 days ago

It really depends on the country and people's personality.

In my experience in Southern Europe people tend to love share stuff about themselves (and will easilly go into their life story) whilst in Northern Europe getting anything about them without having a long acquaintance with them is very hard if not impossible.

Apparently the Finnish are very averse to small talk (pretty much the opposite of Southern Europe).

Then there are also other variances - in Britain they'll tend to portray themselves as better than they really are feeling, in Portugal they'll tend to complain about life and things and in The Netherlands, if you do get them to open up, they'll be very matter of fact.

After language, it's maybe the hardest kind of thing to get used to when going to live in another country.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Finland is very good for people who hate smalltalk.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Sounds amazing. I should move to Germany for a while.