Comment by nine_k
3 hours ago
(Getting to the point:) I once heard a perfect explanation of the small talk phenomenon. It's like two modems establishing a link: they send to each other signals that are intended to asses how the line behaves, how well the other side hears you, and what it supports. Thus small talk may never be a pithy conversation: its purpose is to be a formal, predictable, zero-surprise exchange. Skipping it and going straight to the point may result in a badly botched communication attempt.
It's like letting a cat sniff your hand or get used to your presence. We're smelling each other out at a subconscious level.
And more concretely, you're determining someone's values before offending them. Through small talk you might discover they're more conservative. Maybe they're hippies at heart. Maybe they hate dark humor, maybe they love it.
If you know those things, you can choose which serious conversations you'd like to have and which you'd better avoid. Plus the process of sniffing each other out means there's more baseline trust going in.
It could be. Or maybe she just wanted to enjoy his company for a while, fly around in the clouds until she had to make her final approach and make sure to stick the landing.
> its purpose is to be a formal, predictable, zero-surprise exchange
You might want to revise that as "no unpleasant surprises and minimal surprises in general".
People will always surprise you, but we prefer pleasant surprises.