I.e. the things that make people become friends and feel safe around each other. As a fellow autistic person we should not be avoiding small talk, we should be learning how to better connect with those around us since we need more time and work to do so.

It’s easy to use a diagnosis as an excuse not to connect. But it’s a lame excuse. It is much more interesting to understand what tools we need to gain to connect with the world. Sometimes I need to be an anthropologist. Sometimes I need to be a crime scene investigator. Usually I just need to listen better.

When I was in a wheelchair I had to use ramps instead of the stairs. But that didn’t stop me from going to the movies

i am not autistic, but i hate smalltalk too. i can't bear it. it takes all the fun out of talking to people and i feel like it's a waste of time. not sure where i am going with this argument other than maybe saying that it's ok not to like smalltalk.

maybe learning to be better at it would help, because the biggest pain and discomfort for me is that i don't know what to say and that anything i can think of feels meaningless.

i "solved" the problem by moving to a country with a different native language and culture. this raises the barrier to communicate and it seems to have an effect of curbing smalltalk.

while in a wheelchair, how comfortable were you asking for help? that would be the biggest challenge for me.

As someone who used to feel like they were bad at small talk, maybe this resonates with you.

I wasn’t bad at small talk. I was bad at sharing my thoughts and feelings because it didn’t feel safe. As a result the only things that felt like safe small talk topics were the weather and sports.

Overtime I’ve become better at sharing my feelings, even if they are “embarrassing“. I ended up talking for three hours on a plane ride last weekend with an absolute stranger. We talked about the differences in our family dynamics, what cities we find it easier and harder to make friends in, the current state of our relationships and what we wanted out of them. All of that was “small talk” because we were just passing the time with someone we will never meet again. But the subjects were not small.

A side effect of feeling comfortable talking about things that matter to you is that it gives you a lot more motivation to be curious and interested in things that matter to other people as well. Even better, if you share with people more deeply about how you are feeling, they will be able to help you in ways that you didn’t even realize were possible

my experience was different. yes, i get that sharing my thoughts sometimes doesn't feel safe, and when i was younger i did have that experience too. but i had and have no interest in popular sports, so that topic is poison for me. i have absolutely nothing to contribute. if someone wants to talk about sports i am thinking, why are they wasting their life? any other topic would be better than that. and talking about weather? well, got a window? open it!

but those topics you shared on the plane, well that's not small talk to me. i totally would have enjoyed being part of that conversation. as i get older, i can speak from experience. i can talk about my feelings that i have and had, because now i understand them. and, as a bonus effect, as you get older people treat you with more respect, which makes talking about any topic easier.

so i am bad at talking about banal, to me meaningless topics, and while it is getting easier, i don't actually have any interest in engaging in those topics because they not only feel like a waste of time, they are a waste of my time that i want to spend more meaningfully, like reading a book.

This is what I suggest too, what a good way of putting it!

Some people have very funny ways at looking at the most mundane context in my mind. It would be a shame if I didnt spend time sharing my funny head in ways that can't be captured in a record!

I am semi-verbal.

I can't talk most of the time, that does stop me from having a conversation yes.

Processing Sensory information takes priority over social circuits in my brain, physically.

So I am unapologetically autistic and no I don't have to break my brain to try to fit in.

If people find my disabilities upsetting thats stereotype ableism and yes it happens often

I never said you had to be good at talking. But you can be bad at talking and also not anxious, which it sounds like you are.

Humans associate "bad at talking" with low intelligence so getting called a "retard" when my IQ is high average does cause anxiety, yup.

Yeah, the behaviors in this post are more anti-social than asocial. I don't think it's meant to be about people who are shy, introverted, asocial.