Why Small Talk Is Such a Problem For Autistics
It’s important to non-autistic people but doesn’t serve autistic needs
The autistic community is as diverse as humanity itself and it is impossible to contain us all within a defined set of traits.
But after being immersed in the autistic community for the last three years, I am certain that one thing is universal: we autistic folk have a problematic relationship with small talk.
We’re not good at it, we don’t like it and we don’t see the point of it. It’s a bad fit with a core part of being autistic: deep and broad-ranging engagement with issues that are important to us and lack of engagement with those that are not.
I’m not good at small talk is often the statement we reach for to explain what being autistic means to us. In a world where misconceptions about autism persist, it’s not a stretch for non-autistic people to understand. It can provide a kind of soft-disclosure, a way of testing the waters before we’re ready for big announcements.
We’ve managed to turn our problem with small talk it into a badge of honor, a marker of autistic identity. T-shirts and other merch use humor to problematise the concept of small talk. The target is the neurotypical pre-occupation with small talk rather than a deficit in autistic…
