What’s Your Geek (or How To Small Talk)

We should all feel comfortable talking about the things in the world that we enjoy.

Jun 05, 2025

Small talk is great!1 Some people say they don’t like small talk. I have seen a number of social media comments about how small talk sucks, that small talk is meaningless, and that we should be having meatier conversations than mindlessly yapping about the mundane.

OH, WHAT A SILLY THOUGHT!

Everyone wants to talk about what they like to talk about. It’s the nature of the beast. That includes you. Calm down, I do it too. You (specifically you) are interested in a whole slew of topics that you would just love to blather on about if given half the opportunity. We are all guilty of this. Humans are weird that way. The reason people don’t like small talk is because they would rather be blathering about what they want to blather about rather than whatever it is anybody else wants to blather about. So we end up talking about the weather.

So, yeah: BORING!

You can’t just jump into the deep waters with a stranger. You can’t cannonball into a conversation with, “So, the James Webb Telescope may have just disproved the Big Bang Theory. Let me tell you about it…2” You might, by pure chance, find someone who also geeks out about space news, but the odds are that you’re going to have a stranger look at you the way someone looks at abstract art: with confused disdain.

You have to use small talk to get to the big talk. It’s a game called:

WHAT’S YOUR GEEK

Everyone geeks out to something. There are birders that walk among us. Some people make their own clothes. Others use burlesque as exercise. The goal of What’s Your Geek is to figure out what the other person geeks out about and get them to talk about it.

Here are some strategies for winning the game:

1) ASK BLATHERABLE QUESTIONS

One of the tricks experts have suggested for opening up small talk is to ask open ended questions - questions that allow for the answerer to blather. The problem is, you never can tell what might prompt blathering just by looking at someone. You need to ask blatherable questions. They have two parts:

They need to be universally human.
They need to stay positive.

Here are some examples. Feel free to come up with your own:

What is the strangest thing that happened to you today?

Everyone has weird things happen to them.
“Strangest” is the important word here. It’s not “good” (because maybe nothing good happened) and it’s not “bad” (because no one wants to dredge that up).

What color socks are you wearing, and what was your decision making process for buying them?

People wear socks.
Socks often have weird origin stories.

What are you planning? World domination, or going on a trip, or something?

Everyone is planning something.
If they aren’t planning something, world domination is a fun jumping off point.

What’s new and exciting?

This invites discussion of their geek.
“New and exciting” presupposes that whatever they are going to tell you is, indeed, new and exciting.

2) NOTHING IS EMBARRASSING

One reason people aren’t very forthcoming with what they geek out about is that they believe others will make fun of them. They feel embarrassed by their geek. But we all have a geek! There’s nothing to be embarrassed by if we all have something to be embarrassed by. We should all feel comfortable talking about the things in the world that we enjoy.

So here’s the thing: Every answer is a legitimate answer. There can be no answer that you throw shade on. Your reaction should be the happiness found by someone opening up their secrets to you.

3) LEARN FROM THE ANSWER

Once you get an answer, and they understand that you aren’t going to be all judgy about it, they will open up. One of two things will happen:

You discover you have something in common.
You find a completely different way of looking at things.

If you discover you have something in common - yay! - you can share your geek!

If you find a completely different way of looking at things - yay! - you can ask questions to learn more about what they geek out about. For example, I don’t know much about burlesque as exercise, but I’m willing to learn.

SMALL TALK ROCKS

When you discover what their geek is and then let their freak flag fly about it, you’ve won the game of What’s Your Geek. And small talk becomes WAY more fun.

So tell me, what’s new and exciting?