Do You Miss Small Talk? #IWSG

A smiling, grey-haired gentleman used to man the checkout counter at my local community grocery store. He was helpful, telling me about discounts and vouchers, and reminding me to take all the packets I’d paid for.

 

Alongside this helpfulness was friendly banter, chats about the weather, about simple, general topics like festivals we celebrate or favorite breakfast recipes.

 

I haven’t seen that acquaintance (his name was Chang) for months now. Instead of the dozen or so people manning checkout counters, now there are only two. They look harried and put upon as they help customers work on auto check-out counters, screens where you can scan and pay for items, and have very little time to chit-chat as they cater to dozens of customers at the same time. They rush about helping customers weigh stuff, or get packets, or tap their cards for non-accessible items like alcohol and tobacco.

 

The screens are efficient, no doubt, but I miss the human touch–the exchange of banalities with a stranger (and I say this as an introvert). With economic downturn and falling birth rates, AI assistants and counters of all kinds seem to be having their moment. Actually, more than a moment. They are replacing humans.

 

I wonder who this is actually helping.  Customers are doing their own checkouts, the checkout staff have lost their jobs, and human interaction has reduced, but that’s talk for another time.

 

Technology in the form of social media is ostensibly supposed to bring people together, but all I see in buses and trains are commuters focusing on their screens. There’s no chatter, the way it used to be even fifteen to twenty years ago–normal talk about the weather, about traffic, things everyone can agree on. Now, people broadcast their political affiliations. It is hard to start off a friendly chat with someone sitting beside you who (you can see from the video they are watching or the podcast they’re listening to) is placed on the diametrically opposite side on the political spectrum.

 

Humans are tribal by nature. We are geared to find/ found community with people who hold the same beliefs as we do, who enjoy the same things as we do. To find these commonalities, we need to say hello first. Increasingly though, the opportunities to say hello are diminishing, at least in the urban context. Before technology came along and made our lives convenient, human interaction was inevitable if you stepped out of the home: you had to speak in order to get a ticket on a bus or train, to buy your vegetables, to get your coffee. All of these things are now possible without exchanging a single word with another human.

 

Of course, technology is not all bad for human interaction–I’ve been chatting with some of you for more than a dozen years, and we interact on social media as well–saying hello on each other’s pages. This blog itself has become a community of a sort. Some of you have been more helpful friends than people I know in real life. I do feel though, and many of you might agree, that on-screen interaction cannot and should not replace all human interaction.

 

When we stop having the small chats, the banter with baristas or checkout staff or co-passengers, we miss out on a fundamental aspect of our essential nature: being social, which allows us to focus more on the commonalities than differences.

 

I’d known Chang for years, as an acquaintance I joked around with. Had I discovered that his politics was different from mine, it would still have been possible for me to interact with him. Getting to know someone, no matter in how surface a fashion, lets us have empathy for them, to see them as a fellow human. Empathy helps build community.

I’ve spoken about how we’ve lost the treasure of letter-writing, which gave us someone’s words in a tangible form. I now worry that the babies born today would know only how to interact with screens, and not each other. They’ll not know how to build bridges, only walls.

In a world where technology is replacing or hurting humanity at an alarming rate, all for the benefit or profit of the privileged, building community might provide the answer.

We do a fair amount of that in the writing world–be it indie or trad, writers know the value of joining hands and banding together, of staying in constant communication. Not that we don’t have our conflicts, but we do make the time for small talk and bonding at so many events. This post is in fact part of a writerly event, held each first Wednesday of the month: Insecure Writer’s Support Group. Founded by the Ninja Cap’n Alex J. Cavanaugh, the purpose of the group is to offer a safe space where writers can share their fears and insecurities without being judged.

The awesome co-hosts for the May 7 posting of the IWSG are Feather Stone, Janet Alcorn, Rebecca Douglass, Jemima Pett, and Pat Garcia! Please visit them to check out their posts.

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