Dispatch #5: Casual Conversations and Other Forms of Psychological Combat

May 29, 2025

"Wow, crazy weather we're having, right?!"

Here we go again...

Small talk.

The very thought makes part of my brain scream out like Alderaan at its introductory meeting with the Death Star. (Spoiler: it didn’t go well.)

For neurotypicals, small talk is no big deal. Hell, they even called it small. As if to say: “Relax, it’s tiny! Harmless! Just words!”

And from the outside looking in, I agree. It seems like it should be easy.

Which makes it even more annoying that my brain responds as if someone just asked me to defuse a bomb using strategic eye contact.

Full disclosure: I’ve gotten a lot better at small talk. At least, as far as you can tell, I appear competent.

Fuller disclosure: I’m just cycling through scripts.

And if the conversation goes on too long and I run out of material, it’s going one of two ways: I will either overshare about how the seeds for the dissolution of the Roman Republic were planted during the Cimbrian invasion of northern Italy…
or I will shut down into complete, uncomfortable silence.

Take your pick.

So what’s really going on here? Why does small talk trip us up?

Hydrated? Snacks? Cool. Let’s pull apart the engine and get into the nuts and bolts.

At the very core of this is how the neurodivergent brain processes social information in comparison to the neurotypical brain.

Think about it. Small talk depends on subtle cues, rapid topic shifts, and what researchers call social working memory. This is juggling multiple layers of real-time meaning without dropping any.

It also tends to lack context, depth, or any clear purpose. There's no sharing of ideas, no deep explorations of a topic. And that’s not a flaw, it’s the design. Small talk is often referred to as "social lubrication". It's important for connection with neurotypicals. It's a low-stakes way to maintain connections and build rapport.

But if you were to sit down and make a list titled: "Landmines I Could Plant To Blow My Neurodivergent Friend To Kingdom Come", everything above would be on that list. If we made a Venn diagram of that list and “small talk” we'd have a single, fully overlapped circle.

Ok, cool. So why does all of that trip us up?

We can start with social working memory. This is the brain's notepad for keeping track of the conversation and where to go next. The brain’s short-term scratchpad for navigating conversations. It’s how you remember what someone just said, how they said it, what they might’ve meant, and what you were going to say. And we're doing this while decoding tone, adjusting posture, checking on the amount of eye contact, and so on.

Research shows that many neurodivergent folks, especially autistic and ADHD individuals, have reduced social working memory capacity or process it differently than a neurotypical brain.

It’s not that we’re not trying. It’s that our cognitive load gets full faster. We’re not just tracking the thread of a conversation. We’re also masking, scripting, and scanning for sarcasm, and teasing out ambiguity.

So when the conversation has no clear goal and is nothing but fluff and filler the neurodivergent brain revolts.

Not because we’re cold.

Not because we don’t care.

But because we value meaning, and this kind of interaction often feels like trying to hold sand in a colander.

“How’s work?”

“Fine.”

“Weather’s weird, huh?”

“Sure is.” [existential void intensifies]

We want connection. We crave it.

But asking us to engage in a vague, signal-less interaction is like asking a jazz musician to sight-read a spreadsheet. It’s technically doable but spiritually insulting.

And here’s the kicker: even when we get good at it... even when we script and smile and nod... we often leave the interaction more exhausted than when we started.

Not because we’re antisocial.

Because we’re running social code on incompatible hardware.

So next time your neurodivergent friend short-circuits mid-chat or changes topics like they’re dodging sniper fire... it’s not rudeness. It’s resource management.

And if you're neurodivergent yourself, know this: scripting is valid. So is silence. So is shifting the discussion to something meaningful. You’re not broken. You’re just running on a different OS.

Between you and me? Our firmware kicks ass.

It just wasn't built for small talk.

And honestly? Neither were the best conversations.