"Nobody likes small talk, right?" he asked. "It's just safe conversational topics that nobody can be offended by when you don't know the other person. It serves as a way to get people talking to each other, but I never thought it was meant to be the end of it, unless you don't have much time or you're deliberately playing it safe. But I don't think anybody really wants to sit around all day talking about the weather, or the local sports team, or the state of the roads. It's just like Luma said - a way to test the waters to see if you want to keep talking about more interesting things."

He shrugged. "Pretty sure that learning how to make small talk and still keep it engaging and interesting would be a useful skill."