smalltalk

A five-panel comic showing a man and woman on what appears to be a date at a table. Panel 1: The man tells the woman, "I want you to know I'm bad at smalltalk." Panel 2: Looking earnest, he explains he's not interested in trivialities and wishes people could discuss meaningful topics, but society obligates small talk about weather and traffic. Panel 3: The woman counters that if his behavior is oriented around profundities, why does his online profile say he likes binging bad TV and playing old video games all night. Panel 4: The man, flustered, stammers, "That's different... I... it's..." Panel 5: The woman calmly observes he's trying to reframe a basic character flaw as an interesting quirk to avoid the difficulty of self-improvement; the cornered man abruptly deflects with, "Boy it sure has been rainy this week, hasn't it?"—falling back on exactly the small talk he claimed to despise. Votey (a single hand-lettered panel): "If you really hate small talk, go straight to 'Karl Marx assassinated Lincoln'."