Meme: The Rock Driving, 3 panels:

1st panel: The Rock driving and casually asks, “How do you know so much about history?”

2nd: panel: Girl in back seat responds, “I read about it.”

3rd panel: The Rock, surprised, turns around to look at her

Background: Honestly, I started making this meme to ask if anyone else goes through this weird situation with others and emotionally process the confusion about it. Until just now, I thought that people would ask that because they either (a) wanted to learn how to learn about history as if I knew some secret technique, or (b) were fairly uneducated on the topic and thought my knowledge of it was interesting. Now, I think I realized that most people weren’t asking for either a or b reasons. They were asking to make small talk, which I would completely shut down by answering the question directly.

Right? Is that why people would ask something like that?

  • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
    8·
    4 months ago

    Yeah, it is small talk. But it’s also a sort of open question as to what motivated you to read up about it. If you feel like it’s relevant, you can tell a good bit about your life story.
    Something like “I had a good teacher in 5th grade and was her favorite student, because I knew already some things from video games”.

    Or people who are a bit more experienced at small talk might manage to crack a joke in combination with a tidbit about themselves, e.g. “I’m a big fan of true crime stories, and turns out they’ve been making those for quite a while already”.

    But yeah, your concrete answer is hardly important. It’s more of a “Tell me a fun fact about yourself, please! I’d like to get to know you better.”.