Heck, I'm not even a fan of small talk. It's not as though I have an aversion to talking. Discussing things of mutual interest is fine. Listening to people who have interesting stories, or even need to get something off their chest, is fine. But small talk has always struck me as the means by which people fill silence. You don't really learn anything about each other.
Small talk can certainly be a vacuous attempt to fill the silence. It also seems to act as a social lubricant, moving with easy questions and accelerating into something more meaningful.
