Nope. I adore debate/lengthy discussion.
I don’t really ‘do’ smalltalk. It drives people crazy. I tend to nudge somewhat controversial topics in to conversations to keep life interesting. Nate and I can (and regularly do) talk for hours and hours and hours about things like the definition and application of agnosticism, or the way the school system should and shouldn’t work, or me explaining the more complicated things i’m learning about our evolution right now.
Most of my friends are people who have something that they can teach me and vise versa.
What bothers me is when there’s someone who is really immature and is just disagreeing in the stupidest (and therefore un-counter-able) ways. A recent example. I was discussing the state of Taiwan with a friend of mine, and an acquaintance walks up and starts talking about how he heard that they ate dogs and cats there. My friend and I both agree that that may be true, but don’t see a problem with it. If people are hungry they do what they need to. And who are we to judge them for their tastes anyways. His response is to start talking about how he also heard that they ate babies and the elderly….
Gah. SO frustrating.
If he were presenting some kind of educated discourse, I wouldn’t mind so much… but just trying to offend me is really immature and tiresome.