[klodolph]

I've been living in the US for almost all of my life, various regions, and I still don't see how small talk is "feigned". (I am curious what your social background is, and what your experience is with US culture.) The construction does not even make sense to me, and the phrase seems logically impossible to me, so my guess is that we are using different definitions for "feigned" or "small talk" or some other term.

"To feign" means to do something in a way that it looks like you're doing something else, so I could feign that I care about you and care about your well-being, but secretly I don't care about you and I hate you. However, small talk is not this. Small talk is just polite conversation that does not cover any issues of real relevance but merely demonstrates friendly intentions or a desire for positive interactions. So when I say, "How are you?", if this is small talk, I am not actually feigning interest. We both understand that I am not actually expressing any interest in your well being, I am only trying to communicate that I want to have a positive interaction with you. In Linguistics this phenomenon is called "pragmatics", and it is the phenomenon that the actual meaning of an utterance can be completely different from its literal meaning. Another example of pragmatics is "Do you have a pen?" This is literally a question of fact, but most likely it is a request to borrow a pen. Someone saying "Do you have a pen?" is not feigning interest in whether you have a pen any more than someone saying "How are you doing today?" is feigning interest in your well being. If you ask me, "Do you have a pen?" and I reply, "Yes," with no further comment or action I'm being rude, just as I would be rude if a sales clerk asked me, "How are you doing today?" and I started rambling about my upcoming divorce and how my mother was recently diagnosed with cancer.

That's not to say waiters don't feign interest or feign happiness. Yes, many people in the service industry are required to "perform" or express certain attitudes. This can be emotionally draining. Small talk is not this; small talk is genuine and it does not express interest or emotion. "Feigned" small talk doesn't make sense logically.

If you think it is creepy then you are applying standards from another culture to our own. You have every right to make these judgments but I don't see a case here for the supremacy of one single culture's interpretation of small talk.

[andyroid]

If your interest in my well being does not include listening to me talking about my illness for the next twenty minutes, your interest is feigned. This is what it’s all about in countries that don’t bother much with small talk, and your example with asking about someone owning a pen (while interesting in other aspects) isn’t really a serviceable metaphor to that.

[klodolph]

There's no feigned interest, if you think I have expressed interested in you talking about your illness for the next twenty minutes then you have literally misunderstood what I said. I can sympathize with people who find this confusing—the meaning of the question “How are you doing today?” cannot be deduced from structure. I have known people who are native English speakers who grew up in the US and find this deduction difficult—they have to ask for clarification. I have an autistic friend who does this regularly, but she does not accuse people of being insincere.

The example of a pen is not a metaphor. It is another example of the underlying linguistic phenomenon (pragmatics) in action. Just like the meaning of “Do you have a pen?” cannot be deduced from its structure, the meaning of “How are you doing today?” cannot be deduced from its structure. You are required to use context in both cases, and for the same reason. I am not sure why you are calling it a metaphor, since I literally described it as "another example of pragmatics". It is not a similar phenomenon, it is literally the same phenomenon in action.

If you wish to learn more about pragmatics, there are many resources on the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics

If you interpret small talk as "feigned interest", then you are in error.