People feel at ease with the usual chit chat I guess.
So much is going on around us and it seems that we (everywhere...not just here on the forums) are so caught up in what is going on only in our own personal world.
Thats the one good thing about working in mental health, one learns very quickly to become not so introspective, because one needs to know whats happeneing in the world because often that impacts on our clients.