Autism

Whenever I'm in a group of NTs, I typically just step back and observe. Seems to me that they talk a lot about other people in various ways - those that all or most of the people in the conversation know personally, famous people, and/or people that only the speaker knows and are informing the rest of the party about. This always seems to take up a surprising percentage of the conversations and sneak into other topics as well (e.g. If the topic is about painting a wall, some other person that painted a wall recently will get mentioned).

They also seem to talk about the weather (classic), traffic, the price of various items (petrol, milk, taxis, electricity, etc), any local events, TV shows/movies, and restaurants a lot. But all of it at a very superficial level, no one seems interested in doing deep dives into any particular topic or even being very specific about anything. Any and all information is typically anecdotal with no one being inclined to research further into anything being said, just the fact that it was said by someone seems to be enough.

My general impression is that their goal is to fill up the air with inconsequential words. That seems to tick the "being social and maintaining friends" goal for them, and any sort of information gained (e.g. Restaurant recommendations or life updates on a friend) is secondary.