I Like My Cigarettes with Silence

Brendan Kelly, lead singer of The Lawrence Arms, keeps a blog titled "Bad Sandwich Chronicles," where he typically goes through his -- usually humorous -- thoughts each day. This post, however, relates entirely to the smoke hut's atmosphere.
While the smoke huts generally seem uplifting and full of life, there are times when no words are spoken. Sometimes not even eye contact occurs.
Usually, that type of atmosphere is foreseeable: if a group of people are already inside and no one is talking or facing eachother, social forces may lead the next few that wander in to stand in silence as well. Or, if someone's alone in the hut and another walks in without making eye contact or saying hello, it's a pretty good sign that they aren't in the deep, life-altering conversation kind of mood.
Among the most awkward of all situations that come up in the huts, though, would be the failed communication. When those social forces create a challenge of sorts to create a conversation, so one smoker tries to start something up by making a small comment:
"Man, it's freezing out here."
And, despite the fact that it's obviously a plee of silence-induced anxiety, the only response basically ends conversation completely:
"Yeah."
There's no way to be sure what runs through the minds of those who don't talk -- they could just be anti-social, shy or deep in thought -- but many people take instances like that to be mean.
Brittany, for instance, commented on an earlier post and said she was "shunned" when trying to say hello to a hutter recently.
"Perhaps you could talk about the rude hut visitors," she said.
Back to Kelly's post, he wrote that his tastes were changing -- he used to enjoy random conversation with strangers but over the years found that it was less enjoyable.
"This doesn't mean that I hate my friends or that I've never met anyone nice and good out there," Kelly said. "It's just that for the most part, the whole 'interacting with strangers' thing is irritating and so I've just decided, sort of unconsciously until this very moment of articulation, to avoid it."

Is small-talk with a stranger something that is irritating to you, or do you delve into the interaction no matter how pointless?