Icebreaker

An icebreaker is a low-stakes question, comment, or activity used to open a conversation with someone you have not talked to before. Good icebreakers are easy to answer, genuinely curious, and avoid anything too personal or heavy for a first exchange.

Examples include asking about someone's day, a shared interest visible in a room topic, or a light hypothetical question. The goal is to lower the initial awkwardness of talking to a stranger and give the conversation somewhere natural to go.

Icebreakers are especially useful in random chat and chat room settings, where you are talking to someone with zero shared context.