I have a serious problem with making small talk.

In my BP days, my attitude towards small talk could be summarized as "who gives a shit?" Post discovering TRP, my attitude has improved. However, practically speaking, after years of voluntarily ignoring people, my skills in the small talk department aren't much better.

Most of the advice I've read about how to resolve this issue would be best directed towards guys who are shy or soft spoken. My main issue is that I genuinely don't care enough about other people to begin asking the important questions about their lives or to talk enough about myself to make them want to get to know me. And I don't mean to sound arrogant or condescending, but as a result of my attitude towards others, i simply don't feel the need to talk to others.

Part of my attitude towards small talk is rooted in my personal philosophy of never relying on others. As childish as this may sound, I hate the idea that people will inevitably need people to get something done. I've always been a self-driven and tunnel vision kind of guy who believes that if I want something enough, I can do the work to get it myself without help from others.

Unfortunately for me, my desire for total independence has also affected my ability to successfully game women. Without any skill in making small talk, I lack the ability to make conversation interesting. Most of the time I come off as the silent type with no real personality and no real depth of character. I've been accused by women of being an emotionless robot and being short on words. The truth is, however, that I don't find most of the conversations I have to be worth my time. This is incredibly problematic when talking to women because I either think "cool story bro, don't tell it again" to everything they say, or I explicitly tell it to them when I've had enough of their bitching and useless gossip.

I don't want to see women as objects, but the reality is that the way I've been going about things, they kind of are. That's not to say I don't treat them with respect when practicing game, but it's probably a bad thing when I feel like I don't need to get laid when I can fap to porn whenever I want. I recognize what kind of negative effect this has had on my social life, and especially in my ability to meet new people and maintain them as long term contacts. I tend to burn A LOT of bridges without a problem and I have a very small social circle. I'm fine with this. I hate phonies and don't take anyone's shit. But alas, I come to you all at TRP because I recognize this is a problem. I want to find out how to best remove myself from my self imposed comfort zone. I've done all the required reading that TRP asks, but I've taken most of what I've learned to be akin to learning principles rather than mastering demonstrable skills. My question is mostly about how to make genuine small talk, or if I can't, how to fake it so that it at least comes across as genuine and organic.

So for someone who genuinely doesn't care about getting to know others, and for someone who genuinely wants to turn things around, how do I go about changing my mentality and adopting the right practices to make small talk not such a huge chore for me?