You must have some very meaningful conversations for "no problem" to make one seem meaning-less; most conversations in general seem to be pretty meaningless without needing a glib "no problem" to point that out. Which provides for a great segue to my pet peeve: small talk, and meaningless conversations. "Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?...That's when you know you've found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence."
Ok, I will admit silence in conversation is awkward to me too. But I seem to be pretty bad at filling it. Why am
I the one who has to fill it, anyway, what's the other person doing? Then
I'm the one who's not interesting.
I will also admit I'm sometimes guilty of asking followup questions to get the details of what people are doing, though I don't like to do it because I know the other person might not like it. I just don't want to miss out on anything, and sometimes I'm looking for something interesting to do. How better to find it than by asking what interesting things someone else is doing? It's unlikely I'll be offended by the mere fact that they didn't tell me about it in the first place. If it's something personal, I know not to push it any farther and leave them alone.