Practically every email I’ve received in maybe the past year has started with “I hope you are well”. I even had an LLM draft a placeholder email for me and it started with the same thing. This has not always been the case and it’s strange to me that everyone I interact with begins their emails with this line. Frankly, it’s annoying AF.
What gives? Who started this? Why has it become so prevalent? More importantly, how do we stop it?
While I’m at it, if you work in tech / customer support, I urge you to speak with your supervisors to minimize the boiler plate copy paste trash you insert into your emails. People dealing with shit that’s not working as intended or desired do not have the mental or emotional capacity to wade through your platitudinal nonsense. Get to the fucking point.
I get your first point but to the second point, you’re making my point. Looking someone in the face and having a moment with each other is a valid reason to wish them well, IMO.
A stranger on the other end of a support ticket, someone I’ve never interacted with before, someone who may know my email address but not my first name, hoping I’m well is cringy. Someone I do know and work with on a regular basis hoping I’m well is utter garbage. We just spoke on the phone yesterday so you’re not hoping I’m well, you just didn’t bother to remove that from the copy paste, you lazy ass.
If the internet didn’t have “silly” shit on it then it might as well not exist.
if you think that not seeing them face to face invalidates any sort of good will towards each other then that’s your personal outlook. I email tons of people every day that I’ve never met in person but have still developed ideas of, opinions on, and wonder about, so I don’t think that the removal of physically seeing the person changes too much about your well wishes towards them.
And I’m not saying silly as in not valid to exist, I mean silly as in letting it bother you to that degree.
Edit: I do also want to acknowledge that a good 70% of the time or so, I’d be willing to bet you’re correct and that a person saying pleasantries doesn’t care one bit, but I know there are people that do mean that stuff, to one degree or another, because I’m that way a lot of the time, and some people I know are that way.