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 noticed a lot more people starting using it over the pandemic.
Annoying AF seems a tad hyperbolic, no?
Not at all. If it wasn’t so bothersome I wouldn’t have taken three minutes to post something about it. I hate it.
If this is all it takes to be annoying you either have the easiest time, or you’re perpetually angry due to the most inconsequential shit.
More of the latter. When I’m dealing with the stress of due dates and troubleshooting things that aren’t working a needed, having to read through literal paragraphs of platitudes only to find one sentence regarding the support request can certainly increase my blood pressure. Sometimes the verbiage is so full of shit that it just comes off as spammy. I’ve deleted emails from support agents thinking they were phishing attempts.
Dev?
damn I guess we’re too privileged to find small things annoying now?
At least it doesn’t ask for a response, like “how are you” or “how’s things?”
It’s just an attempt to briefly acknowledge you’re asking a human your questions, rather than an algorithm.
You’re presumably capable of seeing and skipping the sentence without reading it, so go ahead. Nobody expects an answer, nor continued “courtesies” during back-and-forth replies.
Having thought about this, I think I will start using Ave like a Roman.
Ave Oxjox!