• BougieBirdie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 months ago

    “How are you,” is one of those loaded questions I never know how to answer.

    Is it part of a greeting? Do you genuinely want to know? Do I lie and keep the peace, or do I open up and bring you down?

    Anyway, I’m doing fine, how are you?

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      It’s a greeting, and an invitation to open up if you like.

      I’m autistic and I get this. You can learn this stuff. Just respect we’ve got a culture here. Obviously “How are you?” is a symbolic hello.

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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      4 months ago

      It’s like a health check. When you hit /api/health/ it probably doesn’t report all the details like number of users created today, count of files in the S3 bucket, whatever. It checks that shit’s basically working, it heard your request, and now everything is 200 OK.

      (No, you can’t return a 204 no content in this metaphor because that’s not what the client is expecting. If they don’t get a 200 back, they’re going to think something is wrong and investigate.)

      I’m just assuming some of you are like backend developers and this metaphor will make sense to you.

    • Skasi@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Maybe they’re shy and don’t complete the sentence. They wanna know “How are you so handsome?”, but don’t dare to ask such personal questions.

      • tetris11
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        4 months ago

        That sounds like an accusation against either your intelligence, or your standing in life.

    • JATth@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      “How are you?”, is basically an open question of “what have I done lately? where am I headed?” It’s an invitation to politely level some burden at least, but this also includes taking in some burden of the friend.