Greeting sequence on IM

Tags: chat.
By lucb1e on 2012-01-22 14:01:07 +0100

Usually an MSN conversation starts like this:
Hi
Hi
How are you?
Fine, you?
Fine too
[subject you actually want to talk about]

The "Hi" I do myself to know if someone is there before typing what I actually want to talk about. But I only ask how someone is doing when I really want to know, and this doesn't have to be on the beginning of a conversation. I find it rather useless to ask it every time. If there was something I wanted to talk about with you, I would probably have done so already. Or if you already started about another subject before I could start about what's up, there is always the parallel conversation technique.

When I told someone to "Let's skip this" after he asked how I was doing, he said that almost every person on earth starts a conversation like that and that I couldn't blame him for doing it. I said, more as a joke, that I blamed humanity for conditioning him to start every conversation like that, and added a moment later "Do you know how much bandwidth could be saved worldwide?".
(Of course I wasn't really serious, but there is a core of truth). He replied again: "Alright then, but I'm sure 70% of all human behaviour is conditioned by the rest of the society or even more than that."
"It's a vicious circle, I know. But I'm breaking it right now."
"Cool"
"MSN should censor [how are you]"

What I mean to say, please skip the unnecessities. It is a bit like this story about monkeys, doing stuff because everyone does it.