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Actually fr! Studied a year there and I had no driver license back then… Which was fuckin painful as there was little to no other infrastructure! It was also fun to start uni with a 2 hour consultation about school shootings…
But the worst thing? They fucken start every conversation with a ‘how are you’ and look at you like you are boinkers if you say anything aside from ‘good’! Well I am not fuckin good at most times…
Lived in multiple eu countries as a contrast and its incomparably worse, while there is an amount of money I would go back temporarily but I would never settle down there
Wait, so y'all don't have to lie and tell people you're doing good? This is an American thing?
Yeah pretty much. Most of us don’t even ask.
Wow
That would save so much bullshit if I could just skip that stupid pleasantry.
I tell people how I'm doing now and then to throw people off. Feels sort of like a power play, but they usually seem to think "wow this guy is full of himself."
They probably get annoyed because you didn't say 'fine' and now they have to think about you to see if you're kidding or not which should hopefully make them think about asking in the future
That's the idea.
It doesn't work most of the time. I got a talking to from one manager. That one kinda entertained me.
if they're a friend we will often ask but then we want a genuine reply (which isn't always given)
Yes. Among friends it’s different.
Yeah...
I am an American but have had a lot of friends from all over the world.
We are kind of exceptional in the extent of normalized, utterly disingenuous 'standard social interactions and phrases' that we use.
We talk like NPCs using throwaway, canned dialogue lines, and if we don't do NPC talk, well then that is actually viewed as antisocial...
Even though basically everyone else in the world would view this all as the opposite, inverted. Such forced bullshit conversations are generally viewed as bullshit and disingenuous.
Land of the individual!...
So long as you conform to various social norms that are so routine most of us don't ever even stop to question their prevalence or function.
I hear ya, but I gotta say, America ain't nothing compared to Japan in that regards. They have actual standardized stock phrases for all types of interactions, at work and at home. I have been in meetings where some participants literally didn't utter a single word that resembled an original thought, and it was completely acceptable.
That is very true, Japanese corporate business culture is on a whole other level.
Somewhat ironically, all my experiences with actual Japanese people are via Karate... in the Dojo, very strict, formal, no nonsense.
But uh, just casually hanging out? At least the ones I knew,... much more rowdy, haha.
Unrelated to my earlier Karate experiences, about a decadr after I'd gotten my black belt, and had since laid off Karate a bit... I once randomly befriended a Japanese man... who claimed he had been an actual Yakuza, a Yakushi... he explained to me that he had fucked up some operation, and instead of losing a finger, his superior struck him with the blunt side of the... I guess it would have been a waki-zashi?... stuck him on the knuckle, and that finger of his was pretty messed up.
He took that, and permanent exile from Japan, over... losing a finger, and then likely just getting killed... he'd pissed off another group pretty severely.
... We then got to talking about Anime, Yokai, and of course Karate... said he was a 4th Dan, 4th Degree Black Belt and uh... yeah, he was very, very significantly skilled in a few basically play fight, not even proper sparring bs we got into a few times.
Initially, he said he wanted me to prove I wasn't bullshitting about my black belt. Gave him my Style and as much family lineage of it that I remembered... and he then, almost totally without warning, threw a punch right at my face.
I did nothing. Didn't move at all.
His fist stopped about a half centimeter from my nose.
He laughed, said 'You blinked', I laughed, and he believed me after that.
Ehhhhh, this is not standard in all places. If someone asks me how I am I will answer honestly but vaguely. "Living the dream, I've been better, meh, good, pretty good." It's common for other people to answer the same way, too. The part that's not as socially acceptable is to go into detail about it if you don't know the people well/people don't have follow up questions about it.
Hell that's regional even in the US. Most social interactions in the PNW used "What's up!" in whatever variation to mean "Hi!" and "How's it going/are you doing?" meant "Tell new how you're feeling or how your day/task is progressing“. Honest answers were quite normal. The only people who were bothered were the bourgie types, and fuck 'em in any case.
We also just didn't talk to unfamiliar people outside of social spaces if it could be helped.
Why would you do that ngl. If someone asks how I am, of course I tell the truth. If they don't want to know, they shouldn't have asked.
You'll be at work, walking the opposite direction as a co-worker who you are seeing for the first time that day. "How are you?" You can't stop to talk, so you only have time for a 1-3 word answer max.
"Not that great tbh, what about you?"
"How are you?" is a greeting, not a question.
...Unless it's from a close friend.In the US. That's the point. If I get asked that, the other person generally has some degree of interest in my genuine answer
Yes, I'm affirming the commenter and letting other viewers know this is the standard and not just OPs perception.
Are you supposed to answer it? Yes? So its a question wowsies…
No, you aren’t necessarily expected to answer. “Hi” is a totally normal and expected response, for example.
I have a coworker who greets me with "Hi, what's up? How's it going?" and then just continue walking without expecting an answer. It's such a pet peeve of mine, lol. We're not Americans, we live in Europe, and this person is definitely an exception, but it still catches me off guard every single time.
I've even seen it a lot that people don't even reply to "how are you", they just start talking about something else. So weird...
You see, "how are you?" Isn't a genuine quotation, it's just a way of saying "hello" and feigning interest in someone's well-being. In all actual fact, nobody gives a shit.
Just say "fine" and move on.
This is so strange of you start to think about it: A whole country decided to ask about your feelings, which is a super deep question. But it doesn't accept anything other than "fine". Like, you are not greeting someone by wishing them well, or peace or welcoming them, but by demanding a fixed fake answer that everything is offs. It makes the one who greets look like they care. But they usually do not. So every conversation has to start with a lie by the person who was greeted first.
There's a lot more thats superficial about America if you keep looking.
I say “doing alright, how about you”l and that usually covers it
So you have to answer it? To what sort of languical constructs are you expected to answer?
You don't have to. It's socially accepted and preferred if you do, but I have, and have had done to me, simply ignoring the question and moving the conversation forward to the point.
I live in Canada, we follow a lot of the same here, I try to be more genuine than the average and give a nonspecific but truthful response. Anything from "I'm having a day", to "it could be worse", or "not the worst" kind of deal. Basically setting a low bar for how I'm doing and saying I'm somewhere above that.
You don't have to reply with "fine", but it's one of the fastest ways to end the greeting part of the conversation and move on to more important topics.