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.

  • soli@infosec.pub
    0·
    8 months ago

    It has it’s roots in actual letter writing, as in “I hope this letter finds you well”.

    • wuphysics87@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      I always wonder what this means. Does it mean “I hope this letter does a good job finding you, and you can subsequently read it” or does it mean “When this does find you, I hope it recognizes you are having a good day”.

      Stock boiler plate regardless and one of the best ways to convince the recipient you are a twat.

      • soli@infosec.pub
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        8 months ago

        Imagine a time before instant communications, where you have no idea how life has treated the recipient since you last saw them and it might take months for your letter to arrive. It is a sincere hope that they are well and that tradgedy has not befallen them.

        It would be neurotic and unreasonable if your last update on their life was only days or even hours before, but in the days of letters hope is really all you had. It’s just honest.

    • Lifecoach5000@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      8 months ago

      I’m so dumb that for years I seriously thought that meant the actual communication makes it to the recipient without any issues.

      • soli@infosec.pub
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        8 months ago

        To be fair, I’m certain that someone has written it with that as the intended meaning. It seems like the kind of passive aggressive thing some mannered British aristocrat would do.

      • Num10ck@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        8 months ago

        thats a fair thought, not dumb.

        i’m still confused by Rest In Peace. Do you mean I hope this skeleton/soul doesn’t have anxiety? or that i hope the place the skeleton lays isn’t at war?

            • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
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              8 months ago

              If I’m not mistaken, it comes via Latin, Requiescat In Pace, meaning the same thing. The idea being that the person is only temporarily dead and will be raised back to life at Jesus’ second coming. In some views, (which I guess would be in vogue at the time of coining ‘RIP’), the essence of the person is alive and conscious in heaven (itself an abstraction yet real), awaiting their bodily resurrection. Some views take this further, that the person could be conscious and tormented in hell or purgatory.

              So Rest In Peace is wishing/blessing that the person may be at peace and rest, while they wait to be fully alive again when Jesus comes again.