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 find it way more reasonable than, “Dear [random informal business acquaintance].”
I can genuinely say I hope someone is well. I can’t sincerely call them my dear.
But we’re supposed to get weirdly personal in our formal written salutations apparently
Yes, “Dear” should be either something you send part-jokingly to your actually close colleague, or a sarcastic one, when someone seriously fucked up and you send them a message explaining that.