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.

  • @Lifecoach5000
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    208 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.

    • @Num10ck
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      128 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?

        • @Num10ck
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          38 months ago

          oh thanks, so rest in peace means rest in peace.

          • @[email protected]
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            28 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.

            • @saltesc
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              18 months ago

              Oh, great. Well if sleep’s any indicator, death’s got it’s work cut out for it.

    • soli
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      58 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.