Great insights. In US people do ask one another "how are you?", perhaps in a shallow way - but I think it's still an opener that can lead to more meaningful conversation.
In Poland for instance, where I'm from, people don't ask "how are you?" one another - which slightly limits that opportunity.
At the same time Europe as a whole has so much better work life balance which allows for many more outside work friends and family connections and spending time together.
I’m from the US. “How are you,” is indeed a very shallow question that expects a very shallow and prescriptive response. I’ve seen where people answer it honestly, and when they walk away the person asking says something to the effect of,
“god, I didn’t need his whole life story.” Experiences like this make me more hesitant to answer honestly.
The better you know someone, the more this rule starts to bend, but that doesn’t help with establishing new connections.
Even with people who are close, there is some expectation to keep things pleasant and not unload bad news on them, or seem like you’re bragging about good stuff, when asked how you are. This is why you’ll often see movies where someone asks, “how are you,” and then after the generic answer they follow it up with, “how are you really?”
In other situations, especially with good stuff, people feel like they need to be invited to talk about something exciting in their life. If they have something fun planned for the weekend or did something fun last weekend, they’ll ask someone else what they did, hoping to get that same question back, so they can have an excuse to talk about what they did. No one ever really told me this and it took me longer than I’d like to admit to figure it out.
I've lived my whole life in the southeastern US, and the comments online about this always make me feel like an alien. Everyone here always seems to imply that it's meaningless because "You have to say 'good', and if you don't say that people get upset," but I've just never once had that experience.
I almost never say 'good' in response to that question, even to a coworker I don't know well. In my friend groups, usually people will be straightforward about how they're doing as well. Maybe people don't know how to say 'bad' without following up with a story? It's easy once you start doing it. "Not great, but it's fine" or "I'm just keeping along / taking it day by day" is a fairly common response to get from me, especially lately, and it's always honest. Sometimes I will just say "TBH this week completely sucks for me" before continuing with what the conversation was about originally. If things are going well I will be effusive in my (still short) response ("I'm doing awesome actually"). And I do care about how the other person is doing when they respond. I've even gone so far as to ask, after finding out about bad news later in the conversation, "Damn, why'd you say you were doing well?".
I find it to be a deeply useful way to start a conversation. If you ask how I'm doing and you don't know me well, and I say something to imply I'm not having a good day, it completely changes the way the conversation should be conducted. Same goes for the other person's response. You always start every conversation on the same page ('how impatient / stressed is the other person right now?' is one of the most important pieces of context you can have). Over time, I've even found that it has the benefit of making me reflect on a regular basis on how I feel in the moment vs how I'm actually doing on a longer-term scale.
> I’ve seen where people answer it honestly, and when they walk away the person asking says something to the effect of, “god, I didn’t need his whole life story.”
I've definitely experienced the same. However ive realized that invariably, the person answering honestly is wayyy happier in general than the person being critical. Learning to have the freedom to express yourself, invite connection, and let failed invitations go, is a superpower for a happy life.
When someone says "How are you", I sometimes say "Crummy, but thanks for asking." I'm not oversharing, but I'm also not giving them a shallow, dishonest reply. I'm leaving the door open for a deeper conversation, but I'm not forcing it. Then it's up to them whether we just move on, or whether a real conversation happens.
I wouldn't attach grand meanings to that. Most cultures in Europe do have a socially polite "how are you"/"ça va"/"tudo bem"/whatever to which you're expected to reply some variation of "I'm fine thank you" unless you are good friends and the question is meant sincerely.
I always thought there are better ways to open a conversation. The first thing you have in common with the other person is that you are at the same place during the same time as them. Depending on the context this can already provide you with much, much better ways of starting a conversation than just using a "how are you?" to which nobody expects an honest answer. But German is my first language and this culturual circle isn't exactly known for valuing meaningless smalltalk so take this with a grain of salt.
I have found that the key to successfully starting a conversation is (1) to be emphatically observant and wonder which questions are moving the other person in a given moment and (2) be open to take it any direction including shutting up without feeling any pressure.
> I always thought there are better ways to open a conversation.
Just like everyone else. "How are you?" isn't a conversation opener, it's an attention grabber; like "hey", "ahoy", "excuse me", or "hello". A device used to give the other party a moment to realize your presence and shift their focus towards you. If you try to go straight into conversation when the other person is off in their own world, nine times out of ten you're going to simply get back "Wait, what? Did you say something?"
I worked in Germany for a while, and it was always hilarious when an American would ask a local "how are you?" then proceed to be bombarded about how they're having a headache or how their baby puked all over them yesterday. It's a question that's used almost as a "hello" in the US.
> In US people do ask one another "how are you?", perhaps in a shallow way
My understanding is that it is not even a question, the question mark at the end is just decoration. Even the shallow answer is not necessary, responding with something like, "Hi, good to see you" would be perfectly valid.
That is honestly a shallow greeting that leads to a shallow response. I hang out at the bar downstairs from where I live to talk to the bartender who is a friend (we have hung out before), and whoever else comes by - mostly tourists. My go to question is “what keeps you busy”? It’s open ended and I can talk about almost anything enough to ask questions and keep them talking.
Very cool! I like the simplicity of it. Right now I'm working on something similar for myself (and some of my family), but maybe other people find it potentially interesting too? Essentially I'm building a webapp that each time I use it will arrange random ~5-7 lower back exercises from a list of ~25 for a total of 10 minutes session. Then it will guide me (only time and name of exercise) through the workout session (counting down the exercise time, and pause/break time). The problem I'm solving is to not have to think too much about what exercise I should/want to do next, make it a little bit more fun/interesting (due to randomness aspect) and free my hands from operating a timer to time myself (also less likely to drift to social media or youtube videos).
Thoguhts?
I had a spreadsheet set up much like that in the past: it would bubble up the exercises I'd done the longest ago for a particular muscle group so I'd always get variety. It worked pretty good, but I found myself often avoiding unpleasant exercises when given choices and eventually the whole arrangement fell apart due to too many moving pieces. I also didn't see the kind of extra benefit that I thought I'd gain from performing so many variations.
I also used to set up fully scheduled on/off timers for specific exercises in an app, but found that any interruption would throw the whole thing off, annoying me to no end.
However, your last point was also my biggest enemy. If I get distracted online for long enough to cool down to the point that I'm worried about injury, the whole session tends to just blow straight out. That's the main driver I had for putting the simple timer in the footer: keep my device on one screen from beginning to end!
I’ve also been toying with a timer based app that incorporates some randomness, which I feel is usually missing or poorly handled in fitness apps. Some random exercises and variable-range durations should improve motivation and give your body a better workout.
To quote Arnie: “You have to shock the muscle, and you have to trick the muscle. The body will adapt to anything you do, so you have to keep it guessing. That’s how you grow.”
I'm Polish (well, not spending much time in Poland lately), but just FYI this practice (not the election silence - that is true) is not something me or family ever heard about. Maybe it exists, but it's not popular.
This is beautiful, I wonder if there is a way to make it avaliable to more people. Not even as a business - I just imagine it would help a lot of families in similar situations.
Thanks! My brother and I are quite touched by the reaction in this thread. I will see what I can do about this - if not as a product, then by sharing a little more about what we have done and how it has worked so far
I don't mean it in a bad way but I scrolled through the website, watched the video, and still don't really know what is the product/service/offering and when would I need it.
It's a drop in authentication system. You would need it to have users and logins for your app. Or you have to write and maintain your own. They say billing is coming so I guess it crosses the line into subscription management. I'm using auth.js with extra code for the same thing. That's been a revolution compared to wiring it all from scratch. Without subscription revenue (i.e. Just using this for accounts and auth) I couldn't justify the $75/mo needed for active directory SSO. But watching the demo video, I'd love to have a project with the financials to justify using Kinde
Yep, but you'll find with a lot of them the features are incredibly limiting on free plans. It's the same virtually anywhere in terms of having a free tier, so the issue becomes pricing on higher plans. We come in significantly lower for the same feature sets
The driving factor we're pushing for going forward is to bring all of these dev products (auth, release management, billing, experimentation) under one roof. You'll only have to integrate once and from there on out every other feature is a single line of code.
That way you can manage your users in the same place that you manage your subscriptions, release beta products to a very specific set of users etc. all in one place.
Thanks! That's a perfect explanation. Exactly right with the subscription management on the way, similar to linking up Auth0 with Chargebee in one product.
No problem - we're relaunching the website in the next few months so hopefully that'll be a bit clearer. At this stage the closest comparison would be clerk.dev!
This is the best thing I've read today!
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