When / why / how did "I hope you are well" become a standard email intro? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[-] [email protected] 21 points 2 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.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 2 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?

[-] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

It means that may your soul rest in peace, has nothing to do with the actual body lol.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

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

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 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.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

sleep is the cousin of death

sweet dreams

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

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

[-] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

More like, "Please don't get up and start eating people or sucking their blood."

[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 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.

this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024

45 points (80.8% liked)

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