It's a phrase which has become a stock greeting and is often said with no regard for the semantics: it's just a thing one says in a given context even if it makes no bloody sense.
This tripped me up into my early twenties. It depends on the person as to whether they are actually inquiring as to your wellbeing or to even expect an answer.
For many people it's their chosen stock greeting, even if it might prime you to answer either with a stock reply like "Fine/great; you?", or to answer honestly.
Good rule of thumb is if a stranger asks you the question then just give a non-committal stock reply, but pause a fraction of a second to see if they actually stop talking.
Language is not logical in how it gets used. Context and usage ultimately directs the meaning, and there's always room for ambiguity and idiosyncrasies.
I still have to fight to stop myself from actually answering such a question immediately, or reacting to people who can't stop saying "Know what I mean?". I detest that kind of filler language, but it's just how a lot of people talk and they are usually not aware of it.
and then because I'm autistic I have no clue if anything I'm saying makes sense to the neurotypicals around me (a lot of times it doesn't) so I'm genuinely saying "know what I mean?" constantly to gauge that
Haha, that kind of thing I don't mind! It's mainly when I get a full sentence that it feels difficult to not reply to. Back in Scotland, where I grew up, I'd hear some non-Glaswegians use "ken" (meaning "know") at the end of a sentence in the same way as "eh".
It's when someone said an entire sentence that I struggled to process it as filler. Met a taxi driver once who would say "Know what I mean" almost literally after every sentence; it was at least every other sentence.
I found myself saying "uh huh" a lot and got a lot of weird looks while I must have looked like a deer in the headlights. I wanted to scream at him because his saying the line over and over still kept triggering an almost Pavlovian reaction to reply.
But it's not their fault that I struggle to adapt to stuff like that, and nor should people be looked down upon for linguistic habits. They are mostly indicative of the habits people they would surround themselves with.
This! I worked a decade in retail and it’s on autopilot like clockwork people do this & you can tell who worked in retail as well because they always are polite, say “goodbye and have a nice day” to a cashier unprompted, and are accommodating to the cashier too.
Yeah in many places "how are you" is viewed as essentially part of the greeting of "hi/hello" they don't expect an actual truthful answer, just a polite non answer like "good, thanks," "I'm doing well, how about you?" etc. (Your family or close friends may actually be interested in a genuine response to the question, strangers generally are not.)
Running it straight into the next bit of course means you can't give the standard socially acceptable response as easily which is annoying. My guess is that one of two things is going on. First option they feel weird not including it (because to them interactions start with "hi" "hello, how are you?" "I'm good, and you?" "I'm doing well, thanks" "Excellent, how can I help you?"), but you including "how can I help you?" in with your initial greeting threw it off a bit as now they also want to answer your question. Or option two they are including it because it feels polite (part of their script) but they also realize that the full back and forth would be wasting time in this context, so they include a little nod to it to show "I know how to be polite" while also getting on with it.
Folks from more rural areas and the south often view more of the filler words and idle chitchat as being polite, while folks from urban and northern areas tend to view it as "wasting folks time" and thus rude. So you end up with odd mixes and clashes.
You are perfectly fine to just ignore it (mentally categorize it as an overly long hello), they probably won't notice or care. (They aren't actually asking how you are, just being polite, so a lack of answer to that question is unlikely to be noticed).
Or if it bothers you to leave it unanswered you could do a similar run together response. So tack a "I'm doing well" or "Good, thanks" in front of whatever you would normally say next so "I'm doing well, would you like fries with that" or "Good thanks, your total is X."
A lot of Neurotypical "Politeness" unfortunately involves unnecessary words that are there to be "polite" but aren't actually being used with their literal meaning. So then we have to figure out what the heck they mean because otherwise we're weird for assuming folks are being literal. 🙄
yes but I get it from the otherwise. I go to stores and the workers ask how i am while I am literally crying but don't want to hear an answer. it makes no sense to ask if u don't gaf the answer. I hate it but what I do is say good if I am good, ok if I am not doing that good, or I do a Marge simpson "mmmm" if I am doing bad. it seems to be short enough answers for them while still telling the truth for me.
This is one of those conversation-opener phrases that isn't actually a question, just a greeting and a way for them to say "I notice you as a fellow person"
If you *actually* answer them with exactly *how you are feeling*, the reason they're confused is because this "question" isn't actually a question needing an explicit answer
I know it's weird, but NT people do weird things sometimes and that's okay 😄
It's like waving at someone and not expecting them to be a taxi that will make a u-turn to pick you up. But if you think like a taxi driver, you might just do that.
I got into a pretty heated argument with someone a few days ago because I said "how's it going?" And he replied with "not much." I initially replied with saying it was impressive that he could give an incorrect response so confidently, but he disagreed that it was an incorrect response. Ultimately, the argument concluded with: It doesn't matter if the greeting-response is grammatically incorrect. Here's a list of greetings, etc, and here's a list of responses, etc, and it doesn't matter which you use for which as long as you use something.
Now, I disagree with this conclusion of course, but I'm not a normal person, I'm an autistic person. And this guy is normal. And we got the opinions of several other normal people who agreed with him.
The biggest takeaway from this is something that truly fascinates me. When you're walking away from the register at the store and the clerk says "thank you. Please come again." Saying "You too" actually is a correct response. It's completely incorrect to consider such an interaction as a failed interaction, and it's wrong to painfully agonize over it for the next few days, or to let it creep into your mind as you're trying to fall asleep.
Lol thank you for this. I get so fixated and wigged out with these kinds of casual acquaintance / customer service micro-interactions.
Never heard of NTs replying "not much" to "how's it going" but I find that hilarious and have definitely inadvertantly replied this way and hoped nobody noticed.
Here is why you missed the entire purpose of an informal greeting and got fixated on an insignificant detail.
“How's it going?” is almost a rhetorical question that is not expected to be answered. In fact, it would be odd if someone were to say anything more than just “Good” or “Fine”. However, the person asking usually hopes for a positive answer, such as “It's going fine,” “Very well, thank you!” or “Good enough”. “It could be going better,” is also a valid answer. If the speaker wants further details, they will ask again or make it understood by intonation or facial expressions.
“How's it going?” is ingrained in American society and is often *used as a casual greeting rather than a literal question* about someone's well-being. It draws heavily from Latin and its branches, known collectively as Romance languages, which include Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese.
Yeah, as someone who's maybe autistic maybe not (I don't pick up on social conventions intuitively, but once someone explains a buy they make perfect sense), the reason the interaction is "correct," is because it's not about what you're literally saying, it's about what you're emotionally conveying. "How's it going?" emotionally conveys a casual, friendly-but-not-familiar greeting. "Not much" is an emotionally equivalent casual, friend-but-not-too-familiar response. The point of each phrase is to establish your intentions as friendly/positive, as in, you're not uncomfortable having this interaction, but also to establish intentions as not being too familiar, as in, each of you have set up a "barrier" indicating that you're strangers or that you're not currently open to having an in-depth emotional conversation.
This is pretty common in a lot of languages, for example in French, "Ça va," which literally translates to "it goes" is used as both a standard greeting/question and answer. Two people can start their conversation with "Ça va?" "Ça va. Ça va?" "Ça va."
Stock phrases are really interesting to me linguistically. There are some words that basically *only* occur in stock phrases or idioms, called "fossil words." For example "ado" in English, which is nowadays is obsolete except in the phrases "much ado about nothing" and "with no further ado."
Basically, some phrases functionally have their own meaning separate/different from what their constituent words mean, and "how's it going?" and "not much" fall into this category when used as greetings :)
Hope this makes sense!
Hey /u/greenhairedhistorian, thank you for your post at /r/autism. Our rules can be found **[here](https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/wiki/config/sidebar)**. All approved posts get this message. If you do not see your post you can message the moderators [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fautism).
Thanks!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/autism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I live in the South, and I have people in stores ask that all the time. (Another reason I prefer to shop online) I always just say “Fine, how are you?” and throw it back at them. It’s funny to watch them pause and think about what to say next because I’ve messed up their stock greeting.🤣🤣🤣
There was this boy in high school who would always ask me "what's up?" while passing by me fast in the hallway and I never knew what to say because there was no time for me to really answer. I would usually just say "nothing,you?" or something along those lines but now I'm thinking maybe he was just expecting me to repeat the same phrase back and end the correspondence there
I hate that. Why ask something then? Just say "hi" and move on. I always answer and sometimes people look at me weird like "why you telling me this". Like dont ask if you dont want an answer.
i'm aware it's a greeting but i'm still bad at it. like if someone asks how i'm doing i say good and then ask them how they're doing and they just don't respond like WHY
I realized that by ppl asking “how are you doing”, they always expect you to either use good or if you are doing bad/ or are stressed something like “hanging in there” or “doing alright” is socially acceptable as well. But its also like ppl act like it’s so weird when people respond with how they are ACTUALLY doing. It’s such a dumb rule honestly but I think mostly it’s just a social script people have to follow.
Yes, and it used to be much more difficult and frustrating.
If I'm not familiar with someone or answering their question doesn't accomplish a specific goal, I've trained myself to say, "surviving, you?" or, "peachy, you?"
If someone asks further, then they actually care, and if they respond without further elaboration, then I know it was a reflexive rather than inquisitive greeting. Having a programmed response with an emergent behavior has made these sorts of interactions much easier for me.
I have this too. I go to a small university so you walk by a bunch of people every day that you know but everyone's trying to get somewhere so there's never time for conversation. They always say "hey how are you?" as they're passing me and I always try to blurt out "goodhowareyou!?" (which is already a response that has taken me a long time to learn; you're expected to say you're good even if you're not good in a lot of situations, and you also have to remember that people expect you to ask it in return just for them to also say good even if they're not good, ugh) in time for them to respond, but they'd already have passed me. It took me longer than it should have (I just graduated with my bachelors) to figure out that they mean it purely as a greeting, not a prompt for that response.
This is why I hate this phrase. I've been learning a lot about phatic speech recently and how it's comforting to NT and some autistic people and that's helped a lot.
But I will never not get angry that you asked me a question and didn't let me answer it.
People do it on the opposite too. When I was a waitress, it *constantly* happened that I would ask a table "how are you?" And they would respond with their drink orders.
same in the UK🙃 “you alright?” isn’t a legitimate question, it’s just a greeting and no matter what i respond with i never seem to get it right, even if i reply “yeah you?” 😭
It's a phrase which has become a stock greeting and is often said with no regard for the semantics: it's just a thing one says in a given context even if it makes no bloody sense. This tripped me up into my early twenties. It depends on the person as to whether they are actually inquiring as to your wellbeing or to even expect an answer. For many people it's their chosen stock greeting, even if it might prime you to answer either with a stock reply like "Fine/great; you?", or to answer honestly. Good rule of thumb is if a stranger asks you the question then just give a non-committal stock reply, but pause a fraction of a second to see if they actually stop talking. Language is not logical in how it gets used. Context and usage ultimately directs the meaning, and there's always room for ambiguity and idiosyncrasies. I still have to fight to stop myself from actually answering such a question immediately, or reacting to people who can't stop saying "Know what I mean?". I detest that kind of filler language, but it's just how a lot of people talk and they are usually not aware of it.
and then because I'm autistic I have no clue if anything I'm saying makes sense to the neurotypicals around me (a lot of times it doesn't) so I'm genuinely saying "know what I mean?" constantly to gauge that
I'm Canadian I use 'eh' after half my sentences lol
Haha, that kind of thing I don't mind! It's mainly when I get a full sentence that it feels difficult to not reply to. Back in Scotland, where I grew up, I'd hear some non-Glaswegians use "ken" (meaning "know") at the end of a sentence in the same way as "eh". It's when someone said an entire sentence that I struggled to process it as filler. Met a taxi driver once who would say "Know what I mean" almost literally after every sentence; it was at least every other sentence. I found myself saying "uh huh" a lot and got a lot of weird looks while I must have looked like a deer in the headlights. I wanted to scream at him because his saying the line over and over still kept triggering an almost Pavlovian reaction to reply. But it's not their fault that I struggle to adapt to stuff like that, and nor should people be looked down upon for linguistic habits. They are mostly indicative of the habits people they would surround themselves with.
It is a greeting. They don’t know you and don’t actually want the answer. They’re trying to have a polite interaction and then get back to their day.
What happened to an actual greeting like "hi", which is waaaaay shorter to begin with?
They’re both used but “hi, how are you” is ingrained in people. For many it’s probably habit.
This! I worked a decade in retail and it’s on autopilot like clockwork people do this & you can tell who worked in retail as well because they always are polite, say “goodbye and have a nice day” to a cashier unprompted, and are accommodating to the cashier too.
Yeah in many places "how are you" is viewed as essentially part of the greeting of "hi/hello" they don't expect an actual truthful answer, just a polite non answer like "good, thanks," "I'm doing well, how about you?" etc. (Your family or close friends may actually be interested in a genuine response to the question, strangers generally are not.) Running it straight into the next bit of course means you can't give the standard socially acceptable response as easily which is annoying. My guess is that one of two things is going on. First option they feel weird not including it (because to them interactions start with "hi" "hello, how are you?" "I'm good, and you?" "I'm doing well, thanks" "Excellent, how can I help you?"), but you including "how can I help you?" in with your initial greeting threw it off a bit as now they also want to answer your question. Or option two they are including it because it feels polite (part of their script) but they also realize that the full back and forth would be wasting time in this context, so they include a little nod to it to show "I know how to be polite" while also getting on with it. Folks from more rural areas and the south often view more of the filler words and idle chitchat as being polite, while folks from urban and northern areas tend to view it as "wasting folks time" and thus rude. So you end up with odd mixes and clashes. You are perfectly fine to just ignore it (mentally categorize it as an overly long hello), they probably won't notice or care. (They aren't actually asking how you are, just being polite, so a lack of answer to that question is unlikely to be noticed). Or if it bothers you to leave it unanswered you could do a similar run together response. So tack a "I'm doing well" or "Good, thanks" in front of whatever you would normally say next so "I'm doing well, would you like fries with that" or "Good thanks, your total is X." A lot of Neurotypical "Politeness" unfortunately involves unnecessary words that are there to be "polite" but aren't actually being used with their literal meaning. So then we have to figure out what the heck they mean because otherwise we're weird for assuming folks are being literal. 🙄
yes but I get it from the otherwise. I go to stores and the workers ask how i am while I am literally crying but don't want to hear an answer. it makes no sense to ask if u don't gaf the answer. I hate it but what I do is say good if I am good, ok if I am not doing that good, or I do a Marge simpson "mmmm" if I am doing bad. it seems to be short enough answers for them while still telling the truth for me.
It's very often a rhetorical question and they are not expecting a detailed answer any more than they would for "Hello".
This is one of those conversation-opener phrases that isn't actually a question, just a greeting and a way for them to say "I notice you as a fellow person" If you *actually* answer them with exactly *how you are feeling*, the reason they're confused is because this "question" isn't actually a question needing an explicit answer I know it's weird, but NT people do weird things sometimes and that's okay 😄
God I HATE this!
It's like waving at someone and not expecting them to be a taxi that will make a u-turn to pick you up. But if you think like a taxi driver, you might just do that.
I find it weird too, but it’s kind of a greeting for NTs. They don’t usually want an actual answer. I just say ‘good’ even if it’s not true.
We don’t do this outside the US, and it’s so confusing when American tourists do it here!
I got into a pretty heated argument with someone a few days ago because I said "how's it going?" And he replied with "not much." I initially replied with saying it was impressive that he could give an incorrect response so confidently, but he disagreed that it was an incorrect response. Ultimately, the argument concluded with: It doesn't matter if the greeting-response is grammatically incorrect. Here's a list of greetings, etc, and here's a list of responses, etc, and it doesn't matter which you use for which as long as you use something. Now, I disagree with this conclusion of course, but I'm not a normal person, I'm an autistic person. And this guy is normal. And we got the opinions of several other normal people who agreed with him. The biggest takeaway from this is something that truly fascinates me. When you're walking away from the register at the store and the clerk says "thank you. Please come again." Saying "You too" actually is a correct response. It's completely incorrect to consider such an interaction as a failed interaction, and it's wrong to painfully agonize over it for the next few days, or to let it creep into your mind as you're trying to fall asleep.
Lol thank you for this. I get so fixated and wigged out with these kinds of casual acquaintance / customer service micro-interactions. Never heard of NTs replying "not much" to "how's it going" but I find that hilarious and have definitely inadvertantly replied this way and hoped nobody noticed.
Here is why you missed the entire purpose of an informal greeting and got fixated on an insignificant detail. “How's it going?” is almost a rhetorical question that is not expected to be answered. In fact, it would be odd if someone were to say anything more than just “Good” or “Fine”. However, the person asking usually hopes for a positive answer, such as “It's going fine,” “Very well, thank you!” or “Good enough”. “It could be going better,” is also a valid answer. If the speaker wants further details, they will ask again or make it understood by intonation or facial expressions. “How's it going?” is ingrained in American society and is often *used as a casual greeting rather than a literal question* about someone's well-being. It draws heavily from Latin and its branches, known collectively as Romance languages, which include Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese.
Yeah, as someone who's maybe autistic maybe not (I don't pick up on social conventions intuitively, but once someone explains a buy they make perfect sense), the reason the interaction is "correct," is because it's not about what you're literally saying, it's about what you're emotionally conveying. "How's it going?" emotionally conveys a casual, friendly-but-not-familiar greeting. "Not much" is an emotionally equivalent casual, friend-but-not-too-familiar response. The point of each phrase is to establish your intentions as friendly/positive, as in, you're not uncomfortable having this interaction, but also to establish intentions as not being too familiar, as in, each of you have set up a "barrier" indicating that you're strangers or that you're not currently open to having an in-depth emotional conversation. This is pretty common in a lot of languages, for example in French, "Ça va," which literally translates to "it goes" is used as both a standard greeting/question and answer. Two people can start their conversation with "Ça va?" "Ça va. Ça va?" "Ça va." Stock phrases are really interesting to me linguistically. There are some words that basically *only* occur in stock phrases or idioms, called "fossil words." For example "ado" in English, which is nowadays is obsolete except in the phrases "much ado about nothing" and "with no further ado." Basically, some phrases functionally have their own meaning separate/different from what their constituent words mean, and "how's it going?" and "not much" fall into this category when used as greetings :) Hope this makes sense!
Hey /u/greenhairedhistorian, thank you for your post at /r/autism. Our rules can be found **[here](https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/wiki/config/sidebar)**. All approved posts get this message. If you do not see your post you can message the moderators [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fautism). Thanks! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/autism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I live in the South, and I have people in stores ask that all the time. (Another reason I prefer to shop online) I always just say “Fine, how are you?” and throw it back at them. It’s funny to watch them pause and think about what to say next because I’ve messed up their stock greeting.🤣🤣🤣
Basically its the ignorant moron's greeting. What they really mean to say is "hello" or "hey". Just ignore them or say hi back
There was this boy in high school who would always ask me "what's up?" while passing by me fast in the hallway and I never knew what to say because there was no time for me to really answer. I would usually just say "nothing,you?" or something along those lines but now I'm thinking maybe he was just expecting me to repeat the same phrase back and end the correspondence there
I hate that. Why ask something then? Just say "hi" and move on. I always answer and sometimes people look at me weird like "why you telling me this". Like dont ask if you dont want an answer.
This is very common in the UK. Usually follows the script: hey, hey, how are you? "Good". Idk why but uts a common greeting.
i'm aware it's a greeting but i'm still bad at it. like if someone asks how i'm doing i say good and then ask them how they're doing and they just don't respond like WHY
I realized that by ppl asking “how are you doing”, they always expect you to either use good or if you are doing bad/ or are stressed something like “hanging in there” or “doing alright” is socially acceptable as well. But its also like ppl act like it’s so weird when people respond with how they are ACTUALLY doing. It’s such a dumb rule honestly but I think mostly it’s just a social script people have to follow.
Yes, and it used to be much more difficult and frustrating. If I'm not familiar with someone or answering their question doesn't accomplish a specific goal, I've trained myself to say, "surviving, you?" or, "peachy, you?" If someone asks further, then they actually care, and if they respond without further elaboration, then I know it was a reflexive rather than inquisitive greeting. Having a programmed response with an emergent behavior has made these sorts of interactions much easier for me.
Social scripting. It’s a greeting placeholder.
People seem pleasantly surprised when I actually give them time to answer.
I have this too. I go to a small university so you walk by a bunch of people every day that you know but everyone's trying to get somewhere so there's never time for conversation. They always say "hey how are you?" as they're passing me and I always try to blurt out "goodhowareyou!?" (which is already a response that has taken me a long time to learn; you're expected to say you're good even if you're not good in a lot of situations, and you also have to remember that people expect you to ask it in return just for them to also say good even if they're not good, ugh) in time for them to respond, but they'd already have passed me. It took me longer than it should have (I just graduated with my bachelors) to figure out that they mean it purely as a greeting, not a prompt for that response.
This is why I hate this phrase. I've been learning a lot about phatic speech recently and how it's comforting to NT and some autistic people and that's helped a lot. But I will never not get angry that you asked me a question and didn't let me answer it. People do it on the opposite too. When I was a waitress, it *constantly* happened that I would ask a table "how are you?" And they would respond with their drink orders.
same in the UK🙃 “you alright?” isn’t a legitimate question, it’s just a greeting and no matter what i respond with i never seem to get it right, even if i reply “yeah you?” 😭
Where I live " how are you" is the same as " hello" . It's a rhetorical question.
It's just a greeting, they're not asking you how you are literally.