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While the title is somewhat unrelatable, the premise of the article is. Essentially, it explains how using a phatic expression like "how's it going?" won't amount to anything beyond a one word answer. The article further supports this claim by elaborating on the fact that if you ever need to check up one anyone, the question should be phrased more accordingly. There's also this great video by Tom Scott explaining more about this linguistic device (https://youtu.be/eGnH0KAXhCw).

Sociolinguist Gavin Lamb examines how people use language to build social relationships with non-human beings, like dogs. He cites the research of Alexandra Horowitz, a dog-cognition scientist who studied verbal human-dog interaction. Some interesting findings: 1. Humans use dog-directed parentese for attention-getting, positive-affect, using a higher pitch, like we might for babies/toddlers. 2. Talking to dogs serves as a social lubricant for starting up conversations, or diffusing tense situations with other humans. 3. Asking rhetorical, unanswerable questions, e.g. "What's up, buddy?": an example of phatic communication, which is not information-driven, but which helps establish or maintain social relationships. The language serves a socio-pragmatic, rather than denotative function.