Let's visualize this scenario.
Two people, who are acquaintances or somewhat friends, are walking from two different directions and will intersect at some point. At this point they recognize each other and know that they must say something. Each says "Hi. How are you?" and then they are both on their merry ways and didn't even hear the response to their greeting.
I don't understand this new cultural greeting. If you didn't want to hear how I was, then why did you ask me? My bishop today was going around and I noticed that he really wasn't building off the question just merry saying hello with some extra baggage. So when he came to me he said the exact same thing that he said to everyone else, I didn't answer him. And what did he do? just moved on to my roommate not even missing a beat. My roommate then leaned over afterwards and asked why I didn't answer him. We then had a conversation in hushed tones about polite social greetings and why we say what we say. I'm pretty sure that fifty years ago, where people were polite and life moved more slowly, that they didn't ask anything that they didn't want to hear the answer to. People actually stopped and listened to how your life was going instead of just ignoring you and walking past.
Today, it may be cultural, but so is eating 27 hot dogs in 3 minutes, eating disorders, and an odd fetish with duct tape. We are a waning population that uses niceties. What happened to geniality in our lives? When you find it, please tell me where it is.
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When I moved to this country, people used to say "let's do lunch", which never happened either. I was totally baffled by this as you are with the "hi, how are you?" thing. I was taught that if you said something, you meant it. I was ready to do lunch when others really didn't want to see you again, anyway. People are not interested in hearing how you are doing, it is just a longer version of "hi" and they want to come off as caring when they add "how are you" in the end, without any commitment of finding out how you really are.
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