Why do people ask, "How are you doing?"?

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I still have trouble answering "How are you?" after 41 years! Anything but the truth just seems so phony. It's difficult to say "Good, and you?" when I am not "good"... but I try to remind myself that the person probably doesn't really want to know how I am anyway. Still... I'd rather just avoid the whole situation if possible.

I just say "hi" back at them. I haven't had a problem by doing that yet.

I will also sometimes give them a list of provocational quetions about why they would ask somethign like that, and what their intentions were with doing so. If they reply that they were just being polite, I'd say that it is rude to say something of no importance (and add a side note that it is essentially spaming the conversation with relitively useless jabber).

Of course I wouldn't say it in a hostile mannerism.

This is funny - there is a lady at my work who I think has AS but doesn't know it and the other day after my weekend she said 'How are you?' and I said 'Fine, but I think that I'm getting sick . . .' and she said 'Well, then you aren't fine, are you?! That was a silly thing to say . . .'
That reminded me so much of my own logic . . .

It was just funny . . . she has a lot of AS traits . . .

I haven't got any idea why, but my classmates are always asking me what I'm sad about. I'm always telling them I'm fine. It's very annoying. A few times I've asked why, and they say it's because I look sad all the time. I'm confused, I know I look emotionless alot, but how are they confusing it with sadness?

I think it's because they want to talk to me, but since they know anything about me, they talk about how I appear to them.

I got tired of trying to understand why people ask this question, and instead learned the joy of tormenting people who use it without considering.

"How are you?"
"Oh I'm green."
"What?"
"Green, can't you tell?"

or...
"How are you?"
"I asked you first."
"What? No you didn't."
"You must not have heard me."

or or...
"How are you?"
"Knock knock."
"...who's there?"
"Sam and Janet."
"Sam and Janet who?"
"Some enchanted evening, whee!"

People don't ask "how are you" to me very often anymore.

When someone asks me how I'm feeling, I say, "I Feel Fine." since that's one of my favriote songs.

it confuses me when people say "howzit"

I mean what on earth are you supposed to say? "ok"? "good"? or "hello"

might just be me but saying those would sound kind of stupid.

It's anoying that people never say what they mean.
I don't get that so much.

But on AI failure* days I get "You look sad"
and they keep digging for why i'm sad
and if I say anything they'll take offense to it.
but if I don't answer they take offense to that too.

Really i'm not said i'm just worried that someone's going to come
and start a conversation with me and without my social AI i'll
do something dumb and offend them or i'll be too anxious and run away.

*this is pretty much caused by overload. See the other threads about overload.
~EG