(no subject)

[darchildre]

So, here is another "Sara doesn't know how to talk to human beings" question.

When you begin a conversation with someone and they say "Hi [your name]! What d'you know?", what is the expected response? I feel like I've never actually learned the script for that one and my occasionally over-literal brain freezes for a moment, trying to select the thing that I know that is appropriate in this particular instance.

Today, I was silent for about ten seconds and came out with "The plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces are called 'aglets'."* It seemed to go over well and I may try to keep it as a stock response to the question**, but it still felt awkward.

Talking to people is hard.




*It was a wrench not following that with "Their true purpose is sinister", let me tell you.

**Storing up stock responses is often helpful for me. I also have a stock search term for whenever anyone at the library asks me to do a random catalog search to see if things are working or if I know how to do certain things, because otherwise I spend far too long deciding on something to search for. My stock search term is "Dracula" because something always comes up.

Comments

[james]

I treat that phrase like I treat all the 'greeting' phrases - I simply say hello or good morning as if they had used an actual, traditional greeting. If they ask some form of 'how you doing' I say fine or well, of course, but all those other slang phrases used in greeting I simply translate into old, white, from-the-heartland woman speak, which means I say 'hello' back. ;-)

Generally people don't mean those things literally anyhow; or, I've noticed, that sometimes the proper response is to repeat the phrase right back with actually answering the question. For instance, people will greet one another by saying "What's up?" to one another, but neither of them actually ever says what is up. They both just say 's'up'

"What do you know" is sometimes meant to get the joking response "not much" in reply, but I find that stupid and incorrect and stupid. So I just say 'hello' or good morning back.

[scheherezhad]

Living in the south, "what d'you know?" has been a pretty common greeting in my experience. The common response is "not much" (regardless of how "stupid" or "incorrect" it may seem to some), followed by inquiry into the other party's well-being. Like so:

a: "Hey, man, ain't seen ya in a long time. What d'you know?"
b: "Aw, not much, man. How you doin'?"


It's just a generic small talk thing, not necessarily meant to start a long or in-depth conversation. Answering with random trivia like the aglet thing works (I'm likely to do something like that myself). Or one could always answer the asker with something like "About what?" because inquiring about what one knows is pretty broad.

[aa_banner]

Oh, Question. <3

[darchildre]

I feel like choosing to emulate him when I'm already feeling socially awkward is probably not the best life strategy though, y'know?

[silveradept]

There's "Not Much, You?" That works pretty well. It can also be a sign of surprise at finding someone in an unexpected place, at which the response is just "Hello." as above, possibly some sort of acknowledgment that you know who the person is, if you know them.

[lqc]

Ah, sometimes the best answer I find for an open ended question is a vague but technically accurate answer, with a bit of humor.

Example:

"Just enough to get into some trouble and yet not get caught."

But anything that will bring a smile is usually appropriate.