What's up with the "What's Up?"

“What’s up?” – A question that I’m encountering on a daily basis for more than a dozen times when I meet people on the way. “What’s up?” is not a question anymore. It seems to be the new annoying way of greeting people.

While I’m totally fine with people “what’s upping” with me, I frankly don’t know how to respond to this question. Usually, I just give a blank stare or my usual answer ‘nothing special’ or just give a tap on their shoulders and move on. Also, when this question is raised when we cross paths with someone, by the time the counter-party completes the question, he/she would be way past me and I end up walking along as though nothing happened or I just reply a blunt ‘Hi’.

What else do you expect me to do? Returning the same ‘what’s up?’ certainly looks lame and uncool. Neither can I start explaining what I’m really up to like discussing about how my day went, how the weather is, how I ogled at girls, how for the trillionth time I ate an aloo dish, how I kill insects in my room, how I keep postponing all my work etc. Obviously, the person who raised the question doesn’t care what I’m really up to.

My new strategy nowadays is making sure I enjoy the first mover advantage. When I come across people who in dizzying doses tend to use “what’s up?”, I preemptively do a “what’s up” so that they don’t get a chance to repeat the same. I’ve tried this for some time now and I’m getting some really interesting results.

Thankfully, “Hi”s, “Hello”s and “Hey”s are still in practice, but their usage levels have significantly dropped down. It is much easier to reply to these words as you can just repeat them. A “Hi” for a “Hi” seems so simple. Amongst my friends circle, I find that “Hi” is nowadays used to initiate a discussion in gtalk just to check if the person is online or not. If you get a “Hi” back, you are quite happy :-)

I usually raise my eyebrow whenever I come across people I know. Please don’t mistake it as my expression of surprise of meeting you. It is the most comfortable way to me. I find it very hard to smile and if I do, it means you really deserved it.

The most interesting things happen when two people walk across each other. In those few seconds, walkway-relationships are built between people just based on the words such as Hi, Hello or Hey. If the first Hi or Hello is expressed mutually and smiles exchanged successfully, a habit of greeting this person develops whenever we cross him/her. And a new walkway-relationship is established. But I’ve seen such relationships go down the drain too. All it needs is one party to ignore the greeting just one time and the relationship starts turning south.

Occasionally, we get into awkward moments such as one where someone we don’t know but who knows us, will smile at us when crossing paths. In spite of having no idea who that person is, we are caught in a dilemma of whether to return the greeting. Almost always, we return the smile only because we don’t want to hurt the other party. We just want them to think that we know them too. I remember saying “hi” and smiling at a junior at work for 2 years without even knowing his name.

And a more awkward situation arises when we pass someone we know quite well. Initially, an eye contact is made when both are few feet apart. While they approach each other, both the parties wait for the other person to make the first move in acknowledging their walkway-relationship. However the moment passes quickly and both the parties fail to initiate the “Hi”s. And we just walk along thinking why the hell the other person didn’t smile at us or contemplating whether we should have moved first.

Things get much more interesting if the walkway-relationship involves people from the opposite sex. Often, I have to put up with my friends constant bickering - “Do you think that girl smiled at me?”, “Did you see that? I think she smiled at me”, “She said Hi to me!”. Sigh.

I think we should start trying out new stuff. New phrases on the lines of “You look great”, “God bless you”, “Blah Blah”, “Life Sucks”, “Ten thousand thundering typhoons” should be experimented frequently. After all, it’s us who create the memes.

So, what’s up?