12 Brutally Honest Responses to Give to an Acquaintance Who Asks You "How's It Going?"
It’s spring bitches! Warm weather is here now and people are starting to interact outside again. Anonymity is a thing of the past; no longer can you trudge up Sheridan in your puffy coat and blanket-sized scarf, blending in with the rest of the amorphous blobs in backpacks. The newfound warmth is fantastic, but it definitely comes with some baggage. For instance, when you’re walking into the wind, your t-shirt might cling to your stomach and reveal the small gut that you weren’t so motivated to work off in the winter. If you’re a girl, maybe you have to shave your legs more often than you did in those cold winter months. The worst side-effect of the nice weather, by far, is that people will be able to recognize you and they will be more prone to try to engage you in a social manner.
Inevitably, you’ll make eye contact with a loose acquaintance at some point when you’re walking to class or hanging out at the Lakefill. Because you go to Northwestern, both of you will probably be awkward as fuck and not know what to do. However, if you’re extremely unlucky, your acquaintance might try to be normal and wave to you or ask you “what’s up?” or “how’s it going?” This would be a nightmare, because this initial acknowledgement could lead to 1-2 minutes of surface-level small-talk, made up of benign platitudes and uneasy body language.
Everyone should realize that no one actually wants to know the real shit that’s going on in your life when they ask you “how’s it going?” The safe response is “Good, you?” – it’s a pleasant classic, but it gets you nowhere. In fact, it often times leads to a proliferation of these meaningless interactions. Here are a few brutally honest responses that you could give to your acquaintance in order to end all of the bullshit. Hopefully these will bring any small talk to a roaring halt and alienate the other person so much that they will look at their phone the next time they walk by you, like most other people already do.
1.) “I’m okay, but I didn’t shower today, isn’t it obvious?!”
2.) “Not great. The person I’ve had a crush on for the last 9 months just started dating someone who is smarter, funnier, and way more attractive than myself.”
3.) “Bad, my last profile picture only got 7 likes and every single one of that sorority girl’s gets 200+.”
4.) “I’m doing well dude, and I know we had our spring quarter freshman seminar together, but we never even talked then, so can we give up this goddamn charade and stop acting like we care about each others' well-being two years later?!”
5.) “Not too well. I blatantly cheated on my calc quiz and still got a 5 out of 8. At least my parents won’t be surprised - I’ve always been a disappointment to them haha.”
6.) “I’m fantastic! And, no, I was not blacked out when I tried to lick your face at the Deuce last month. I remember it well and I am entirely responsible for my actions!”
7.) “It’s been rough, I haven’t had a solid bowel movement all week.”
8.) “I’m miserable, I’ve become psychologically conditioned to weep uncontrollably when my alarm goes off.”
9.) “I’m alright, but you have some chocolate or something on one of your front teeth and no matter how hard I try, I can’t stop staring at it, you fucking slob.”
10.) "I’m not doing so hot. The ratio of nights I’ve spent with a real human being to the nights I’ve spent with an economy size bottle of cocoa butter skin lotion and a Chrome incognito window this past year has been about 2:363.”
11.) “Horrible. I’ve started to wear disguises so that the cashiers at Taco Bell can’t recognize me and judge me for how often I come in there by myself, completely sober.”
12.) “Wait, what’s your name again?”
