My go-to answer to "How are you?" is "Mean as ever."

Depends how tired I am or how much sleep I ve got

Exchausted and in shitty mood me : " doing great , never been better "
Rested me : " rough day . The dragon got a sinus infection and the flames are not shooting properly . I am trying to clean out his nostrils and I just got 3 fingers burned badly .
It's a good thing I have 9 more to use . And how are u ?"

If I'm in a really pedantic mood:

"I am because, billions of years ago, flaming clouds of gas coalesced out of the Milky Way and formed our solar system and the planet we call Earth. Then, the planet cooled, water vapor condensed and oceans, lakes and rivers appeared. Later, life evolved, beginning as single-cell organisms, and gradually becoming more complex; plants and animals, amphibians, dinosaurs, reptiles, and eventually the first mammals appeared. Then my parents met, they married, had sex one night, and 9 months later, I was born.

That's how I am.

Or did you mean something different by your question?"

Yes, the correct answer is "Fine, thank you." Then you do the same thing to them.

Just fell in love with @Pralina1. Her priceless reply:

"Depends how tired I am or how much sleep I ve got

Exhausted and in shitty mood me : " doing great , never been better "

Rested me : " rough day . The dragon got a sinus infection and the flames are not shooting properly . I am trying to clean out his nostrils and I just got 3 fingers burned badly .
It's a good thing I have 9 more to use . And how are u ?"

I find that annoying too! I respond with "Just fine!" Sometimes, I merely nod my head. I could respond with "Why? Do I look sick?". But "Just fine!" usually does the trick,;and they cease trying to engage me in dingbat blabber-jabber.

Fine...

We as a society need to come up with a new default greeting.........

Where this site is concerned, I do get a number of private messages like the ones you have listed. I interpret their meaning to be, "I want to communicate with you, but am clueless as to what to say to a total stranger." If I bother to respond to such a message at all, which is seldom, my response is pretty cursory. I won't be interested in a man who contacts me out of the blue and then expects ME to initiate conversation.

Fine is a little vague.
I’d go with “I’m fine. And you?”
They did contact you. They deserve the burden of the conversation starter.
A little test on your post is a winning idea. Helps to weed out the mindless

I hate small talk and generally refuse to engage in it. Since it sounds like you are talking about online dating and the messaging you get from men on that, I will say that when I send a first message to someone after viewing their profile, it is usually pretty brief, but intelligent and shows that I have read their profile by mentioning at least a couple things that I saw in the profile. I don't spend more than a few minutes anymore on these first messages because it isn't worth the effort, as 90% of them never get replied to and only about half of them even get read anymore. Only about half of them ever result in my profile being viewed.

And you think you have problems with how people from dating sites treat you??

That line should be a salutation not a message. It should be followed by a paragraph and a close of hope to here from you.

Hey! How you doin' there?
Ow! why did you hit me??

I have no idea why someone would initiate a PM to someone who lives somewhere they have no intention of moving to...

Oh gosh, I get SO MANY of those! I used to ask them to tell me more about themselves. Then the response I'd get is, "what do you want to know?" Now I just write back, "I'm fine. How are you?"

By the way, reading all the previous comments, I'm going to us some of these.

i usually type - 'fine. how are you?'

what gets me are the prescripted questions that match has.... i don't usually answer those.

Peachy
Ducky
Fantastic
Stupendous
Really just depends. If you throw out an unusual response, it usually throws people.

i don't usually get asked this unless i've not been feeling well and then i am asked by someone who knows i've been ill, which i usually am. therefore i take people at their word and give an honest answer.

g

I get those too. It’s annoying that there’s virtually no effort put into a question that requires a real response. So I put the same effort back and simply don’t respond.

"Hi how are you?" a man messaged me yesterday. Not again.

"Not unwell," I replied, quoting George Carlin.

Radio silence.

Thank you, @Deiter, for that brilliant suggestion.

George Carlin on "How are you?" and "Have a nice day"

[video.search.yahoo.com]

To a similar greeting, I was in a wiseass mood and replied :

"last time I checked, everything was functioning satisfactorily - however, this is subject to change at any time "

If it were me,I'd reply,"Honestly"? Then talk about the frustrations of life,how lifetimes, are relatively short.

Love all your response ,a lot of funny but serious answers at the same time, Please let us know the response back when you use these different lines,,should be very interesting