Same old, same old

Is it only me that from time to time feels a bit boring whenever I say 'hey' and 'how are you?' on msn and of course the practical but infuriatingly broken facebook chat? To me it feels like I'm being a bit of a robot, churning out the same greetings and questions, just like every other day - as though it's some kind of ritual. It's only after this, when topic points of interest crop up that the conversation can really get going. That's not me saying the greetings are boring, no no, of course not. It's just that most often, the response is 'yeah I'm good cheers', and there's not much you can say about that. It's only when something's up that you can really get talking at the start of the conversation. (and as someone in particular knows, I can go on a bit...) So what I do? I've tried mixing things up before, but they vary from the slightly less boring 'how be you?'s and the 'you okay?'s and the 'hey up's to the utterly laughable and completely ridiculous 'what's crackalackin?', 'how is you finding yourself maaaan?' and 'yo yo negro'...! The point is, that I don't think it's possible to avoid the beginning of conversations sounding ever so slightly rehearsed. You'd have to be a social genius to be able to freshen it up successfully. Or, maybe I'm the only one who finds this an actual problem and I'm just a socially awkward reject of life...come to think of it, that does seem eminently plausible. Bugger.