Three comedians riff on Canadian greeting etiquette, mapping the hierarchy from "Good, you?" to "Good, good, you?" Each reply signals a different level of modest distress. Admitting you're actually struggling triggers emergency hugs and repeated "oh gosh."
Canadians, I need your help. How you're supposed to answer the question, "Hi, how are you doing?" This is actually a great question.
You have two choices in this country. Uh, you can lie politely, or you can traumatize a stranger at the deli counter. There's, there's no middle ground here. When someone says, "Hey, how are you doing?" they do not want the full diagnostic report. They don't want to hear about how your dog ate a sock and you spent 4 hours Googling, "Is surgery covered by pet insurance?" That is not the contract. The contract is light and polite and over in 3 seconds. The polite, national issue reply that keeps the fragile machinery of social harmony humming. So you have options. You can go classic: "Good, you?" That's the simplest. You can upgrade to the West Coast version of that, which is "Not bad, you?" which translates to "I'm hanging on by a thread, but look at me pretending everything is fine, you absolute monster." If you want to get fancy, you can deploy the Canadian deluxe combo, which is "Good, good, you?" Now, I should mention the double "good" there is important. The "good, good," it reassures the other person that you are stable enough to not cry, but humble enough to not brag about it. If you want to show advanced citizenship, there is the gold standard Canadian reply, which is this: "Not too bad, you?" This translates to "Everything is mildly on fire, but I will perish before burdening you with it." Oh, there is also the emergency failsafe reply: cold. That's it, that one word, no follow-up needed. Uh, everyone nods in solidarity. What you cannot do under any circumstance is say, actually, things are terrible. Okay, we are not Canadians, we are not built for that level of, uh, emotional intimacy between the onions and the canned soup aisle. We will short circuit. We may offer you a hug. We will certainly say, oh gosh, 12 times. So How should you respond? Politely? Quickly? If you are at all unsure? "Good, you?" That's the default. That's the default setting here. And then no matter what the other person says in response, you throw in a nod, a tiny laugh, and a quick "haha, yeah." No one knows what it refers to, but somehow we all understand.
Hello, how are you? I'm tired.
Ten times Canada helped the U.S. with its wildfires, instead of whining about the smoke. 
