thanking-for-thanking, long buildups to requests, apologising for things which are clearly not the other persons' fault

I find it utterly mystifying when people apologise to me for things that are not only clearly not their fault, but probably mine. I have no idea if this sort of thing is expected in polite company but people seem to do it all the same. I assume it's probably involved with status signalling of some sort, but that doesn't make it make sense to me.

I guess this is why I prefer to be in a culture with low levels of (expected) politeness. Politeness brings status into everything, introducing complicated rules that seem to just make it easier to cause unintentional offence.

Actually I'm reminded of the rather extreme example of the culture of elves in Eragon. Because of various factors including low fertility and their expertise in killing, they decided they couldn't afford to have elves fighting amongst themselves. Apparently they then decided to introduce a complicated system of honorifics and greetings depending on the status levels, genders and occupations of the people involved.

Our hero perceives, of course, that this is exactly the wrong way to go about it. The existence of a right greeting for a particular situation out of 30 implies the existence of 29 wrong ones: 29 new ways to give offence.

So uh, make of that what you will.