See, at work, I find myself frequently in situations where it's important or necessary that I provide an affirmative noise of some sort, but the noise doesn't really have to mean much. Saying "okay" over and over again, especially when the repetition is clearly obvious, like in IM, looks/sounds bad to me, and I see how it could be misread as attitude. So over the years I've build up an arsenal of affirmative phrases: "no problem," "sounds good/sounds great," "OK," "sure thing," etc, littler my vocabulary because I don't want to sound redundant and I simply need to register with the other person that I've heard and will do what they want/need. I use these phrases frequently and innocently, so to see this article looking into the potential "deeper meanings" of the phrase intrigued me because usually, I'm BIG on reading into little phrases. However, I did feel the author went a bit overboard on their interpretation of the topic. Either way, it seemed like a good thing to ask Hubski about - I'd still like to hear from lil on this for sure.