Similarly if you catch the Queen on one of her visits to schools, community centres, etc., you might very well be able to have a chat without being vetted.

It's only comparatively recently that letters, especially from a man to a woman, ceased to be signed "Your obedient servant." To this day business letters are signed "Yours faithfully". If you write that, do you really mean it? If you don't write that, you'll be considered an ignorant oik.

> I'm halfway convinced the only reason anyone still puts up with this shit is that Elizabeth in particular seems to be pretty cool.

Maybe, maybe not. It seems that you and most others are unaware that this is simply one miniscule example in an entire ocean of formal diplomatic and social protocol. Recently when giving a talk at one of the Livery companies in London there were similar forms to which one adhered.

In short, I think that the people who are pointing and laughing and saying it's stupid are those who don't actually know how it works and what it does. I'm not defending it or saying it's rational, I'm merely saying that looking in from the outside, you and others are speaking from a position of well-reasoned ignorance. I grew up in an informal country, similarly thinking that all this diplomatic protocol crap was an insult and a waste of time.

I was wrong.

Personally, I'm largely convinced that it's an unwillingness even to try to understand the historical and cultural reasons for this sort of "shit" that makes so many people in Europe so dismissive of so many Americans. I've lived in three different cultures and seen this in action. One culture looks at another not only with incomprehension, but an unwillingness to try to understand. The Europeans have a multitude of cultures on their doorstep, and many of them travel, so the situation isn't as bad. In the US there are cultural differences across the states, but nothing like the differences across the borders in Europe. As a consequence, it seems, people from the USA seem much less able to see, understand, and adapt to cultural differences.

Not all, of course, and perhaps not you. But think about it.

Hackers are historically reknowned for not accepting anything on faith, and thereby ensuring that while they manage to invent things no one else has thought of, they are equally constantly reinventing the wheel. That's changed a lot lately, but there is still an air of "If it's not done the way I think it should, then it's wrong." If you can accept that what someone else does actually works and has some benefits, even if you wouldn't do it like that, then you've taken a big step.

This is no longer Hacker News, but cultural differences exist in hacking, and understanding is always worth striving for.

It seems to me that Britain has quite a bit more of this type of protocol than the USA, for the simple historical reason that the USA abolished the aristocracy and established a republic while Britain never did.

The historical and cultural reasons are clear to me: Britain has an unelected, hereditary monarchy that historically held final authority and had people killed if they weren't subservient enough. (To be fair, England's experiment with republicanism was no less tyrannical.) Over time, more and more checks grew against royal authority until eventually they grew powerless in reality. There even seem to be a few practical benefits from having the same titular head of state for decades, since most sources agree that the Queen provides intelligent and thoughtful advice to her Prime Ministers. It's a role that most parliamentary republics have replicated, albeit in an elected role.

But there was a time when addressing a monarch by the phrase "I have the honour to be, Madam, Your Majesty’s humble and obedient subject" actually meant what it sounds like. In practical terms, maybe royal protocol isn't a real problem. Maybe people tend to create their own royalties and aristocracies without the presence of a real one. But no, I wouldn't do it like that, though I understand and appreciate that it seems to work for Britain.