I feel the same about happy birthday threads. If I reply "Happy Birthday!
" and people post simple "Happy Birthday." afterwards, I feel naive and fluffy. If I post a serious "Happy Birthday." and people post "Happy Birthday!
(a wide array of crazy smilies afterwards)", I feel like a grouch.
Then again, there's this horrible "two bottles of beer" smiley at Studios - each time I see it, I feel vindicated, for surely, no one will be as (whatever) as to actually use it.
As for e-mail, I just more or less stopped putting in "Cheers", "Regards" and other stuff, except for the formal correspondence at work, where my signature is standardized. It's mostly "no beginning, no end, just the actual information/gossip/stuff" in my letters.