"Hi raxxorrax! How are you? Had a good morning? Want some cookies?" - Completely normal within my circle of friends as an honest question, but I don't like colleagues asking me constantly. You get nothing done if you always start small talk. The people asking you this are mostly not interested in an answer anyway. That is just the reality of it.
And then you do that with people that you might not even like. There is much value in some distance in a business setting. The most abusive work relations are probably prevalent if you get too close to every other employee.
If you don't like ripping yourself to pieces, get out of the rat race after 3 years working as a programmer and live on cheap land away from cities (if you're in the US), growing your own vegetables. It's a much better life.
This goes way beyond tech. It is permeating the business world in general and society at large as well. "How are you? Fine!" -> I'm stable and we can do business.
VS: "How are you? Well, to be honest I'm having a lousy day, I've been ill for the last three weeks and three of my customers have left." -> This customer moves somewhere else as well. Besides the fact that most people really aren't all that interested in how you feel, they simply exchange these words as some kind of ritual formula.
People are pretending things are better than they are all the time because society sees anything less as weakness and weakness will result in things getting even worse for the person displaying that weakness. We are continuously conditioning each other to pretend that things are better than they really are.