I do the opposite: I often purposely include phatic cruft because I've found I can't convince people of anything without it. If you look at my comment threads, there're whole paragraphs with no purpose other than to equivocate or make my argument more palatable to those who would otherwise discount it. It's good for karma, but on a strictly technical level, the writing is weaker than PG's style.
I picked up this habit in the Harry Potter fandom, which aside from being a community of writers also happens to be 99% female. Women's writing tends to include many more phatic expressions, because (particularly in something as socially-constructed as fandom) its purpose is often relationship-building. I adapted to fit in; before then, my writing style often tended to be brusque, mechanical, and to-the-point.
I picked up this habit in the Harry Potter fandom, which aside from being a community of writers also happens to be 99% female. Women's writing tends to include many more phatic expressions, because (particularly in something as socially-constructed as fandom) its purpose is often relationship-building. I adapted to fit in; before then, my writing style often tended to be brusque, mechanical, and to-the-point.
I still use my old style in technical posts, where I figure the reader can deal with any unintentional rudeness. For example, compare the last paragraph of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144001 to this comment: http://arclanguage.org/item?id=3103