But what if that question was also thrown at the group as an "opening gambit" for a conversation? For many people, the act of interacting with other people seems to fulfil a deeper psychological need than just obtaining information. The replies may be a form of reassurance that people care - and that the questioner is not alone, and crying into the void. Granted, it is a fairly superficial reassurance - but maybe it just tickles a part of the brain that makes people feel good.
There was a phenomenon that was noticed during the early days of chatbot development, such as ELIZA, many decades ago. These bots seemed extremely crude by today's standards, but many people found that they enjoyed "conversing" with them, and very quickly started to attribute a far deeper level of intelligence (and even empathy) to the bot's replies than could possibly be justified in objective AI terms. The "conversations" seemed to be ticking that spot in the brain that made them feel good.
Maybe that is the real reason why some people have taken so easily to these conversational interfaces.
This happens in call centres a lot. People call up with some superficial issue, which is really just a pretext to a conversation and a human connection - however brief. Very human, very understandable.