Glad he’s up and about. .25s have in fact killed a lot of people.
As far as bro and dude, I’m a biker. “Bro” is a part of my lifestyle lexicon. I’m old, “dude” is a term I’ve used for years. Just like my sideburns, some years they are in style, some they are out of style. I wear them anyway, in or out of style, because its who I am, and I’m not going to change because someone else thinks I look old and tacky, even though I may in fact BE Old and Tacky!
There’s a difference between talking and writing. A lot of corporations now require their employees to have someone look at their emails before they send them outside of the company, because it is just too easy for them to be mis-read and tick off somebody and lose a customer.
That’s the reason I take it up a notch in formality when writing on FR, the same as you might if you were talking to an LEO, or a preacher, instead of a friend. You don’t want for him to think you are being aggressive, or even passive-aggressive, giving him lip, dissing him, or all the other stuff people think others are doing when they aren’t.
People are just not that hot in guessing what other people are thinking.