Is "how you do you" grammatical?

Question

I read this on the Stack Overflow blog:

Computer security is always evolving. Passwords are “what you know.” Smart cards are “what you have.” We decided to ask “how you do you.”

Is the phrase in bold a grammatically correct one?

Answer 1

Yes and no: it is meaningful, but you have to interpret it in a very specific way.

The context is about the difference between
-something you know (for example, a password)
-something you have (for example, a key)
-something you are (that is, you yourself!)

The article starts by mentioning how we deal with how you prove something you know or something you have. "How you do you" is being used as a kind of shorthand for "how you prove something that you are."

It would be much clearer if it were punctuated differently, like

We decided to ask how you do "you".

because when they say "you" they really mean "perform the action of proving that you are who you say you are."

Answer 2

I agree with the first part of stangdon's answer:

The context is about the difference between

• something you know (for example, a password)
• something you have (for example, a key)

I have a slightly different take on the "how you do you" part, though; I interpret that to mean that there is some kind of security mechanism based on

• how you behave

I believe this is meant to fall under the umbrella of behavior-based security.

In actual cyber security systems, a system might analyze the speed of your typing to detect whether or not it's actually you logged into the system, or pay attention to what actions you perform once you get in.

Since this new system is going to be rolled out on April Fool's Day, however, I'm convinced it's part of an elaborate SE joke.

Answer 3

"How do you do" is an idiom, in the narrowest sense of the word denoting a canned phrase with an assigned meaning. It's grammatical the same way "good bye" is grammatical.

However:

We decided to ask “how you do you.”

is questionable. The problem is semantic. Namely, "how do you do" is not a question. It doesn't expect a reply. It isn't something you can ask. It's a situational phrase used when people are introduced. Therefore, it is not a suitable complement for the verb "to ask".

The verb "to ask" requires a complement which refers to a question. Either a piece of quoted speech that is, grammatically, a question, or some kind of wh-clause: a clause headed by who, what, where, how, ...

Examples:

We decided to ask, "how are you?"

We decided to ask him how he was.

We decided to ask him where he was going.

Since "how do you do" is something you say, but isn't a question, it can be used as a complement of "to say":

The delegates shook hands and each said to the other, "how do you do".

We can turn it into a noun:

Everyone entered the meeting room and the expected barrage of introductions and how-do-you-dos ensued.

Of course "how do you do" is also a fragment of the the correct phrase structure "how do you do {complement}", where the {complement} is some sort of action or activity:

We decided to ask them, "how do you do your taxes, if you aren't keeping proper records of your business activity?"

Though in English we have all kinds of ways to elide (leave out, omit) words and phrases from sentences when they are understood from context, the complement of a "how do you do {complement}" clause cannot be elided.

We cannot say:

• I told him how I do my taxes and then I asked him, "how do you do?"

A complement is required for the second do, such as:

... I asked him, "how do you do yours?"

This is tricky because we have so many ways to do elision of words. For example, "John loves Mary, and she him". "She him" is a complete, grammatical sentence in which the verb is "loves". I know you don't see it there, but please believe me! However, if we take out the conjunction "and", it is no longer grammatical: "John Loves Mary; *she him." See? Tricky.