What a coincidence. Not only is the gesture supportive, it frames the speaker in a positive light! Just like how startups offer perks like catered lunches because the company cares about work/life balance, right? "How convenient, it just so happens that offering cheap-perks allows us to attract top-talent at half the cost". Notice how the CEO never has to consciously register that s/he's fooling anyone. From inside the mind, it all just looks like a convenient coincidence. Narratives are convenient because they can improve public relations without changing behavior.

Plausible Deniability is why these gestures are socially acceptable. "I'm sorry to hear that" or "that sucks" (i.e. acknowledgment) would suffice. But that's not what Pieter Hintjens' associates told him, is it? Instead, they went the extra mile by offering unwarranted advice. Notice that "I'm sorry to hear that" doesn't connote that the speaker holds relevant information, and is therefore important and worth paying attention to. Regardless of how we define gesture, it is not lost on Hintjens that the stock phrases he receives nudge the conversation in a particular direction.