A friend of my step daughter's had a conversation within earshot of me recently. She said "like" 47 times in seven minutes. It was so annoying I simply had to count the frequency or I surely would have gone insane.
When did teens start saying "like" all the time, like every sentence? I started, like, noticing a dramatic increase in the early 90's, but then saw, like, an 80's movie and there it was again! I think I have, like, narrowed it to, like, the late 70's in California valley-speak.
"Like" has only two true usages: one is to compare one thing with another (a peach is like a ball of fruit) or to show that you enjoy something ("I like that"). The word "like" adds nothing to any message unless it fulfills one of these purposes.
When you use filler words such as "like", "you know", "um", and so forth, you are basically demonstrating that your brain isn't running as smoothly as it should be. You are filling a pause that should remain a pause with a nonsense word. Why not, like, pause? I can tell you that when you use these fillers you sound dumb as hell as well as annoying. If you said "like" in a job interview as a filler more than once you can kiss that job (unless it's working at MacDonald's) a hasty goodbye.
I believe kids don't know how often they use fillers. I wonder what would happen if they saw a video of themselves. Would they even notice?
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