What's Like Happening to Like Culture?
My partner Albert complained a couple of days ago about the overuse of the word like. Like :-) Albert, I regret its over use. Like Albert, Mary and I also find ourselves constantly saying to our two ten year olds “its not like anything” - just say what you mean.
But I think there is something else going on here. I think kids today are so much more self aware than we were when we were growing up that they are uncomfortable speaking directly. By starting evrery sentence with “Like” they introduce an element of ironic distance to every utterance that signals how sophisticated they are.
I guess we will have grown through the ugly adolescence of our culture when the most sophisticated kids begin to see the usage as a crutch and drop its use to signal that they are even more sophisticated and self aware than their freinds who are still need to distance themselves from everything.
A couple of days ago I was riding on a Metro North commuter train behind a group of teenagers who were loudly discussing something. I say something because I could not make out their topic as it was drowned out by the word “like” appearing three or more times in every sentence. Now I am generally not language obsessed and English is my second language, but the complete lack of expressiveness among the teenagers and their constant substitution of “like” for more complicated words or expressions was a bit horrifying……
To do my own little piece to stem the decline, I have now taken to correcting my kids whenever they use “like” as a meaningless filler or to avoid having to think of the correct word.