Do you or do you not say "And I was like ... XXX" all the time?

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Well?

― Jay Kid (Jay K), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 13:35 (twenty-two years ago)

While you shrug your shoulder, that is, of course!

― Jay Kid (Jay K), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 13:36 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm nothing Like xxx.

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 13:43 (twenty-two years ago)

why do you feel the need to deny that???

― Jay Kid (Jay K), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 13:44 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm more like Hacksaw Jim Duggan

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 13:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Vin Diesel rocks!

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 13:45 (twenty-two years ago)

The Rock rocks!

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 13:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, I'm like ... Rocketi-rock!

― Jay Kid (Jay K), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 13:47 (twenty-two years ago)

The Rock rocks my body, which is hard like a rock.

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 13:48 (twenty-two years ago)

fix up, look sharp

― Kingfish Balzac (Kingfish), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:02 (twenty-two years ago)

"was like" seems to have almost universally replaced "said" - i.e., instead of "I said.." or "He said..", it has now become "I was like..." or "He was like..."

If you listen to people around you talk (especially young'uns), it will start to drive you NUTS how much this phrase comes up. Hell, try it on yourself! I bet a lot of us use it without even thinking.

― Rob Bolton (Rob Bolton), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:11 (twenty-two years ago)

And I was like, is this a bad thing, like?

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:13 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm like ... no, I don't think so.

― Jay Kid (Jay K), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:14 (twenty-two years ago)

it mirrors society's ambivalence. We can no longer be sure about anything and therefore find ourselves searching for comfort in the oblique. Totally.

― Donna Brown (Donna Brown), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:14 (twenty-two years ago)

it mirrors society's ambivalence. We can no longer be sure about anything and therefore find ourselves searching for comfort in the oblique. Totally.

Yeah, like the constant use of -ish (is this a UK thing, by the way?).

― Jay Kid (Jay K), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Donna is like, totally OTM. We're afraid to quote someone (or ourselves, oddly) directly with "said". It is far too definite - legally binding, if you will. "Was like" implies paraphrasing, getting us off the hook if we got it wrong somehow.

― Rob Bolton (Rob Bolton), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I use it a lot, probably. It's a lot more flexible than "said," and has more meanings than that: "was like"/"was all"/"went" can all mean "felt," "thought," "should have said," etc.

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:22 (twenty-two years ago)

sure. is the loss of distinction between the different speech acts, if you will, a bad thing? or is it good that it makes life easier?

― Jay Kid (Jay K), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Neither. Slang tends to rely on the listener's ability to interpret intonation, body language, etc. more than formal language does. It isn't a loss of distinction: it's a distinction that isn't restrained to the word-level.

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Ice Cube rocks.

― Barima (Barima), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:30 (twenty-two years ago)

surely something is lost, if we skip a lot of different verbs with different meanings. but is the gained complexity in non-verbal comunication a fair trade?

― Jay Kid (Jay K), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't think you can really talk about anything being lost there any more than you lose something if you say "red" instead of "apple." They have different functions and contexts. There don't seem to be any real reasons -- tangent warning, I'm medicated -- to think language has become less formal in recent generations so much as that people are less frequently formal when their language use is recorded, just like we're less formal when we're being photographed than we would have been a century ago. (Tangent mostly over.) We seem to become more aware of usages such as "I was like" mostly because they're less effective in print or when overheard -- when they're taken out of their element, in other words -- and we're more likely to encounter them that way now. It's like the various idioms that don't make sense when parsed literally: but would you consider those idioms to lack something a less figurative phrase would have? Other than "clarity when encountered by an unfamiliar listener"?

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:36 (twenty-two years ago)

.. and I was like, "Why?"

= "I asked "Why?""
also = "and I said "I can't understand why you would do that, or would want to"
also = I looked totally shocked and open mouthed at him, then shrugged at him,

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 14:40 (twenty-two years ago)

i started calling myself and my friends on it. i hate it so much, but we can't stop

the other one that bugs me is, "and he was all...."

― JaXoN (JasonD), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 19:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Tep is like totally OTM

― oops (Oops), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 20:50 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah, tep, you're probably right. i'm just growing prematurely old. next thing you know i'll start dissing people in large hip hop jeans.

― Jay Kid (Jay K), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 20:53 (twenty-two years ago)

"I was like..." implies you didn't say it but it's a combination of what you said, implied, and wanted to say.

It's different to "I said".

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 20:57 (twenty-two years ago)

ronan otm, also

"was like" has replaced not just "said", but the different ways we could describe a dialogue. For instance:

"he was like 'i love ilm'"
"so i was like, 'how come'"?
"he was like, 'it's so totally fab!'"

could be:
he told me he loved ilm. I asked how come? So he exclaimed...

― paulhw (paulhw), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 21:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Ronan's largely right. "I was like..." is followed by an account of what you said at the time but are not guaranteeing you will recount verbatim. "He was all..." always implies to me that 'he' is boastful, pompous, or full of shit. If that reflects ambivalence, so be it, but I often think it's a pre-emptive way of making sure somebody doesn't niggle at your memory and allows you to talk about the context generally as opposed to making some kind of affadavit.

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 21:07 (twenty-two years ago)

And I was like, then she was all, and I was all, and she was like...

― luna (luna.c), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 21:08 (twenty-two years ago)

I have a friend who excels at inserting "like" into every sentence. Even worse, he is a "screenwriter" who is a bad "storyteller." He insists on repeating things near verbatim while inserting the word "like" every few seconds, which pads his stories insufferably.

― dean! (deangulberry), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 21:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Your mission is clear. You must hit him in the head with a hammer.

― luna (luna.c), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 21:14 (twenty-two years ago)

i have another friend who puts everything into ""'s !!!

― Jay Kid (Jay K), Wednesday, 7 April 2004 21:16 (twenty-two years ago)

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