language complaints

i will not be expanding on these.

• “doing the work.”
• the em-dash apology meme. let me have one tool.
• “in conversation with.”
• “lowkey.” (it is not.)
• “unhinged” used about anything actually quite hinged.
• when an essay's title is a sentence with a colon and the part after the colon explains the part before. pick one.
• “i'm not gonna lie.” okay but were you going to.
• “this slaps.”
• the word “vibe” doing forty hours a week.
• “what if [extremely normal thing]?” as a thesis.
• “this is everything.” yeah. that's the problem.
• people who say “ontology” and mean “list.”
• “the discourse.”
• “literally” used to mean “extremely figuratively.” fine. fine. this one is lost. i concede this one.
• “perhaps the real X was Y all along.”
• “we need to talk about X.” we do not. you do.
• “small but mighty.”
• “obsessed.”
• starting a sentence with “look,”
• starting a sentence with “so,”
• starting a sentence at all, honestly. shut up.