Words, usages, and phrases that annoy the shit out of you...

i mean obviously the drift of this thread is largely for being a very special kind of bellend but still

lol i remember my mum saying almost exactly that to a younger (and more bellendish) me when i was being prima donna-ish abt a condolence letter i was trying to write

well im defending it but im not up for calling anyone a cunt over it like

god i'm *so sorry* your beloved child died, what's that you say, car accident? *yawn* so trite

It is really difficult writing a message to someone - and I have found it harder doing so for someone I know and love as opposed to someone I’ve been out of touch with for years. I am not quite the age/family age to have experienced loads of deaths in my extended family or among friends, so I don’t do it very often. It’s hard! You’re sitting there looking at this blank space and worrying about what to write. What if you don’t want to write the same lines as everyone else but then accidentally touch something off? What if you do the card equivalent of leaving an awkward voicemail message? Will they even notice the words used?

When I was talking about this to my mother a few years back - who had lost both her own parents when she was young - she said that she remembered who had sent the family cards, and less so what they’d said. So since then, I have gone with the words we all use. Tl;dr deems largely otm.

(Unrelatedish but yesterday I was telling my mam that I thought our old neighbour had died. Can you not check? she says. Check how, I went, they don’t have an rip.ie over here. Pretty sure she’s still shocked over that, but we think ye have awful funeral customs anyway so).

remember who, not what is otm

and you dont ime remember who didnt, tbh

She didn’t mean that she remembered who didn’t in a bad sort of a way, but the people who did meant a lot to her.

ya im in agreement

thank you yes, you'd have to be a very special kind of bellend to worry about not being cliched ooh la la when faced with consoling somebody's loss

Yes it's really tough finding the right words to console someone you've never met over the death of someone you've never heard of on Facebook. Context, dear boy.

thank you yes, you'd have to be a very special kind of bellend to worry about not being cliched ooh la la when faced with consoling somebody's loss

― GK Chessington's World of Adventure (Noodle Vague), Thursday, January 30, 2020 12:22 PM bookmarkflaglink

Otm

"Just leave me alone, your words of support are hackneyed and stilted"

Using "that sucks" for major tragedies, on the other hand...

Yes it's really tough finding the right words to console someone you've never met over the death of someone you've never heard of on Facebook. Context, dear boy.

― (includes digression on farting) (Tom D.), Thursday, January 30, 2020 1:26 PM bookmarkflaglink

Context missing from the original post, but how many strangers do people console on a regular basis.

I can't remember a time where I was on FB and said "oh hey, the guy I met at a Grim Reaper concert once just lost his grandpa, think I'll offer my words of support."

You can't be on FB very much, people are forever announcing deaths on there.

That's one thing Twitter has over FB... or does it?

People dying all the time, what a tired old trope

to the tune of 'love and marriage':

thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers
i suspect that really no one cares

Xxpost yea but i have a FB friend that is some rando I barely know, even if they somehow show up in my feed, I don't offer condolences if I barely know them. That's just weird.

I won't even say happy birthday on FB to someone who hasn't called me an asshole at least once

Well, what can I say, there's a lot of weird people out there!

Evidently.

"Moral bankruptcy".

Cursed, now.

ok, kind of specific, but when someone guesses the countdown conundrum and the presenter says "let's see if that's right". if it wasn't correct he wouldn't be revealing it, the other person / side would get the rest of the time to work it out.

If there’s one perfectly normal word that I can say truly makes me mad to hear it’s “boring”, I’d like everyone to stop calling things boring. Please. Come up with something else to say.

Interest deficient

"let's see if that's right"

haha you are not alone on this!

"I hope he gets the help he needs"

"A major terrorist incident". I never hear about any minor ones tbh.

Various UK railway station/train announcements:

"The next station stop will be..."
"This train will be non-stopping at the next station"
"This train is formed of eight carriages" - I'm not sure if this grammatically correct or not, or what would be better; it just sounds wrong.

i very much hate the the construction "not that good (or other adjective) of a (thing)", is that considered grammatically ok in america or something?

it's not that elegant of a construction

its not that big of a deal

Gooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal

"young people"

Various UK railway station/train announcements:

"The next station stop will be..."
"This train will be non-stopping at the next station"
"This train is formed of eight carriages" - I'm not sure if this grammatically correct or not, or what would be better; it just sounds wrong.

seeing "simp" used a lot as basically synonym for beta, cuck, thirsty. which is particularly boring because it's being treated as if it were a "new" word or new usage

When it calls me a customer rather than a passenger.

while in line at a pharmacy i was recently summoned with 'next guest, please'

foh

I've also heard, "Following guest!" at a store, can't remember where or when.

I used to work retail with a woman who would say, "I can help whomever's next!" and I had to put in a lot of time and research convincing her it was "whoever." It ended up being a whole store-wide argument w/ customers weighing in.

"it's a bop"

Wait, strictly speaking isn't "whomever" right in this context?

I don't get the "following customer, please" thing in the States. What's wrong with "next customer, please"? Do they think next is too abrupt a word or something?

service culture in the states is cringe

gimme a sulky teen barely bothering to avoid you with the splash any day

uh in a catering context youse guttersnipes

I'm terrible at explaining grammar because I never learned all the proper terms, but here goes: "Whoever" is correct because while "I" is the subject of the sentence (I can help), "Whoever" is the subject of the clause "whoever is next" and the clause doesn't change. (It's possible I've used the word "clause" wrong here, but you get the idea.)

Ah, that makes sense - thanks.

Linguist answer: just use "who" all the time, for many people "whom" is now analyzed as simply the formal/marked archaic version of "who" and the case distinction it used to mark (nominative vs objective) is handled unambiguously with word order. Which is probably why you're still hearing customer service people use it, since formal = polite.

That said, credit to the who-words for hanging on to the most distinctive forms of any pronoun for the longest time (pour one out for "whosever")

I think I am as at least as likely to say whomsoever as whomever!

I'm a populist, I say "who-all's"

'm terrible at explaining grammar because I never learned all the proper terms, but here goes: "Whoever" is correct because while "I" is the subject of the sentence (I can help), "Whoever" is the subject of the clause "whoever is next" and the clause doesn't change. (It's possible I've used the word "clause" wrong here, but you get the idea.)

― Lily Dale, Thursday, February 6, 2020 4:15 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think that's correct. 'Whoever' is the object that the subject is helping, regardless of the clause. We say 'I can help her/him' not she/he. Technically whomever is correct, but no one says it because it sounds stupidly pedantic, like this post.

Another example is "there's loads of ..."