To complement OMG, here’s Bill Bailey on the plague of “LOL”:
(He actually did this with an audience at a live standup gig, but it’s disappeared from YouTube).
An economical expression such as
“I’m like, hello?”
is brilliant. Our elders (or let’s face it, some of us) would have to fall back on a ponderous formulation like
“I must confess I found myself at a loss to respond to the sheer fatuity of my companion’s comment, and could only register a mock expression of disdain”.
I recommend reading this in the voice of Jacob Tree-Frog (aka The Haunted Pencil, Minister for the 18th century)—actually “I’m like, hello?” sounds just as funny with his patrician tones, like the Queen reading MIles Davis’s autobiography.
Cf. this cartoon found on https://twitter.com/PhilosophyMttrs:
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