This quirk of dialect should be called the California Superlative.

Everything is awesome, amazing, radical, insane, great, gnarly, not to mention sick, ill, righteous, dope. Californians just love superlatives, use them constantly, wear them out, and need new ones.

This spreads like a fine coating of mold over the rest of the country before going on to annoy the Commonwealth, and then we repeat. It's pretty cool.

Considering this is Norcal, you forgot hella.

Good point, and the place of hella in the dialect is hella distinctive, because it's a superlative modifier: hella sick, hella insane, "I just bought hella strawberries at the market", and so on.

So you have a politeness continuum from very, to hecka, to hella, to fuckin'. Which is dank.

It really seems to me that in American English, every word eventually gets watered down to mean either "good," "bad," or "very." Take the word "terrific" for example. It used to have connotations of terror. Now it's just another synonym for "excellent." Or "fantastic," the old meaning of which is still found in the related "fantastical," but now simply means "very good." Or "incredible," which used to mean "not believable." I could go on.

And when every superlative has been watered down like this, you need to pick a word that's completely over the top to express anything with any strength of feeling. It's good, it's great, it's awesome! It's fantastic! It's incredible!! It's insanely unbelievably wonderful!!!

"Insanely" is just the latest entry in our internal linguistic arms race.

Yep, and people using "absolutely" all the time is the crown jewel.

In the past few years there's been a similar but opposite degradation: the only adverbs anyone uses are "super", "super not", and "not super". I think it came from the infantilized condescending culture on Twitter.

it's cringeworthy in the US outside of the job-finding/bragging echo chamber this kind of post normally shows up in

I also believe there would also be a large segment of the US that finds these "job-finding/bragging echo chamber" Twitter posts cringeworthy regardless of context. They appear oddly performative and obligatory. Stay tuned for the follow up "I'm incredibly excited to announce that today I am joining ___" post.

It's boring executive marketing speak, and it's prevalent worldwide, not just in the US.

I grew up in the US, and I also found that odd. Not unprecedented, but odd. The literal interpretation of that statement might be more justifiable than the one he meant...

What's odd about it? Why wouldn't he be proud of his team for successfully building stuff he thought was important to build?

I will expect more people to mock this decade of extreme marketingspeak that was funded with fake money and fat investor pockets. The people doing the mocking will lead the next wave of tech growth

Being so proud you lose your sanity? That's quite odd. It's an insane amount of hyperbole.

Insanely is just operating as a term of emphasis in this context. Maybe that's not an easy translation?

One definition for "insanely" is [0]:

> to an extreme degree.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insanely

Seems like a pretty typical use of the word "insane" in the US.

it's kind of insane to me that this is seen as insane, if I'm honest

Yes, I agree. That's probably why hintymad shared the context of not being raised in the US.

The cultural difference doesn't seem like something to "cringe" over. I also don't think the hyperbolic use is restricted to the US. Pretty much any english speaking country will use "insane" to describe something with emphasis. Certainly normal in the UK and Australia.

> I also don't think the hyperbolic use is restricted to the US.

Strictly restricted? Of course not. But for what it's worth I've been told by numerous Europeans that they perceive casually throwing around extreme hyperbole to be characteristically American behavior. I guess it goes with waitresses pretending to love you.

Wait til you find out that "sick" and "ill" can also be synonyms for "really great".

Didn’t Steve Jobs make that usage of ‘insane’ popular in SV?

I think so. I think he also coined a number of other annoyingly ubiquitous speech patterns, like "Do X. Fast."

I thought it came from surfers/skateboarders.

I agree with the other replies about California Superlative in general, but at least in German it would not be weird for some corporate bro to say he was "WAHNSINNIG stolz..." which means exactly the same thing.

you should read this more from the perpective of a dude who just lost his job and will need to soon get rehired. not really a US culture thing.

What's the issue? Using the adverb "insanely" in a positive light? Or that he's proud?

Can you say more? Why did you find it cringey?

This comment is insanely cringey