So, I feel like I agree with that?

> I feel like

This is just a bit of a vent (as a Gen-Z-er myself), because "I feel like" reminded my of something I've noticed in my fellow young peers:

"I was just going to say, <insert statement>." And,

"I was just going to ask, <insert question>."

This makes me sound curmudgeony, but I work with a non-negligible number of people that cannot avoid these constructions in any serious or professional setting. I'll hear it 10+ times in a half-hour meeting. It's so indirect, and I must admit I take the speaker less seriously when I notice it.

Just say the thing! Just ask the thing!

Has anyone else noticed this construction?

I'm guilty I think of 'I just wanted to [verb ...]' - softens what follows as if to say 'not a big deal but'. It hasn't bothered me/caught my attention particularly before now, but I'm sure it will henceforth.

(Not 'gen z' but 'millenial', I think, fwiw.)

I noticed someone say it at least three times in a meeting not long after writing that. Thanks a lot!

While I'm here, a similar one that does bug me (but at least for now I only hear Americans saying it, on Youtube or whatever) is 'I'm going to go ahead and [...]' or 'so I just went ahead and [...]' - why do you have to 'go ahead' before you do things over there, is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?

To your first comment: I also use the “I was just going to <verb>” construction to soften a statement, I just don’t use it ubiquitously - sounds like you’re in the clear.

I haven’t thought about the going ahead/went ahead construction much. I loosely associate it with managerial talk. It does sound to my ears very subtly disingenuous. Now it’s my turn to be on the lookout for this.

Cheers

> Everything is a questionnn

That particular affectation seems to have leaked into written text too. Damn annoying.

> Valley/Uptalk is the most annoying.

Add in a vocal fry and you'll have something to torture me with.

the tiktok voice is quite valley girl, and I’m not sure there’s a more annoying sound around

on the other hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb21lsCQ3EM

Or people can just not speak in uptalk.

That'd be nicesuhh?

> Or people can just not speak in uptalk.

What's uptalk?

Not much, what's up with you?

Or yall can just stop caring and put mental effort into worrying about things with substance instead of how people talk.

Uptalk evolved to fill a social niche and is related to dialects/sociolects that commonly use "right?" or "eh?" to inter-punctuate sentences without using such filler words. (Admittedly, Valleyspeak is partly best known for different filler words so there was, like, no space for inter-punctuating sentences.)

One article on the subject: https://www.thecut.com/2017/06/the-real-purpose-of-uptalk-is...