As an aside - word you may have been looking for is irrespective, or perhaps just plain old regardless. irregardless is not a word.
Lots of dictionaries disagree. But not me! I'll join you on this hill, regardless of what those dumb dictionaries say.
The misuse of "literally" and the common use of "irregardless" are the red pills that have turned me into a crotchety old ... prescriptivist.
That means they disagree with you on the definition of the word, but it doesn't make it a synonym of figuratively.
Is that figurative speech?
If I say "I literally broke my arm" after I actually broke my arm, that use is completely correct. But you cannot be literally dead and still type a message, unless it's an automated message that you ordered someone/something to send AFTER you died.
If the answer to this is to avoid the word "literally", and instead replace it with "really, actually, truly" (like I did above), then I might just decide to retire from haunting.
OMG A GOAST SO SPOOKY
Would you be less likely to interpret it as such if the speaker has omitted "literally"?
I would say that that is an example of hyperbole. "I am so figuratively dead right now it's as if I am literally dead." The meaning of literally, there, remains intact.
In the same way, when someone complains that you left them waiting for "days" we don't say "sometimes days means ten minutes" but that sometimes people exaggerate.
So if it’s good enough for Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Vladimir Nabokov, and David Foster Wallace, then it’s good enough for me. Literally.
https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/the-300-year-history-of-using...
There’s beating a dead horse, and there’s railing about the injustice of it all in the shadow of a great oak growing over the horses grave.
"Irregardless" is absolutely a word. It's not a word I personally like, but there's no denying its status.
A number of times now Youtube has shown me a video recommendation that I ignored for days. The thumbnail with that stupid "gobsmacked" expression of the creator (:-O) with some dumb headline in big block letters ("IS GRAVITY A LIE?"). You know what I'm talking about.
Then I finally get around to looking at it closer, and it turns out it's one of my favorite channels with an awesome video! They went with the stupid title and thumbnail because "the algorithm demands it". The actual video itself is great.
These creators get an automatic click from me as well, except when I'm mislead by the thumnail and title into not even realizing it's one of them. Then it takes time for me to discover it. There's been a couple of times where the video I'm mentally spam-filtering appears on the HN front page, and it turns out to be a great video. But had I not seen it here, I would never have clicked on it.
The end result is I don't use their discovery crap at all, because it all looks like garbage I don't care about.
My use of Youtube has become very similar to my use of Xitter - never log in, almost never look at content on their domains, only on other peoples' sites.
I'm sure it works for them on average.
We can assume the metrics, we can see the results, and both seem to line up.
When you DO click on them they're almost always the most mundane things imaginable.
> To be fair, most web users are happy with the arrangement - they get an endless feed of free tiny doses of dopamine while they avoid the real responsibilities of life.
I'd argue it's mostly the latter. Most creators produce content to make money, catering to demand.
Ancient Aliens BS, TikTok reaction videos, blatant staged animal rescues, celebrity drama... this is what the general populace regards as interesting and useful. These are all genuinely popular and sought-after content.
It is a dopamine trap. People want to feel good knowing something special, feel a shared emotional bond, feel the world has good, or that they are almost a socialite... and they'll fight tooth and nail if that perception is challenged.
In my early experience of social media, people were criticized for not writing correct English. That is almost gone. Infact, now people realize that people belonging to different backgrounds can't be expected to perform in one particular context. There is reverse sort of meme, where non-natives are celebrated for writing perfect English. Similarly, there was debate on how to actually spell Quran or Koran etc. Now people understand the intention behind the words rather than actual grammer or spelling. It takes time for higher level of ideas to percolate social media.
The simple answer, apart from historical origins of words is "error correction". It is far easier to error correct words which are far apart in spelling and audio space.
relevant : https://youtu.be/AZX6awZq5Z0?t=3107
No, you and I don't want to look at staged animal rescues or celebrity drama... but if the average person does, then so does at least 50% of the population. We're in the minority.
Spiders Georg would like a word with you. And 99.99% of people have more than the average number of legs. And "the average person" is not something you can actually imagine. Think about "the average driver". You're actually thinking of an asshole driver, because asshole drivers are more salient. You don't notice "the average driver".
I can see how a YouTube channel gets attention-optimized to hell, but then I am able to find content that is genuinely amazing that have survived the temptation to over-optimize for engagement.
A common breaking point for creators is the ones where they have job X that makes a decent living, but their content starts getting popular and starts making a decent living. That's where the creator starts running into the 2 masters problem. Do they quit their job and make content only? If they do, will the platform decide to completely screw them over with an algorithm change?
Then you have a 3rd class that is just jumping into content for the purpose of making money by any means possible. All aboard the over-optimization train.
Sure, some of it is just scams and politics (yeah yeah the jokes write themselves). But at core there are people who have an actual thing to sell, and people who want to buy things. It may not make them happy in the end but that's up to each of us to figure out for ourselves, and the philosophers.
Somewhere under all that attention is a service or a product. In the end we've got to learn which ones matter to us. That's what the attention is supposed to be for.
Not all content is intended to sell a product or service. The really great stuff is not.
Each new medium provides more power to dive into this, and each generation panics that we've crossed a never-before-crossed line. And they're correct.
But the problem lies within us as humans. This lightweight diversionary content is just what the majority of us want.
To be fair, most web users are happy with the arrangement - they get an endless feed of free tiny doses of dopamine while they avoid the real responsibilities of life. The large-scale effect is decidedly negative, though.