At the End of the Day this Survey is What It Is, so, You Know, Whatever

We all kind of wish that our everyday speech was fast paced, witty and with little or no pauses to breath or think like Quentin Tarantino characters, or like Aaron Sorkin characters. The truth is we can’t be that way because all of us are humans, and humans – even the smartest ones – still have to take a second in between every few sentences to soak in the information we just spat out and figure just what the fuck we’re trying to say. Hell, even Barack Obama, for as eloquent as his words are, still has to take a second between thoughts to work out where his train of thought is taking him. To bridge these thoughts, we humans have created for ourselves some place holder words that fill in that scary silence in between moments of non-silence. Words and phrases like “Whatever” and “you know?” are squeezed in to sentences to prolong the thought process for just a few seconds longer.

Well, a new study shows that people generally think these place holder words and phrases should eat shit and die.

According to a Marist poll (whatever that means/is), 47% of Americans believe the word “Whatever” to be the most irritating word in the English language. Behind that in second place with 25% of the vote is “You know,” and behind that with 11% is “It is what it is.” Others include “Anyway” and “At the end of the day.”

The great irony here (the one that we couldn’t confirm even if we tried) is that there’s a very good chance that most of the people surveyed probably use these words like periods or commas. We’re almost certain that many of the phone interviews for this survey went a little something like this:

Pollster: Okay, Mr. Smith. What words in the English language irritate you the most?

Citizen: Uh, well, you know, I’ve never been a fan of, you know, uh, that word…uh…it’s like…you know, whatever, man. I can’t think of a good one. Whatever, anyway. Do you have any other questions? I gotta get back to my schoolin’