The Hyperbole Police: ABIB Gonna Have To Cite You

“I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Howard Beale, Network (1976)

Are you, like The ABIB, troubled by the wholesale overuse of perfectly innocent adjectives that can’t speak and/or defend themselves against the wanton abuse of their appropriate usage? To wit:

OMG!!! I just ate THE MOST FABULOUS AND DELICIOUS SANDWICH EVER!!! – Beyond doubtful. Furthermore, if true, the fact that you haven’t shared this with CNN, The New York Times, and Reuters is just plain shitty. Don’t you think everyone else would like to try such a culinary marvel? Bitch.

Had SOOOOOOO many amazing events to attend but now I’m SO EXHAUSTED I CANNOT MOVE!!! – Wrongful use of overstatement (honestly, you literally can't move?) only made worse by being in the context of a humble brag; always annoying.

Can I just say that I WORK WITH THE BEST PEOPLE EVER and am SO HUMBLED TO BE LUCKY ENOUGH TO BE IN THEIR PRESENCE? – Wow…did you ascend to Heaven and somehow get to work with Mahatma Gandhi? Jesus? Mother Theresa? No? Huh…

You get the point, right? I mean, how hard is it to formulate written sentences without becoming the verbal equivalent of a gushing sea of lava? Do these people actually speak like this when in face-to-face conversations with others? I kind of doubt it or we’d be hearing more on the news about folks getting carted off to psych wards for observation. Because let’s face it, if you had someone in your face spewing out the kind of gibberish that passes for the average Facebook/Tweet/Tumblr update you’d be backing away slowly and scanning the area for deadly weapons, right?

So let’s break it down here. In my admittedly very non-scientific, limited observation, the worst offenders in the Hyperbole Olympics are women. Specifically young women. Now I get it, we women are traditionally given far wider boundaries of what is acceptable in terms of emotional expression. I know that this wrongful paradigm is slowly changing but it’s still pretty clear that women hold the corner on overwrought, flowery descriptions of…whatever. A fucking sandwich? The effects of daily activities on your energy level? Your fucking co-workers for fucks sake? What is it that they lack in their lives that makes these women so desperate for stimulation that they have to invent increasingly dramatic terms to describe mundane, daily events? Is anyone’s daily life that fucking dramatic? Shit, I hope not, because ladies I gotta tell you, that’s not even remotely sounding like fun. And who began the whole practice of having to have the BEST friends, the MOST WONDERFUL interactions, resulting in being INCREDIBLY LUCKY…or AMAZINGLY FORTUNATE…or RIDICULOUSLY GRATEFUL. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for expressive feelings of thankfulness for good luck, good friends and happy circumstances that people encounter in their daily lives. But honestly, how do you know that those friends are really THE BEST? Did you check with the other 85 posts on your wall alleging that THEIR friends are THE BEST? How can we decide who is telling the truth? How do we readers conduct a best-off? And is any luck or good fortune ever really incredible (adjective: so extraordinary as to seem impossible)? Are you really ridiculously grateful? Hell, that doesn’t even make sense.

So here I am, The ABIB, purveyor of a varied menu of bitch fests, asking you (and YOU know who the fuck you are) to have mercy on the rest of us that have to see your bullshit on a daily basis. Folks: words have meanings; specific meanings, meanings that are geared toward illumination, not fulfilling some random need for you to appear at your most Drahmahtic and Important and Better than every fucking one else. There are people actually reading the drek that passes for insight into your life, so cut us all a break and ease up off of the crazy talk and just speak English, please, correctly and accurately. Just think: if you do, then when something truly amazing happens to you, say, you scale Mt. Everest in a tee shirt and flip flops, you won’t have to convince us that it’s right up there with that Starbucks latte you got last week.