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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34966 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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To clarify, by "literal virgin (despite being 21 years old)", I meant to convey:

  • "virgin" is sometimes used colloquially and insultingly online to just mean "awkward around women", but in this case the guy is a "literal" virgin.

  • I mentioned 21 years old because it is an unusual age to still be a virgin and highlights likely social awkwardness, I didn't mean to imply any moral failing on his part for that.

Is English your first language? 'Literally' these days is often used for derisive emphasis. "My boss is literally a jackass", "What a literal retard you are", etc.

To be clear, your English writing is perfect and I wouldn't suspect anything usually. But literally does not mean literally literally, literally.

English is my first language, and @Testing123 is using the word correctly (and the people you mention are using the word wrong regardless of if they are a native speaker). People are shockingly bad at English, but that doesn't make "literally" mean something different just because they're shit at the language.

I can be somewhat accepting of the Valley Girl usage as a kind of emphatic hyperbole -- but this is the first I've seen someone argue that this means the normal usage is deprecated.

Concerning.

Man, I wish you were right, but it's time to give up the ghost. "Literally" is used for emphasis much more than for its original meaning. The fact @FarNearEverywhere assumed @Testing123 was using "literal virgin" as an expression of disgust shows that even highly literate people are using sense two as the primary definition these days.

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