Відео

This is a good development. The world is uncertain, people are uncertain, and this form of expression is closer to the truth than trying to make bold statements all the time

this video made me very self aware of how insecure i sound when i speak like that

No, I just find it cool I'm not native either (to English)

My trick is to be 0 and then double down with irony as defense

0:27 You make a good point about being overly redundant with hedging our speech, but it's ruined by what you consider to be the ideal example of saying what you mean ("They're funny"). Every time you trotted out that example, I cringed a little. The key thing binding the sentence "I think they might be one of the funniest people I know." together and making it mean something is the fact that the word "funniest" is a superlative. Nobody ever says "I think you might be *pretty funny,* in my opinion." That would truly be saying "nothing" as you say. The reason all the "safety statements", as you call them, are there - is because that superlative is overwhelmingly strong on its own and needs to be reined in a few notches. But dropping the superlative entirely goes too far. I still perceive the original sentence as expressing a more intense opinion than the shortened one, purely because of that reined-in superlative. Ironically by dropping it in an attempt to avoid "wasting syllables", you've gone too far and made the sentence _less_ impactful. "They're funny." _Anyone_ can be funny. But one of the funniest people you know? That's really saying something, even if you just think they might be.

cool vid

Why Rodney Dangerfield for Ghetsis?

Like instead of saying “You’re good.” People say “You’re pretty good…”

Finally someone that pointed it out, we should talk more bluntly. It’s gotten to the point that ORDINARY WORDS sound offensive. Definitely contributed to people being so overly sensitive now.

Why do you have a tapeworm background?

"They can factor in the absurd and the unknown all on their own." me when autistic people don't exist

i agree with this video. a while ago, i noticed how i've been using "safety statements" and other kinds of word filler so i made an effort to phase it out of my speech. i think related to this is the term "word cruft" (there's an article on tvtropes about it) this video also gives me the idea that whoever actually uses all of these safety statements has their hand permanently stuck inside SCP-645. you know, the thing that bites your hand off if you tell a lie

This is a really interesting topic!! A thing that proves your point is that it took my brain a few seconds to think of a way to word this so it doesn’t have “sort of” or “kind of”, etc. My mind is blown!

I do this A LOT. I don't really see it as a bad thing, since I personally consider being transparent about how little you may understand about yourself and the world to be, in a sense, wise. Being too sure of oneself leads to ignorance. Everything in moderation, though. All this to say, I write and do text-based roleplay a lot as a hobby, and I've had to consciously stamp out these "safety statements" when some of my characters are talking in order to give their speech a distinctive feel or excude a sense of certainty or confidence. When you have to find a way to make fictional people speak distinctively different from you as a writer, it forces you to analyze your own speaking patterns (or your writers' "voice") with a little bit more scrutiny 😂 I have no plans of drastically changing the way I speak though; that in itself would be tiring.

I actually feel like "they might be the funniest person i know" feels like a stronger compliment than "they're funny." It sounds closer to "they are the funniest person" (in the world?)

you're just mindlessly complaining :3

I always took "you're one of the funniest people I know" literally As in , the person has a sub conscious list of funny people, all ranked based on their funniness level , and I , happen to rank very highly in terms of humor capabilities

The fear of sounding too certain and too formal is honestly the cause of this. Changing social trends from the baby boom onwards have inculcated the idea that sounding too straight forward or too confident makes you look like you're egotistical or stuffy or just a know it all.

this is the worst video anyone has, or ever will make

On the flip side I hear so many people say things like “That was one of the greatest movies of all time” or “That game was an absolute piece of garbage”. People are so melodramatic about their opinions on culture and what’s worse is they treat you like a living joke for disagreeing with them on any of it. I miss when I was a kid and me and my friends would just say “I liked that” or “I really didn’t like that” I wish people had some humility.

Perchance this may just be one of the better videos I’ve seen in the last hour, in my opinion

I happen to be bilingual and its really funny when having to translate crap like "that might be the funniest thing ive possibly seen" to "eso puede ser lo mas gracioso que puedo haber visto" because it sounds just so clumsy. Ive seen the might and pretty sure be used to describe "ironic uncertainty" too hut thats a different thing. Think of "im pretty sure france might be in europe idk" as a "dude of course france is european you dingus"

Honestly, man. I just don't feel like sayin things as if they're fact, when I don't even know.

I bet that this sh*t has leaked into our speech and writing from the bureaucratic lingo. When you're writing an official statement, scientific paper or any other kind of text that's supposed to be thoroughly reviewed, you'll get into less trouble while understating your opinion rather than overstating it, so everyone just plays safe. Nowadays people are so used to the fact that a horde of no-lifers on the internet can take your opinion and wipe their asses with it, that this type of language becomes a standard for the internet too. And when both your official writing and unofficial one use the same principles, you're starting to use them in the spoken language.

It sounds better, like overthinking but verbally, I love it, to some extent.

I maybe think it might be possible that I perhaps disagree, but I'm not really sure, I'll have to think a bit more about it, like if I have the time to I mean. Sort of

If it wasn't for all of the people around us who were so CONFIDENTLY AND LOUDLY WRONG all the time, we wouldn't feel the need to be wishy-washy with our own thoughts and feelings, even when we know we're right.

i kinda sorta might be suffering from this right now a bit i think idk though

I have a friend that uses this sort of language constantly and they arbitrarily mention their top 10 lists. It's also interesting that one of your example phrases mentions a new years stream. They do new years streams too. Is there, like, a pipeline for these sorts of people???

The thing is Chat is not realistic love interest, but definitely the one spidey deserves

"You're funny" is a bad example. That sentence can be misinterpreted in this day and age very, very easily. And to be quite honest. Because communication is something so many people struggle with, they haven't given me a real reason to stop using "overly" verbose writing styles.

If you ask me, I think this might be one of the most insightful and thought-provoking video essays I've watched, in my opinion. In other words, this WAS the most insightful and thought-provoking video essay.

I kind of noticed too, but subconsciously. I personally do it because of the amount of self-doubt I have, I don't trust my own memory because the lack of sleep has made me have a lot of short term memory loss, and because I think I'm always wrong about everything (ironically enough, this whole statement has almost none of those safety things).

FINALLY I KNOW IM NOT ALONE IN MY NEUROTICISM

i like that you bring up sincerity in this video beacuse i honestly believe that assessing sincerity vs. irony is one of the biggest (and most often overlooked) aspects of understanding our modern society, popular culture, vernacular, and media.. from the bottom upwards has crept irony from deep depths of ancient meme culture up to the modern 'multicultural' (many memetic sources) "brainrot" culture, bringing it mainstream... from the top down a pseudo-irony has crept, likely originating from the structures of corporate conglomeration.. the most recognizable of this kind of irony comes from media, a great example being marvel movies, which fear sincerity on such a fundamental level that you can never catch a break between the ironic self-referential, nod-to-the-audience type bits.... anyways, I'm rambling, but my main point is that there is a lot to be said about how we set our intentions on being ironic or being sincere... i generally agree on cutting the conditionals, but i don't think less verbose, full sincerity has to be the answer for everyone... i think swears, inside jokes, humorous verbosity, and sincerity can construct balanced speech that allows a wide variety of types of people to speak raw sincerity... to use your example, "you're funny" (already subtracted the conditonals) becomes "you're the funniest motherfucker i ever met" or whatever you want lol... sincerity + your own personal spin to connect to who you're saying it to..

For this kind of stuff, it's best to adjust as you see fit. If you feel these kinds of words detract from your life and what you mean, then by all means, crank it down to whatever level you feel comfortable with. Ditto if you feel like you need to communicate more uncertainty.

I've been thinking about this too recently. Like you and many others have pointed out, this usually happens when you try to avoid making absolute statements that could get proven wrong in the future. We're afraid of being wrong because we see the consequences of being wrong. Sadly, being wrong is human, and we just seem to have collectively decided that we need to be perfect all the time. There are also reasons like trying to communicate the degree to which you think something is the case. Not everyone deals well with very direct statements such as "you're funny." In some cases, such as during online discourse where body language and tone cannot be taken into account, saying something like, "you're funny," can easily run the risk of sounding sarcastic when that was not intended. I do agree, though, that it is in our best interest to cut back on some of this stuff and just let ourselves be. It is very hard to police your thoughts, and if we continue to do so, we just won't end up saying anything. I have definitely seen this in my own experience where I just won't say anything out of fear of being wrong, even when I just want to yap all day. I've deleted countless comments, emails, texts, and so on, just because I felt they could be misconstrued somehow or because I feel I may have gotten something wrong. I don't like it. It drives me crazy. I, sometimes, genuinely envy people that seem to not be bothered by any of this. I wonder if their minds are as chaotic as this, or if they just actively choose to project very confident and direct fronts to people, while being doubting messes on the inside.

Incredible video. Thank you for making this

All cultures, given enough time, will converge into East Asian politeness system 😂

Yep it wasnt just me that thought the same way

I'm sooooo guilty of this

I think this video is good

safety statements + exaggeration = the same thing with extra steps

In the same way that saying a misleading statement is a form of lying, an omission of truth is a lie. In order to you lie, you have to know the truth. So by masking your language and repackaging it as an incertain statement, when you are aware how much you like something, you are just trying to make the truth exist outside of you. The truth is both inside and outside to you. It doesn't somehow stop existing internally, cuz it exists everywhere. The times I have done this was to downplay what I thought as to not give someone misgivings who might have had contrawise thinking. This kind of deceptive language puts distance between you and your actions, it avoids having gravity in your words, which I do think you should say things with your chest instead of trying to avoid guilt, shame, etc. It's like legal speak, and isn't really doing anything but add more confusion/ambiguity to justify what you think.

I think (yeah alright I SAID THE THING) that this kind of behaviour is becoming more common because of the internet and social media. People have also started communicating more and more with irony (irony poisoning) as a way to have a shield for when you get pushback for what you said. There's just so much constant hate, criticism, and general negative sentiment that you get exposed to online that (at least in my experience) (yup i'm doing the thing again, you caught me) it makes you scared to share any deeply personal thoughts, or even beyond that just personal preferences and opinions that are slightly unpopular.

I feel like this is just modern softener particles finally being added to english

Dunno about this one, chief. Communication is more than just the words themselves -- the existence (or lack thereof) of what you're describing as useless filler words is part of the message they're used in conveying. You mention it in the first part of the video, even -- to make definitive, matter-of-fact, "efficient" statements is to imply a level of certainty that simply isn't practical or realistic. For instance, around 2:45, "I think it may have gone too far." Why didn't you just say, "it has gone too far?" I'm guessing it's primarily because you're implying that "hey, I *could* be wrong here. I'm not so confident in my assertion that I'll preemptively dismiss any claims that may challenge its validity". Of course, to say all of that WOULD sound unnatural -- nobody talks like that outside of very, VERY specific situations. Language is a lot looser than you seem to think it is, at least based off of this take, at any rate.

damn you're totally right. never realized it till this video pointed it out

I kind of just... entirely cannot agree with you on this? Even in the premise alone of "we do this more often" - more often since when? Where did that assumption come from? There's a very big part to this about the natural rhythms and patterns of speech as well, "saving syllables" isn't always a good thing (and it's an assumption (or at least ungeneralized opinion) to say it is) I'm willing to bet there's a lot more interesting linguistic and societal stuff going on in the background here than "the internet has made us anxious" I. understand how much it sounds like I'm just mindlessly ragging on you but I have no real better way to get my point across - hope you're having a good day xD