“OMG, bae. That is literally so basic. I can’t even.” If this sentence sounds like something you would text, Time magazine is your enemy. In an attempt to thwart white girl speech patterns, Time has released a poll deciding which of our favorite words should never, ever, ever get back together with our vocabulary. In this year’s annual “word banishment poll,” Time focused exclusively on our favorite words and phrases, such as “literally,” “I can’t even,” “twerk,” and “sorry not sorry.” The poll looks like this, and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t used each and every one of these in an Instagram hashtag in the last three weeks.
Time has compiled a list of definitions of these words (albeit a very sarcastic list) that goes something like this:
I can’t even: … finish a sentence, apparently. Nobody is this speechless.
literally: You continue to hate it when people use literally to mean figuratively, even if the word just won’t be separated from that usage. The least you can do is cast a vote against everyone who has ever “literally” lost their mind, because they are metaphorically driving you bananas.
obvi: You hate this particular unnecessary, cloying word-shortening about as much as you hate perf, whatevs, adorbs, natch, totes and amaze (when used in place of amazing). If truncation is cool, then you’d like to buy a ticket to the hottest place on earth, please.
Okay, Time, we get it. You’re sick of listening to us talk. If you’d like to vote in the poll, you can do so here, although I personally feel all of these words and phrases enhance my everyday vocabulary. At the moment, “feminism” is currently winning, and I feel that this may be the most offensive facet of this entire project. The silver lining, of course, is that “PSL” didn’t make the list. We still have that one, ladies..
[via Time]