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Healthy work/life balance (startrek.website)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 88 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

"Literally everyone"

You keep saying that. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

I don't get why it grinds everyone gears. Isn't it just an hyperbole? (y'know like for the hypersoups ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

[-] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

What bothered me about it was that they're stating it's everyone doing these things, but I think it's probably a small minority.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Someone sourced a couple higher in the comments. Their info showed 2% of the populous doing what "literally everyone" is doing. The other stat they included was 80% of the populous had never used a sleep aid in their life. So the talk of it being hyperbole is even a stretch.

Saying literally everyone in the U.S. is a cigarette smoker would be more accurate. (Not accurate)

[-] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

It is hyperbole, but the problem is that it's using a word that was supposed to specify that something was not hyperbole as hyperbole, rendering it useless.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

the problem is that it's using a word that was supposed to specify that something was not hyperbole as hyperbole, rendering it useless.

... Or... Because it's a word specifically meant to indicate it is not hyperbolic, using it in that way is literally the superlative hyperbole.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

At the cost of the word's intended use, unfortunately. RIP literally. It literally died.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Now you have to hit literally in the chest with an adrenaline shot to bring lividity into its decaying body.

quite literally

actually literally

[-] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

A good point, I haven't seen "quite literally" used to mean "figuratively." Perhaps there's some usefulness to be had yet.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

rendering it useless

Another example of hyperbole.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Okay, rendering it far less useful.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Except some of the earliest uses of the word "literally" that didn't pertain to letters and glyps we in the form of hyperbole.
Literal as factual and literal as exaggeration both about the same age and precedent, and have been used long enough that it's just part of the English language at this point.
May as well complain about how "discreet" and "indiscreet" are opposites, but "flammable" and "inflammable" are the same.

https://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/fun/wordplay/autoanto.html

English is a language of contradictions and massively confusing syntax. News at 11.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

People, including many famous authors, have been using literally this way for hundreds of years.

[-] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Yes, but its use to mean its opposite didn't become widespread until the past decade or so.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

People have been complaining about it longer than a decade, so you're way off there.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally

Tldr: common use in the "figurative" sense for since the 1800s.

[-] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Incorrect. People have been using it the way you are complaining about for hundreds of years. It’s a new phenomenon that people complain about it being used the way you disapprove of. I’d attribute the recent complaints to lack of literary exposure and anti intellectualism in recent years.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I think because it's a pretty gross mischaracterization of the demographic? Usually hyperbole is used for effect to more emphatically illustrate a generally true or accepted point.

The number of Americans who use nightly sleep aids is extremely low. Like, a vast vast majority of people never take them. I don't know anyone who regularly takes them, and honestly I don't know many who take them even occasionally.

So this meme uses hyperbole to drive home the idea that Americans have a pill problem regarding sleep aids and no one in Europe does. I have no idea how the numbers shake out in Europe but I can say in America it is not as characterized. So it's less hyperbole (exaggeration of a fact) and more like a lie.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Ok so I did a quick search and:

  • 2% of americans declare using sleeping aids daily.
  • 18% declare using some some

So yeah the amount of people "litteraly using medication to sleep every night" ia quite low. The use amongst the population is still generally high so I wouldn't directly classify that hyperbole as a lie. (but I'm not claiming I'm right on that it's a feelings calculation).

I'm also pretty sure these numbers are underreported for example because of the stigma around using "recreational drugs" as an illegal mean to self medicate.

Also it's nice for you to have nobody (that you know of ofc) struggling to sleep.

Where I'd personally feel more nitpicky about that meme is the opposition with Europe. I don't think we sleep much better. A lot of people around me (and myself included) heavily rely on sedation in one form or another to have any semblance of sleep. Although there might be some selection bias since alot of folks I know are handicaped in one way or another so we don't tend to have the best physical and psychic health ^^'

[-] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Appreciate you finding numbers when I didn't go to that effort. It makes me wonder if numbers are pretty similar globally. 2% having chronic insomnia doesn't sound completely out of line to me.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Is that a LinksTheSun reference

[-] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

It might've been where I got it from :p

It wasn't conscious but I used to watch what he did awhile back.

[-] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

Not literally literally, figuratively literally.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Figuratively everyone.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Hyperbole: A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in I could sleep for a year or This book weighs a ton.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah but there has to be some reality to it, sleep for a year makes sense because you're saying 'I'm super tired and I could sleep for a real long time' all of which is true, this is saying 'a majority of people in place A do this thing that is unknown in place B' which isn't even close to an approximation of reality.

this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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