Alright, I don't know about you, but I've had enough of "like." It was the one above that sent me over the edge. A bride said to me, in a pre-wedding interview, "I will have, like, three bridesmaids."
I said, "Like three, or three?" I couldn't help myself.
My brain went wild. Two and a half? Two? Which half? Top? Bottom? Left? Right? Or some other combination entirely?
One cannot have, like, three bridesmaids. They only come in integers--whole numbers.
I've heard it from the pundits, old and young and in between. I've overheard it on cellphones across the country. I've ever, to my horror, heard myself use it. I'm done with like.
So where does this linguistic fixation with "like" come from?
I think it's a function of our computer and television realities. We don't live our lives any more, we like live them. Living is a virtual pastime for much of the world. Watching television is like watching life. (That was a perfectly legitimate use of the word like, FWIW.)
Life, dear one, is not for watching. It's for living. Living is a gerund, an -ing word, what has come to be called an action word in English class these days. Is verb too complicated? I hope not.
Part of the reason I am writing about this subject is because a public relations wizard I know has had enough of like as well. We even see it in writing in The New York Times.
What is it going to take to begin to live our lives here and now? What will it take for our children to do that? Our example.
There is no "like" to it. There's a will and a way to live currently in the present moment, appreciating all its goodness and responding in awareness to anything that approaches us. The thing is ... responses aren't "like" either.
I think "like" has taken us away from genuine experience, and it's time we returned to real live experience in the here and now. In fact, I'll tell you a little secret. It's the only place from which genuine change can be created.
Life itself is a wholeness, a oneness, one thing. There is only one place to experience it--here. And only one time, as well--now.
Anything else is virtual, and not real. So I say, "Down with like!"
And, "Up with real life right now."
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Alas, for many, it is. I teach English at the university level (at a very highly-ranked public institution), and "verb" is beyond the abilities of a great number of students, let alone the tricky stuff like gerunds.
I see "like" pop up copiously in upper-division papers. And not always used as a simile, but instead with the sense you are lamenting.
It makes people seem very, very, dead-behind-the-eyes dumb when they use this word to excess.