I use “like” and like a lot, almost like a California girl.

i worked a summer gig at an outdoor camp as sort of a small unit supervisor. basically a department of 1 (me) that occasionally college interns would rotate through. to my credit, they told me by the midpoint that my setup was best because i was “chill”. anyway, at the end of the summer, a group of the stoner guys started doing impressions of me, to me, and universally they all included me becoming reservedly annoyed/exasperated at something (like a broken piece of equipment, or some high level boss barking pointless orders sharply before 7am) and muttering “blow me” quietly to myself. or when relating a story and characterizing my own lack of enthusiasm about whatever was happening.

“So then they said, ‘The job pays $8 an hour.’ and I was like, ‘Blow me.’”

they also all imitated my style of speech which involves really exaggerating, slowing the word “blow”.

that was over a decade ago so i am pretty sure i’ve shifted off that consciously, but for a while it was kinda wack how often i would say it. even to myself while reading something annoying. they all thought it was hysterical, but i definitely made some changes.

Say “slide note” instead and pull out a slide whistle and oooOOOOOP with it.

I say “I’ve probably mentioned this before” a lot because I am always forgetting if I have already told you something.

Parenti uses “and the like” a lot in his speech (and texts) and while this could be some kind of recency bias, I believe I see it more often in lemmygrad+hexbear than on the rest of the instances

Everyone has a tick they say a lot.

I tend to to say “You know what I mean?” A lot

Insert piss joke

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My problem is what Wikipedia calls semiarticulate utterances: huh, uh, erm, um, hmm, etc. If I ever wanted to do something like a podcast - I’d first prepare by trying to figure out how I can drastically cut down using them. I have no idea how. But I think I might have no choice but to end up with an unfortunately Obama-like way of speaking. What I mean to say… is that the number of pauses… would be noticeable. Still - all things considered… that’s better than saying “um” and similar phrases… all the time.

I don’t know what I have for my vocal speech, but when I type I tend to add extra thoughts in parentheses a lot. I also probably stutter a lot, my thoughts tend to move faster than my mouth can speak.

I’m always like “Does that make sense?” after I go on for more than a couple sentences and need verbal affirmation that I’m not being silly/confusing

I use a ton of analogies, so I probably say “that would be like…”, “that would be equivalent to…”, or “that is analogous to…” a lot.

Honestly, when I space out I tend to say stuff like, “I like cats…”.

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I’ve noticed my verbal tics change every time I notice them and become aware of how prevailing they are in my speaking.

When I was in school it was “um” and “like”.

When I was in college it was sometimes “mmm” but mostly silence because I was trained and practiced enough to consciously avoid any verbal tics.

When I left college I was at my peak and could keep my mouth shut.

Now I’ve gotten way out of practice and usually do shit like “expletives”, “folks”, some flavor of “mmm” or “hmm”, and a few years ago it was also “side-note” but my coworker kept giving me shit about it so I eventually stopped saying side-note.

A coworker of mine very frequently will say something indirectly then follow his extremely obvious implication with “you see what I’m getting at?” It’s so annoying, bro just say what you mean. They’re never clever and don’t add anything so he’s just making things take longer and demanding a response.

Sometimes, Bob Dole likes to refer to himself in the third person. It’s not a big deal.