We are in a age where most interactions are supercharged with melodramatic theatrics.
Not to dunk too much on the artistic community, but when it comes to these 4 day dramas all the over the top adjectives are applied. Very eloquent but the feelings most of the time aren't even real. It's a performance.
Not to mention, and this is something I have to explain to my European friends all the time when they get all of their information on the US from it's media, Americans speak in hyperbole all the time. It's how they talk to each other ("omg, you're my best friend", "I almost died", "That's the biggest tower I've ever seen", "People are literally dying on the streets due to private healthcare", etc), so if you read it without the context you would think this ad is the worst thing in the world.
> "omg, you're my best friend", "I almost died", "That's the biggest tower I've ever seen", "People are literally dying on the streets due to private healthcare", etc
Side note: because literally has been so often used to mean figuratively, literally is now acceptable to mean figuratively. They even updated the definition in the dictionary: the word now means literally AND its opposite.
Literally has been used in that way for literally hundreds of years. From Charles Dickens ("He had literally feasted his eyes on the culprit.") and Charlotte Bronte ("Literally I was the apple of his eye"), to Mark Twain (in Adventures of Tom Sawyer) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (in The Great Gatsby) -- among others.
This "Literally shouldn't be used figuratively" is a rather modern construct that was artificially created.
Yep, the dictionary's job is to tell you how people are using language, not to tell people how to use words :). And don't people love to make a mess with words' meanings?!
No, literally is not acceptable to use to mean figuratively. Those people are using the word wrong. The dictionaries acting like this is ok should be ashamed of themselves.
Manufactured outrage. Designed to entice clickbait farmers to spread the word. Gone are the days of blasting millions into a TV ad. No new age ad gets that attention anymore. Instead, the idea is to go viral.
Not to dunk too much on the artistic community, but when it comes to these 4 day dramas all the over the top adjectives are applied. Very eloquent but the feelings most of the time aren't even real. It's a performance.