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People Exaggerate Online, and the New York Times Is On It!

“‘Literally dying’ has become, like, the new LOL."

The New York Times wrote a pretty amusing story about how hyperbole —

Wait, no, starting over… YAAAAASSSSS, did you see this? It’s unreal! I died as soon as I clicked on it.

https://twitter.com/ch000ch/status/668196037954297856

Maybe not the clearest way of communicating what that story’s about if you’re not already in on the joke, but according to the Times, it’s how I’m supposed to be talking as one of those gosh-darned millennials. The writeup is the latest attempt by the paper of record trying to explain the youngs to the olds.

https://twitter.com/FlatFrontChinos/status/670634859551936513

It’s worth a quick read, but best parts ever that literally destroyed my head and now my house is a crime scene and the cops are here (am I doing this right?) are when the paper over-explains certain phrases:

“There’s also a;lsdkjfa;lsdkgjs; meaning ‘I’m so excited/angry/speechless that all I can do is literally slam my hands/head/body against the keyboard’ (thus producing a series of gibberish that usually involves the letters a, s, d and k).”

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.