There are some annoying phrases that have somehow survived years of group chats and family dinners, but we’d be happy to never hear them ever again.
‘No offense, but…’
The problem with the phrase ‘no offense’ is that as soon as someone says it, you know they’re going to offend you. They’ll make some comment about your clothes or your cooking, maybe your relationship, and then pretend it’s utterly harmless.
They’re giving opinions on things you haven’t asked them to review. The speaker knows that they’re about to annoy you, and they act like these three words will prevent that from happening. Newsflash, that’s not going to work.
‘It is what it is’
The saying ‘It is what it is’ sounds rather final. Maybe that’s a problem. It’s one that people say whenever another person gets bad news, and they say it to show they’re accepting the situation. Except, no, that’s not right.
It’s okay to get annoyed about your own problems, and it’s okay to feel frustrated. That’s called being human. Saying it to someone else when they’re going through something comes off rude. It’s like you’re telling them to stop talking about the issue. They’re saying, ‘stop complaining,’ basically.
‘I’m just being honest’
Their honesty has already caused some damage, so they’ll try to recover by saying ‘I’m just being honest.’ But the thing is, nobody was questioning whether the sentence came from your own brain. It’s annoying how some people treat honesty like a free pass for saying anything.
That sort of brutal honesty is mean, simple as that. You can tell the truth to someone and still choose your words carefully so that you don’t hurt them. Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.
‘Must be nice’
Anytime that you bring up an achievement or some plans for the future, you might hear someone say, ‘Must be nice.’ It sounds pleasant enough, as long as you only look at the words on paper. But the tone of how they say it tells you something else entirely.
This sort of phrasing is a clear example of passive-aggressive language, where someone else is turning your good news into a comparison. They force you into explaining why it’s okay for something good to happen to you. How annoying.
‘I told you so’
You know. That’s what makes this saying so irritating, you already know that you made a mistake or that things didn’t go the way that you were planning. You’re dealing with the consequences now. Yet someone still decides it’s fine to say, ‘I told you so.’
They seem to think it’s acceptable to remind you that, actually, they were right all along. It’s not a phrase that adds anything useful to the conversation, and it doesn’t make things better. It’s just a way for the other person to feel better about having good intuition.
‘At least…’
You lose your wallet or your vacation gets canceled. Maybe your dog destroys the couch or something, whatever. The incident itself doesn’t matter, it’s what people say after that counts. They’ll say, ‘At least you still have your phone’ or ‘At least you got a refund.’
They’ll say ‘At least it wasn’t the carpet.’ It’s true that, yes, there’s almost always something worse that could’ve happened, but that doesn’t mean the original problem disappears. Saying ‘at least’ makes the other person feel brushed aside. They should have the time to be annoyed before you start telling them how much worse it could’ve been.
‘Just saying’
Anyone who says something like ‘Just saying’ has usually said something that, actually, wasn’t worth saying. They’re trying to make their comment seem casual by adding ‘just saying.’ It’s almost as if their opinion just slipped out by accident.
It didn’t. Everyone knew what you were saying because, well, you absolutely said it. You said it quite clearly, in fact. There’s really no good reason to use this phrase.
‘Sorry not sorry.’
It begins like an apology. They say ‘Sorry,’ but then follow it up with ‘not sorry.’ It makes you question why the other person bothered saying ‘sorry’ at all because it seems entirely pointless. Someone saying such a phrase just seems rude.
Apologize if you truly mean it, don’t apologize if you don’t. Hearing someone say it after they’ve already annoyed you can make the whole exchange feel way more irritating than it already was.
‘Do better.’
You’ll see this phrase a lot online. It comes after somebody makes a mistake or a company posts something ‘wrong’ online. People tell them, ‘Do better.’ It’s so condescending and not at all helpful because it doesn’t make it clear what ‘better’ truly is.
You’re better off offering criticism that’s clear and deals with specific behavior, not just sharing a negative judgment. ‘Do better’ makes you sound like a disappointed teacher. Nobody wants to be spoken to in that way, even if it’s online.
‘Say it louder for the people in the back’
There’s nobody actually in the back, but still, some people think it’s a smart idea to say, ‘Say it louder for the people in the back.’ It’s a phrase that usually comes up when somebody strongly agrees with a point and wants to give it some more emphasis.
It’s fine once, maybe twice. But once you’ve seen it a hundred times, such a saying gets really annoying. There are so many better alternatives out there to use. ‘I agree,’ for example, is always in style.
‘We need to normalize…’
It’s true that, yes, there are absolutely things society may need to normalize, such as talking openly about mental health, for example. But the internet got hold of the phrase and started claiming that practically everything needs to be normalized.
‘We need to normalize eating cereal for dinner.’ ‘We need to normalize canceling plans.’ It turns personal preferences into a campaign, and that’s just silly. You don’t need to ‘normalize’ every single one of your opinions.
‘I did a thing’
Here’s a saying you’ll see quite a lot of millennials online. They’ll post a picture of a new haircut or an engagement ring, then include the caption, ‘I did a thing.’ Yes. Clearly, you did a thing, everyone can see the thing.
Someone who says this is trying to add a little mystery to the information that they were already planning to announce. Be direct, and say what you mean. There’s no need to beat around the bush when everyone knows what you’re talking about.
‘Adulting is hard’
Another annoying thing that many millennials say is ‘adulting.’ They’ll complain about how practically everything involved in being an adult is difficult, and they’ll say ‘Adulting is hard.’ It’s true that life is difficult.
It’s not true that simple things, like cleaning the bathroom, are a struggle. The people who say this phrase make it seem like doing regular life stuff is some kind of an achievement that we all deserve praise for making it through. That’s just not realistic.
‘Not me…’
You’ll notice a very specific kind of rhythm when people say this one. You won’t be able to stop noticing once you first see it. People say ‘Not me…’ right before doing something completely innocent and normal, like ‘Not me ordering fries after saying I wasn’t hungry.’
The joke is that the person is obviously admitting they did exactly that. But it’s just not funny. Hearing that same setup hundreds of times in a row means that you already know where the sentence is probably going. It gets really frustrating soon after.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
11 annoying habits of people who think they are funny
We all know that person. The one who just has to one-up everyone with a “hilarious” joke. The one who thinks they’re the wittiest person in the room, even when their jokes are worn-out and predictable.
