You are so repetitive!

I'm going to be mad about something I actually do myself. It annoys me when I do this.

So do you ever get stuck on a word or phrase and use it all of the time for like a week? Think: Mean Girls' Gretchen Weiners when she says "fetch" all the time.  I know that I've personally had my week long binges of the words: "solid", "stellar", "sensational", "prime", "epic", etc.  It drives me nuts when I have them.  I will use one of these words, and suddenly cringe, realizing that by overusing it, I've erased it's actual meaning and overgeneralized it. I think everyone does this at some point.  We get word or phrase trends.  But if you're around a person for a significant enough period of time, you hear the word over and over and it's super annoying.

Many people have the overuse issue with commas as well. I probably made a couple errors myself in the above paragraph.  If you read a sentence, where there are a ton of commas, that don't belong, it just becomes obnoxious, to read. (see what I did there?) It's not actually that difficult to be even relatively grammatically correct with one's use of commas. They only belong in certain spots.  There are rules on when one should and shouldn't use them. I won't go into it; you can bore yourself to death if you want to find them. All I'm saying is that if you completely overuse them, it becomes annoying and their purpose is erased because there is no consistency in when you are and aren't using them.

The best way to stop overusing something, be it words, phrases, or commas, is to force yourself to realize your error.  As soon as you say that word you've been abusing since last friday, in your head tell yourself to find some other way to describe what you want to say. Give yourself a little mental slap on the wrist, that way it sticks with you that you want to get past the word.  When you reread your paper on World War II, scribble out all of the unnecessary commas with bright red pen, and then go back and realized how much you overused them.

It's easy to get past overusing something. You just have to actually put forth the effort.

Could everyone just stop talking?

I'll save you reading now: the moral of the story is not to talk about things that don't involve you. It breeds dramatic response, which is honestly immature and annoying.

I can't stand it when one person here's some gossip about another and immediately has to tell them.  There are certainly cases where its appropriate, but if the person was honestly just sharing their point of view on another, you don't really need to tell this other person. Unless they are your best friend or something. But otherwise you're just making everyone look bad. The person who has been judged gets hurt. The person who has the opinion looks like an asshole even though in some (definitely not all cases) the other may deserve this view. It's up to those two people to sort out their issues, and they will do it when it's the right time for them. Don't force it by inserting yourself into the situation and telling them that Person A said XYZ about them.

In a class of mine last week we talked about the different decisions we can make and how they play into the greater life story of a person.  We did this by playing a sort of "choose your own adventure" game (apologies that the hyperlink may bring you to the most mediocre yet delightfully distracting website).  At the end, each group read their character's story and we looked at how different internet events can effect our real lives.

I think people don't realize that they have to be careful about who they are and what they say in the "real world" and who they are in a virtual setting.  It's kind of pathetic that people think they can just release online.  Many people think they can vent and say whatever they want and show whatever they want without consequence. They think no one will know their URL and therefore no one will know the virtual them. Which is BS. A friend of mine from high school has a pretty raunchy blog that I accidentally stumbled upon one night, and now I could never see him the same way in person.  But the same goes for face to face interactions. If you don't watch what you say or do, people spread information about you that might be true, or might be assumptions based on your attitudes and actions. Or, if you involve yourself in things that aren't your business, people will realize and not trust you.

Just stop sharing what doesn't need to be shared, for the greater good.