This usage is called a “quotative” (there’s a longer techno-linguistic jargon for it that I’ve seen) and is apparently a newer usage that arose in the 1990’s or so. I remember reading an article about around that time. The above-cited Wiki article has a section on it.
Overall, “Like” has been around for a long time. It’s nothing recent. It came to prominence in the “beatnik” speech of the 1950’s-early 1960’s. MAD Magazine parodied it a lot. But according to the Wiki, it’s been around longer than that.
Asking questions like, you know what’s the absolute worst?
No! The absolute worst is when these verbal ticks are included in text. Like, there’s no reason to, um, you know, include them 99% of the time. I get why you’d say something like, “Um, did you mean to say that?” But there’s no reason a 100 word paragraph should be 33%, like, ya know, man, right.
Heh, in a previous post I considered mentioned that, as a fiction writer, I generally avoid many of these colloquialisms in the main text, despite the fact that I write in a fairly informal tone - but when I’m writing character dialogue I put this sort of thing in with deliberate intent. Y’all might not like it, but that’s what people actually talk like!
I had to listen to someone explain their new system. It was already not one of my favorite topics (HR related) and the person does not do public speaking well, and is not a native English speaker.
I almost started counting how often she used “um”. It was was more than 20%. I swear. Really.
It would have been better to be silent that to use “um”. I have the same opinion of “like”.
I try not to use “like” and I try even harder to not think poorly of people who use it often.
Let’s all of us get stoned and sit cross-legged on the floor, where we may speak profound observations on the condition of the universe, such as:
“Hey, like Wow man!”
I had a teacher once whose hesitation word was “again.” I counted once; she used the word as filler about once every sixty seconds. I wish I hadn’t noticed it, because I could never stop hearing it.
I have no problem with common filler words, because I can tune them out. Uncommon ones are totally distracting to me.