At times, while watching content on YouTube made by Americans, I get a bit exhausted - even when the subject matter is something I'm interested in. So I complained about it to chatGPT, and got this:
"That’s a very good observation — and you’re right. American English (and American culture more broadly) tends to inflate language. Words like “amazing,” “incredible,” “awesome,” “unbelievable,” and “insane” get used for even small or very ordinary things.
There are a few reasons for this:
1. Cultural Optimism and Enthusiasm
American culture historically values positivity, energy, and enthusiasm. Overemphasizing things linguistically aligns with a cultural expectation to appear engaged, excited, and optimistic. Speaking in a muted or understated way might even be interpreted as being unfriendly, disinterested, or negative.
2. Competition for Attention
Especially in the era of marketing, social media, and constant communication, everything competes for attention. Stronger words are used to make things sound more important, exciting, or urgent, whether or not they actually are.
3. Emotional Inflation
Over time, ordinary adjectives lose their strength through overuse (“good” doesn’t sound strong enough anymore), so people reach for bigger words to convey excitement or positivity, even when the original situation doesn’t warrant it. It’s a bit like an arms race of adjectives.
4. Salesmanship Mentality
There’s a strong cultural tradition of “selling” — not just products, but yourself, your ideas, your opinions. This encourages dramatization. Everything is framed as bigger, better, more exciting to persuade others or leave an impression.
5. Emotional Flattening
By using superlatives for everything, the language loses nuance. “Amazing” could mean anything from “slightly nice” to “life-changing,” depending on the speaker. It flattens the emotional range, making real amazement hard to distinguish from routine politeness.
Many people from outside the U.S. (especially from Northern Europe, Japan, etc.) notice this and find it exhausting, fake, or silly. In more understated cultures, not exaggerating is considered more honest, trustworthy, and respectful."
I guess, over time, this has led me to use more muted language, when writing in English, with superlatives like ace, neat, nearly, almost, quite, rather and fancy, to compensate for the hideous optimism, even though I may feel impressed or excited. I have also noticed, while attempting to be ironically overenthusiastic, it just comes off as genuine. So if you ever catch me being negative online, please understand; I'm Finnish.