You’ve probably heard “Don’t cry over spilled milk,” “You’re beating a dead horse,” “Find the silver lining,” and “I’m head over heels.” These cliché phrases are annoyingly familiar.
Despite their lack of creativity, boomers usually argue that cliché phrases exist because their meaning has been proven true throughout history. The internet has a different opinion. Some common phrases just need to exit boomer vocabulary fast.
Here’s what users had to say when asked, “What is a common saying that is false?”
1. “Don’t be a quitter”
“Sometimes the solution is to quit and do something else,” explained one user. Another agreed, “The best thing to do is cut your losses.”
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2. “Looks don’t matter”
“I went through a glow-up in high school. It’s astounding. Went from being a loner with like three friends to being friends with everyone and getting greeted by five different people every morning.
“I even got asked out by girls twice and heavily flirted with by a guy friend of a friend. I’m certain there were at least five people I could have asked out that would have said yes enthusiastically”
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3. “Be yourself”
Simply put by one response, “Don’t, if you’re a terrible person.”
Another person doubled down on the falseness of the cliché phrase, writing, “Some of my better moments involved very much not doing what I really wanted to do out of vengeance or bitterness or selfishness. Doing the right thing often means overriding ‘yourself.'”
4. “What goes around, comes around.”
“I know two people that were horrible in their youth and now they are happily married with kids and living their best life. They still act like horrible people and never even so much as apologized to the people they hurt,” said one commenter.
Agreeing, another responded back, “Conversely, those who put others first often get taken advantage of, manipulated, and walked on.”
5. “The customer is always right”
“The restaurant that I have worked at for over five years has had to close for several months due to its poor management. The owner would practically beat it into our heads that the customer is always right but then yell at us if we had to void something because it was wrong.
“It happened often because people would start to notice that they could get away with eating three-fourths of a meal and then be like ‘It was wrong. take it off.'”
6. “If you didn’t do it you have no reason to be defensive”
“Innocent people have the most valid reason to be defensive. If you watch police interrogation videos, you will notice very quickly that the most angry and defensive people are innocent.
“The guilty ones are more likely to calmly explain why they wouldn’t commit that crime and the innocent folks will angrily outburst because they’re being told they did something awful that they know they didn’t do.”
7. “You can have any job you want if you work for it”
“The biggest contributing factor to success is luck. Luck of who your parents are, luck of timing, luck of genetics, luck of opportunities, luck of school, luck of friends and networking, etc.
“You could be a natural genius at birth, but If you’re born to poor parents, grow up in a poor community, go to bad schools, and find the wrong friends you won’t be set up for success. But an idiot born to super powerful or rich parents will be set up to become powerful.”
8. “I could care less”
“It’s ‘I couldn’t care less,'” said one user of this commonly misspoken cliché phrase.
9. “It will work itself out”
“It’s a true statement, it’s just the implication that it will work itself out in a positive way is the fallacy.”
10. “Blood is thicker than water”
“Some people harm their family members physically and/or mentally and use this saying as a way to excuse their actions.”
11. “No smoke without fire”
“People can in fact make things up.”
12. “It’s common sense.”
“We have seen time and time again that common sense is subjective,” responded one person. Another commented back with an Albert Einstein quote, “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
This article was written and syndicated by What the Fab.
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Elise Armitage is an entrepreneur and founder of What The Fab, a travel + lifestyle blog based in California. At the beginning of 2019, Elise left her corporate job at Google to chase her dreams: being an entrepreneur and helping women find fabulous in the everyday. Since then, she’s launched her SEO course Six-Figure SEO, where she teaches bloggers how to create a passive revenue stream from their website using SEO. Featured in publications like Forbes, Elle, HerMoney, and Real Simple, Elise is a firm believer that you can be of both substance and style.
