Don't panic. While there is a definite meme around exasperation at this (and apparently some dictionaries are on board), I think they have it wrong. In every

Don't panic. While there is a definite meme around exasperation at this (and apparently some dictionaries are on board), I think they have it wrong. In every example I've seen, including those proffered by those promulgating the meme, the difference intended by addition of "literally" is emphasis. Omission would not have lead to the listener/reader being more likely to conclude that the utterance was literal. It's simply hyperbole. "It was figuratively X so much that it was almost literally X, but obviously you understand that it was still only figurative." This doesn't mean it's completely harmless - overuse of the word in that role does make it marginally harder to convey that something was actually, literally the case when it's expected that it would be figuratively the case. But it's not a reversal of sense. When someone says, "I've walked miles around the store looking for you", we don't conclude that there is a new use of the word "miles" to mean "hundreds of feet". We say they were exaggerating for emphasis.