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I don't thinks statements like this are meant to be read literally in American English. IE US English speakers always fond of telling me how they work X hours

I don't thinks statements like this are meant to be read literally in American English. IE US English speakers always fond of telling me how they work X hours in a day, or they went N days without sleep. Which used to really impress me, until I realised "wait... do they just exaggerate as matter of course"? And then I realised - of course they do; these are people for whom every purchase is an "upgrade"; where a bicycle for commuting in a city is an "urban assault vehicle", rich creamery butter, rich creamery type systems, etc etc. So no, I sincerely doubt they actually worked 18 hour days for a year straight. I'm sure they worked hard, but it's just the way Americans talk.

creativenolo 2y ago
The does video starts off with some serious hyperbole (noted for anyone reading this comment before watching the video)
- jh00ker 2y ago
  So much hyperbole that I thought the entire video was a spoof on the practice of making a Doom proof until about a minute in, where I asked aloud to an empty room, "Wait, this is real?" Also, he forgot to credit the video itself, which has a really high production value! Kudos all around!
rob_c 2y ago
From experience, be careful if you ever called them out, just let them be.
nmeofthestate 2y ago
I work with Americans and never experienced this from any of them - are you sure you're not... exaggerating?
- lofaszvanitt 2y ago
  not with the youtube types. who say: I spent 670 hours trying to defeat this boss and died 555 times.
gr4vityWall 2y ago
> I don't thinks statements like this are meant to be read literally in American English. I don't know, when I got hyperfocused on a side-project a few years ago, I was dedicating almost all my awake time to it. 12+ hours a day, every day, including weekends, for months. Surprisingly, I didn't burn out. I was just so interested in it, I couldn't stop, and even started neglecting other things to work more on it. I never hit such a focus state since that time in 2017~2018.
- KPGv2 2y ago
  This happened to me once. It was like attaining enlightenment. My company worked with a F100 that had, as a core piece of their business, a piece of software they'd commissioned in the 80s that they still used in the 2010s to make billion dollar decisions. But no one knew how it made the calculations they relied on. This was before attorneys knew to include source code in procurement, the original devs at a third party code shop was long gone. We were already working on something for them, and on a whim, one of their VPs asked my company if we could take a look at it. So that's how the mathematician at the company (me) ended up waking up, sitting in front of a whiteboard, and losing all concept of time until my wife got home from work at night, not eating, not sleeping, staring at decompiled assembly and stepping through line by line for weeks. (I don't want to say months because I'm sure someone will come roast my ass for taking too long, but "months" is honestly more accurate; in fairness, I was learning every technique used on the fly) It was a prolonged, repeated flow state that I've only ever experienced during really competitive tennis as a high schooler. Losing all concept of time and space, hyper focused on one task that has completely spread to all parts of your consciousness.
  - danielscrubs 2y ago
    ”not sleeping […] for weeks”. This is why Americans make the best marketers, you just can’t help yourself embellish with some fabrications to make a great, memorable story.
  - ok_dad 2y ago
    Imagine if every human had the resource security to do this for a good portion of their lives. Star Trek was fiction but we could have that if a few of us humans weren’t so greedy!
posterman 2y ago
I think you are confusing hyperbole with poetic license, and overstating the effects it has on English vernacular. I am not American, but I wouldn't go around minimizing how industrious the "great society" is.
jack_riminton 2y ago
Yeah I worked out the "N days without sleep" was mostly rubbish too. I personally went for 3 days without any sleep in the army as part of a sleep deprivation exercise and it was one of the most brutal things I've ever done, I fell asleep standing up whilst digging a trench, ouch. So I know when people say "I literally haven't slept in 6 days", they very much don't mean literally, they normally mean they went to bed and had a few hours of sleep per night.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nkrisc 2y ago
That's correct. Hyperbole and dramatization of real events was entirely unknown to the world until it was invented in a rural Nebraskan town in 1854 (pre-statehood). It's been a staple of American speech ever since. Only recently has it begun to find a footing outside of the United States. It's a similar story with Comedy, as well.
- LAC-Tech 2y ago
  I never said it was only in American speech, just that it's very, very common, to the point where a lot of what Americans said made less sense to me until I realised it. Different cultures express things differently. Overstating, understating, etc etc. If you want to understand, and be understood, it's important to know.

creativenolo 2y ago

The does video starts off with some serious hyperbole (noted for anyone reading this comment before watching the video)

jh00ker 2y ago
So much hyperbole that I thought the entire video was a spoof on the practice of making a Doom proof until about a minute in, where I asked aloud to an empty room, "Wait, this is real?" Also, he forgot to credit the video itself, which has a really high production value! Kudos all around!

rob_c 2y ago

From experience, be careful if you ever called them out, just let them be.

nmeofthestate 2y ago

I work with Americans and never experienced this from any of them - are you sure you're not... exaggerating?

lofaszvanitt 2y ago
not with the youtube types. who say: I spent 670 hours trying to defeat this boss and died 555 times.

gr4vityWall 2y ago

> I don't thinks statements like this are meant to be read literally in American English. I don't know, when I got hyperfocused on a side-project a few years ago, I was dedicating almost all my awake time to it. 12+ hours a day, every day, including weekends, for months. Surprisingly, I didn't burn out. I was just so interested in it, I couldn't stop, and even started neglecting other things to work more on it. I never hit such a focus state since that time in 2017~2018.

KPGv2 2y ago
This happened to me once. It was like attaining enlightenment. My company worked with a F100 that had, as a core piece of their business, a piece of software they'd commissioned in the 80s that they still used in the 2010s to make billion dollar decisions. But no one knew how it made the calculations they relied on. This was before attorneys knew to include source code in procurement, the original devs at a third party code shop was long gone. We were already working on something for them, and on a whim, one of their VPs asked my company if we could take a look at it. So that's how the mathematician at the company (me) ended up waking up, sitting in front of a whiteboard, and losing all concept of time until my wife got home from work at night, not eating, not sleeping, staring at decompiled assembly and stepping through line by line for weeks. (I don't want to say months because I'm sure someone will come roast my ass for taking too long, but "months" is honestly more accurate; in fairness, I was learning every technique used on the fly) It was a prolonged, repeated flow state that I've only ever experienced during really competitive tennis as a high schooler. Losing all concept of time and space, hyper focused on one task that has completely spread to all parts of your consciousness.
- danielscrubs 2y ago
  ”not sleeping […] for weeks”. This is why Americans make the best marketers, you just can’t help yourself embellish with some fabrications to make a great, memorable story.
- ok_dad 2y ago
  Imagine if every human had the resource security to do this for a good portion of their lives. Star Trek was fiction but we could have that if a few of us humans weren’t so greedy!

posterman 2y ago

I think you are confusing hyperbole with poetic license, and overstating the effects it has on English vernacular. I am not American, but I wouldn't go around minimizing how industrious the "great society" is.

jack_riminton 2y ago

Yeah I worked out the "N days without sleep" was mostly rubbish too. I personally went for 3 days without any sleep in the army as part of a sleep deprivation exercise and it was one of the most brutal things I've ever done, I fell asleep standing up whilst digging a trench, ouch. So I know when people say "I literally haven't slept in 6 days", they very much don't mean literally, they normally mean they went to bed and had a few hours of sleep per night.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

nkrisc 2y ago

That's correct. Hyperbole and dramatization of real events was entirely unknown to the world until it was invented in a rural Nebraskan town in 1854 (pre-statehood). It's been a staple of American speech ever since. Only recently has it begun to find a footing outside of the United States. It's a similar story with Comedy, as well.

LAC-Tech 2y ago
I never said it was only in American speech, just that it's very, very common, to the point where a lot of what Americans said made less sense to me until I realised it. Different cultures express things differently. Overstating, understating, etc etc. If you want to understand, and be understood, it's important to know.