Saturday, November 05, 2011

Just my two cents

If anyone says "Just my two cents" I mark them down mentally as an idiot and a moron.  Often abbreviated to the intendedly humorous "just my $0.02".  Why do people say this?  Two cents is a small and insignificant contribution. So why bother to advertise that your contribution to the discourse is small and insignificant? It's often a lie, said contribution usually being long-winded and repetitive.  It's often true, said contribution being banal and lacking any form of insight. But if the latter, surely such self-awareness would be the cause of humble silence, rather than an idiotic and mindless rant.

It's similar to "that's what I think, anyway".  Well of course it's what you f--ing think.  And that's my two cents.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There's a related expression in German which goes like that: "Ich kann mir ja kein Urteil erlauben, aber..." (= "I don't have the right to make a judgement in this case but bla bla bla...") It's a very reliable idiot-is-speaking-marker.