The "To Be Honest" Epidemic

To be honest . . . 

JKJK.

But really. Count how many times you say that in one day. 

**waits for one day**

Disturbed yet?

Me too. My number is also increasing at a disconcertingly alarming rate. 

urban dictionary

I first noticed the phrase when watching Jimmy Kimmel's "Lie Witness News" mockery of SXSW in which multiple...characters, shall we say, repeatedly used the phrase before continuing to blatantly lie. 

Obviously, its usage was not literal. 

So, what is it then?

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Are you using it to fake your own legitimacy, as Urban Dictionary would have it? Are you somehow lending yourself an air of (oh-so-trendy) authenticity by claiming that your statement is nobly busting through the B.S. to tell it as it really is? 

((Even if it isn't?))

And what could this mean socially?

Is the entire social media movement based around "TBH" in which teens expound upon the "truths" of others behind the comfort of the 3-letter acronym truly based on the notion that "TBH" denotes an absolute truth? 

And if you use it to respond to a friend's demand that you truthfully disclose how you feel about their new haircut, and you begin your subsequent lie with "To be honest...", are you given an automatic get out of proverbial jail free card?

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Is it a strange way of disagreeing? As if to say that your point of view, though you're slightly disappointed to have to say it, is ultimately the correct one? As in "to be honest, I see your point, but I'm pretty sure that my wholly illegitimate one is more correct."

Or is it just a verbal tick? Are our days of 'umming' & 'ahhing' being slowly replaced with far more lengthly and articulate (and idiotic) lingual pauses?

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I don't know.

I don't know the answer to the reason why we now insist upon precluding every statement with a disclaimer that we are, in fact, telling the whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth, but I would like to investigate the percentage of individuals who use the phrase and know what they're talking about in comparison to that of those who use it and have no clue. 

Cheers.