Like Killing

When did "like" go viral, and not of the nice kind? While on a three hour flight to somewhere warm, a week or so ago, I overheard the word "like" spoken by one individual, at least a thousand times. I have to confess that my seatmate and I counted, but gave up after hearing a few sentences that were not only peppered with "like", but dunked and saturated in it. On a plane even with our ear buds well installed, this twenty-something, long-tressed, attractive, stylish female, insisted upon inflicting her penetrating voice with its annoying aberration "like", on everyone near her aisle seat. She was speaking to her companion, another fan of "like", the whole time, while giving us her full autobiography in verbal high colour. If I could have edited her conversation, and that of her clone "like" user, removing the offensive four letter word, it would leave little else other than news that she had a degree from a prodigious university and was pursuing another one, was rich and spoiled, and heading to a dance studio for a refurbishing of her fine artistic talents. Her protegee, occasionally, inserted among the voluminous "like" overkill across the aisle, a suitably obsequious "like wow", "like how cool" or "like I wish". The word "like" that takes up a few inches in Websters, means more or less, a similarity or something one has a fondness for. What it means in the way aforementioned infamy, on the plane trip, is utterly mysterious. I think it is more or less like (!) an ahem or a cough-cough or in terms of punctuation, a dash with benefits. There is no meaning to it at all. In fact, it is much like another maddening word overused constantly, "right?" But the insertion word "right" is something for another usage rant, on another day. Most of us  don't listen to ourselves much and if we did, the English language would improve enormously. We would find out our flaws very quickly and hopefully improve our banterings, but I fear that the use of diction addictions such as certain four letter words like (!) "like", "awesome", "right" and their ruder cousins,  would be replaced by others perhaps worse, like very quickly.