EPTOn May 20 2023 01:01 NonY wrote:
Yes, of course.
"I couldn't care less" means the same thing as "I don't care." By saying "I couldn't care less" you are using this kind of roundabout and verbose phrasing to describe your own apathy, which undermines itself. Someone who is conveying apathy or disinterest should be doing so with a style of language that conveys what they're feeling. Even if it's not really apathy or disinterest that a person is feeling, but rather they want to emphasize how much they don't care about a particular thing, then again I feel that the direct and simple "I don't care" is the superior phrasing. Anyone who says "I couldn't care less" isn't conveying to me that they've been driven to the extreme that the words literally mean, as they still want to hear themselves talk more than they want to express themselves. I have never ever heard someone say "I couldn't care less" and thought it was really a better choice of words than "I don't care."
It's like in a creative writing class when someone learns how to use style and likes using stylish writing but has no ability to implement style correctly in a way that meshes with and enhances the substance of the prose. It's just kind of cringe once you see it for what it is. For a young person still discovering themselves, it's fine, I'm not laughing at them for it. But if an adult expects me to take them seriously and wants to convince me that their words are matching their true feelings, then "I couldn't care less" is a red flag. I don't think they're necessarily being deceptive but I do think that they don't choose their words carefully and I'm going to have to have to decipher their intentions rather than take their words at face value. That's a very dramatic way of putting it and it's not really that one phrase by itself that is a red flag all by itself, but you do encounter these people who don't use words to express themselves, but rather they pick up patterns of language from society and loosely match these patterns to how they're feeling, and it never turns out to be very accurate. So it's good to be aware when you're talking to someone like that so you know to interpret their communications differently. You can't hold them to what they're literally saying; you have to constantly guess at what they really mean.
And "I could care less" is often the factually true phrasing, as the person usually does care a little. In almost any conversation that involves someone saying "I couldn't care less", if you remove everything except the declaration of "I couldn't care less" and you're asked to quantify how much each person in the conversation cares about the thing in question, no one is saying zero.
On the other hand, "I could care less" has actual uses, like as a threat. Again, if you look at actual conversations, I'd say it's more useful for someone to say "I could care less" as a threat than it is to falsely claim "I couldn't care less" as some kind of declaration. Because that's when people tend to say "I couldn't care less": when they're exasperated and want to stop talking about it. Presumably the other person cares more, so by saying "if we keep talking about this, I'm going to care even less about it," that's a more accurate and useful communication than suddenly saying you don't care.
Of course, in reality, both of these phrases are now so tainted that it's best to avoid them completely unless you're trolling. The only way I'd use "I could care less" is if I've already made it clear I do care so that I can bait someone into saying I've misspoken so that I can go back and prove them wrong -- an exercise which used to amuse me but has lost its charm.
Yes, of course.
"I couldn't care less" means the same thing as "I don't care." By saying "I couldn't care less" you are using this kind of roundabout and verbose phrasing to describe your own apathy, which undermines itself. Someone who is conveying apathy or disinterest should be doing so with a style of language that conveys what they're feeling. Even if it's not really apathy or disinterest that a person is feeling, but rather they want to emphasize how much they don't care about a particular thing, then again I feel that the direct and simple "I don't care" is the superior phrasing. Anyone who says "I couldn't care less" isn't conveying to me that they've been driven to the extreme that the words literally mean, as they still want to hear themselves talk more than they want to express themselves. I have never ever heard someone say "I couldn't care less" and thought it was really a better choice of words than "I don't care."
It's like in a creative writing class when someone learns how to use style and likes using stylish writing but has no ability to implement style correctly in a way that meshes with and enhances the substance of the prose. It's just kind of cringe once you see it for what it is. For a young person still discovering themselves, it's fine, I'm not laughing at them for it. But if an adult expects me to take them seriously and wants to convince me that their words are matching their true feelings, then "I couldn't care less" is a red flag. I don't think they're necessarily being deceptive but I do think that they don't choose their words carefully and I'm going to have to have to decipher their intentions rather than take their words at face value. That's a very dramatic way of putting it and it's not really that one phrase by itself that is a red flag all by itself, but you do encounter these people who don't use words to express themselves, but rather they pick up patterns of language from society and loosely match these patterns to how they're feeling, and it never turns out to be very accurate. So it's good to be aware when you're talking to someone like that so you know to interpret their communications differently. You can't hold them to what they're literally saying; you have to constantly guess at what they really mean.
And "I could care less" is often the factually true phrasing, as the person usually does care a little. In almost any conversation that involves someone saying "I couldn't care less", if you remove everything except the declaration of "I couldn't care less" and you're asked to quantify how much each person in the conversation cares about the thing in question, no one is saying zero.
On the other hand, "I could care less" has actual uses, like as a threat. Again, if you look at actual conversations, I'd say it's more useful for someone to say "I could care less" as a threat than it is to falsely claim "I couldn't care less" as some kind of declaration. Because that's when people tend to say "I couldn't care less": when they're exasperated and want to stop talking about it. Presumably the other person cares more, so by saying "if we keep talking about this, I'm going to care even less about it," that's a more accurate and useful communication than suddenly saying you don't care.
Of course, in reality, both of these phrases are now so tainted that it's best to avoid them completely unless you're trolling. The only way I'd use "I could care less" is if I've already made it clear I do care so that I can bait someone into saying I've misspoken so that I can go back and prove them wrong -- an exercise which used to amuse me but has lost its charm.
They are both fine phrases depending on the context of what the speaker means, and the only case where only one is acceptable would be if you believed you are the only one in the conversation who considers what he says before speaking, which might not be true. Also, your reasoning for rejecting "I couldn't care less" seems to be based on you framing the age old "If you care so little, why are you talking about it?" as a rebuttal to "I don't care." The two errors involved here are thinking that 1) it is impossible to talk about something you don't care about, and 2) that "I couldn't care less" is synonymous with "I don't care."
Now 1) is slightly a matter of definition, like I would say it's possible to savor food you don't find delicious, or to listen to music you think doesn't sound good, or to encourage someone you hope would fail, probably you think there is some special meta-rule that applies here because the concept of "apathy" makes the statement tautologous somehow. - I'm not personally a fan of that, it sounds like elementary school, and it sounds like the converse of for example "if you love Starcraft so much, why don't you marry it," or also it reminds me of everyone on the internet who wants to frame disagreeing with something as being the same as the thing itself, or maybe that disagreement with the speaker proves the speaker right. For example, someone says all these people who think the new Zelda game is great just think x,y, and z which is retarded, it's actually bad. Then says look, the people telling me x,y, and z proves that Zelda is bad and they're retarded. These seem like the same style of circular logic traps which don't really lead from anywhere to anywhere.
As for 2) it's simply not true that "I couldn't care less" is strictly synonymous with "I don't care," is it?
Like you are reading that definition into it in order to ambush people who don't follow your social nuance to the letter, in point of fact "I couldn't care less" very clearly means that the speaker is at a minimum value of caring, there's nothing necessitating that it be a global zero value of caring. It's not the same as "It is impossible for any human to care less." The fact that they are at their minimum caring is usually what's relevant and it's not necessary to know the distance from their actual caring level to the caring 0-axis because either it's already 0 or their caring curve presumably will never intersect it.
For example, imagine you're lost with your friend, and you reach a 5 meter drop that clearly leads you back to where you need to go. Your friend says, "Well, we can't jump here." Are you going to pester him that what he actually meant was "We are physically capable of jumping here, but it's a bad idea because one or both of us might be seriously injured or killed, so we should keep looking for another way," or did you get what he meant without having to chastise him for conveying to you that he's been driven to the extreme that the words literally mean, as he still wants to hear himself talk more than he wants to express themselves?
How about this, you're at a nice dinner, cleaned your plate, you're stuffed. Surely you don't take your napkin, fold it over your plate, finish your drink, and say, "Okay honey. I can eat more," to signal you're ready to go?
Suppose the other members of your party come out and say "Wow, that was delicious. I can't eat any more!" Do you surreptitiously beckon the waiter to torture the others with a mandatory dessert course? Maybe give them a little of this: Are you saying if Gordon Ramsay came and put a gun to your head and told you to eat or he would blow your brains out, you can't eat another bite so he'd have to end your life? What you really meant is you could physically eat more, but you're comfortably full as it is and ready for a change of venue?
It seems to me that the only thing differentiating these analogies from the original is this notion of "apathy" playing some hocus pocus circular logic role to make you look clever when you spring this. A closely related expression is "I could(n't) give a shit." Seems like either way conveys the same idea to me, would you agree? Or which one better suits the apathist? "I could give a shit," because I don't now so I could. "I couldn't give a shit," because I don't have any to give, so it's not going to be given."
Anyway, I could care more about this issue, it just reminded me of holding down the fort.
