This whole convo is reminiscent of the "filler world" phenomenon - e.g. especially if I'm feeling relaxed, I'll say "Like" a lot (I lived in CA for a decade, grew up/went to school in Boston) and I've seen that especially people from Texas will get really hung up on it (ok, big state, like CA, I have double digit individual data on this from a skew of states) and I thought about applying an audio plugin to filter out my "likes" as these convos were in a video game. I'm not sure if I'm right about the "Texas doesn't like the CA slang" hypothesis, but I find it fascinating that people get so hung up on it and expect me to adhere to their expectation of how I should behave. I'm just saying "like" instead of "filler word" of "empty air" - the later of which the critics advocated for. I guess they might just be advocating for open air for others, and I'm overthinking the whole thing.