Today’s chapter may be more a pet-peeve of mine (right behind my #1 pet-peeve, gum chewing) than anything else. However, it’s important to note that very subtle differences in how we speak, using different phrasings, give off very different emotions. Compare, “would you mind stepping off my lawn, because if your feet are there, the flowers underneath will be trampled” to “Get The F–Off My Lawn, You F–Wad!” Same point, but very different emotional connotations.
There are two words that give off negative emotions in 99% of all cases. Actually, it might be more accurate to say 100% of cases, with the exception of direct, literal quotes. These words are “obviously” and “honestly.”
Many other words get at the same problems but these two are, overwhelmingly, the most common.
Why are these problematic? For different, but related reasons.
If you need to say “honestly,” that is conveying the message that in everything else you’re saying, you’re not being honest. Whenever I and most of the other people I know hear the word, “honestly,” we think, “wait, in what you just told me 2 minutes ago, you weren’t being honest?”
With “obviously,” the problem is that what is “obvious” to you is likely to not be obvious to most other people—even people much smarter and more experienced than you (since you’re the subject matter expert or dealing with the little details, not the other person.) When someone tells me, “obviously,” I always think: “You’re such a genius, Einstein, that it’s obvious to you—but it just wasn’t to me!” And do you really want your boss or client thinking that?
And note that this isn’t some idiosyncratic interpretation. It’s the literal and common meanings of the word: “obviously” does mean that, to the speaker, it is obvious!
More broadly, both the emotional context of each is that “obviously” tends to convey a sense of superiority, while “honestly” tends to convey a fake (and obviously transparent) attempt to build rapport. Both tend to backfire more than fire. “Words are weapons, sharper than knives,” as the underrated philosopher Michael Hutchence once observed. The devil inside, indeed.
