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Has anyone else noticed a shift towards 'I feel' and against 'I think'? This is in writing but especially in speech, unprepared dialogue.
It's been irking me for months now. 'I feel like' sounds weaker than 'I think that'. It's like a defensive measure, a way to avoid being shown up. You can have a wrong or incorrect thought but it's much harder to have a wrong feeling. There's also a lack of rigor to feelings, it's as though they're reading into vibes (another similar idea). Thoughts should at least be connected to logic and some kind of fact, there'd be some kind of basis for them. Feelings need no basis.
I recall that there used to be more confidence and surety. People would say 'I think' or just make a plain factual statement. Or even a plain normative statement like 'X should do Y to Z'.
I did a quick ctrl F and found there to be 35 'I thinks' and 1 'I feel' in this thread, which perhaps disproves my paranoia. But then again this is an unusual place.
I think that you're technically correct about the "weakness," maintaining distance from the belief, but I feel like it doesn't really matter. The confounding factor is that "I feel" signals greater openness to being convinced for the same face-saving reasons it's weaker. That makes it useful, and it also makes it harder to psychoanalyze. You'd see more "I feel" from a vibes-based world, but you'd also expect it from a greater level of humility.
The sense that it's increased...no, I haven't seen that. My reflex is to say that confirmation bias, etc. are more likely than an actual systematic change. I'm generally skeptical of word-frequency studies, so take this with a whole shaker of salt, but Google Trends says that "feel" has gone up more than "think." There's no obvious inflection point, and I don't actually know what Google is measuring here, but it supports your observation. Also, apparently "think" is way more coupled to the summer-break effects. I wonder why?
Now, I do get my hackles raised when this community, specifically, uses "it seems." That's a red flag suggesting whatever comes next is going to be pulled directly from the author's ass. Not always, and the toxoplasma of rage suggests that I'm going to notice the worst examples, but...argh. It really gets to me sometimes.
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