I'm like ...

I find young people in urban India using "was like" and its various cousins to hide the gaps in vocabulary and/or memory in the firm belief that it's the hep thing to do. This is probably because the sloppy young Americans they watch admiringly on the idiot box do so. In advertising where I work, a lot of young copywriters and art directors do it all the time. As I'm neither their parent nor their teacher nor their boss, I tend not to correct them. But I go like "Yechhhhh!" inside every time. Read what others are saying: http://www.barbarafeldman.com/was_like.html.