Not to be like the old guy on the porch yelling, “You kids get off my lawn!” or anything, but here’s another phrase that’s starting to annoy me: “Like a boss.” (I last vented about “hacking your life.”)
The Telegraph reports the meaning as “well achieved.” The Urban Dictionary says it’s “The act of doing something as a boss would do.”
It’s everywhere online these days, which is part of what makes it so tiresome. Here are just a few of the ways people have used the phrase lately:
- Test and debug your site like a boss.
- How to promote your B2B content like a boss.
- How to leave a tip like a boss.
- How to wake up like a boss.
- Own Monday like a boss.
- Slaying the urban/hiphop style like a boss.
- Busting 9 UX myths like a boss.
- 10 essentials to help you pack like a travel blogging boss
- 7 tips to network like a boss
- How to order McDonald’s like a boss
We have so many to thank for this:
- Comedy hiphop group The Lonely Island, who came up with the song Like A Boss…
- …which was a parody of a song by rapper Slim Thug…
- …and was used for a Saturday Night Live skit with interviewer Seth Rogen and “boss” Andy Samberg, who sang/rapped about all the increasingly rude and ridiculous things he did “like a boss.”
The phrase first hit the Google Trends chart (above) in 2005 and took a huge leap in popularity with the Saturday Night Live skit in 2009. Thankfully, it’s been mostly on the decline since 2012. But you’ll still get 26.5 million results to an online search for it.
Enough. Are you with me?
Yes, Sue. I would love to see this phrase die, along with the word “killer,” as in “killer copy” and so on. Both are tiresome. GET OFF MY LAWN indeed!
Thanks for joining me on the porch, Donna!
Still going strong and just as annoying 08/06/2021
Omigosh isn’t it?!
The sheer age of it probably tells you the true age of the people using it and trying to sound ‘down wit da kids’ or whatever the equivalent is nowadays
Some words and phrases just seem to live on and on…
March 2024 . KFC New Zealand has been using “Save like a boss” for the last couple of years in its TV and social media advertising. Don’t even know what it means and its relevance to KFC products. Extremely annoying ad.
It’s a zombie phrase that will not die!