You've heard it all year long, but "fake news" is officially the second most annoying phrase of 2017, according to a Marist poll.
The phrase is a newcomer to the annual poll, which ranked the word "whatever" as the most annoying word for a ninth consecutive year. Of course, the term gained viral popularity as now-President Donald Trump used it throughout his 2016 campaign and into this year to claim that news outlets were spreading disinformation.
More than 1,000 Americans were polled, and about 23 percent of them ranked "fake news" as most annoying. That's behind approximately one-third of Americans who called "whatever" the most annoying word of the year.
Newsweek claims liberals are more likely to be annoyed by the use of fake news.
“Since 2015, we have seen a narrowing between ‘whatever’ and the rest of the list,” said Lee M. Miringoff, director of The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “It has been more than 20 years since ‘whatever’ first gained infamy in the movie Clueless. While the word irks older Americans, those who are younger might not find ‘whatever’ to be so annoying.”
Read more at the Marist website here.
