When People Put Random Words in "Quotes"

What's going "on" with this?

Do you know what quotation marks are used for?

Why type extra characters when you don't have to? Or, better yet, why make little finger quotation marks when you don't "have" to?

I must say, I love the sound in my head that I'm getting when I put random things in quotes. It's like this sarcastic, emboldened voice. "Voice." See? That one there.

But anyway, back to my point.

People online, in papers, in essays, in real life-- everywhere!-- use quotation marks when they don't have to be used. They're used for dialogue, right? For quoting people. Or for titles. They're not just for random words in a sentence.

I'm kind of a grammar Nazi. I'll admit it. But, really, seriously, who thought it would be a good idea to put the word "like" in quotation marks? Here's a sentence I saw on Facebook today (that God awful social media site that makes me hate a lot of things, but has me too addicted to quit): 'I "like" the new update so far.'

Why? Why do you "like" it and not just like it? What does it mean? What's going on?!

It drives me up a wall.

And what's worse, is when someone, a lame boss, perhaps, is talking, and he or she picks up her fingers and makes air quotes around a random word.

Because, notice, air quotes never go around things that people actually said. Nobody is air-quoting: "So, I was like, yeah, and she was like, right."

No. Air quotes go around things like: "I hope you like your 'new desk'" or "We've been 'watching' what you're doing."

With an overly-cheerful tone and a fake smile.

And maybe those are bad examples. But, forgive me, I've stopped paying attention to anything anyone who utilizes the horrific art of air quotes said a long, long time ago.

But anyway, we're facing a horrible pandemic here in the US. The overuse, wrong use of quotation marks. And if anyone can tell me why this is, I'll be very, very happy.

But until then, I'm going to "go insane."