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I’ve been noticing my tendency to exaggerate the number of people who I’ve seen say something online. Like, if I see three or four people say something online, I might post that I’ve seen “a bunch” of people say it.

I don’t intentionally exaggerate those numbers; I think the phrases that I use accurately reflect my feelings about how many instances I’ve seen. For example, I might get mildly irritated when I see one remark that I disagree with on a particular subject, and then each subsequent one that I encounter makes me more irritated, and so by the time I see (say) five different people refer to something, it feels like a huge number. But despite how it feels, the phrases that I tend to use often don’t accurately reflect the numbers.

So here are some half-joking approximate translations from the phrases that I use to the numbers underlying them:

• “everyone is talking about”: I’ve seen at least ten people mention it.
• “that thing that’s going around”: I’ve seen at least five people repost this.
• “a bunch of people are saying”: About four.
• “multiple times in the past week”: About three.
• “I’ve now seen two or three people say”: Two.