YAY!! Very glad to help, and happy to see you over there!
The strength of the language is a convention, yes, but people do still mean it. In lieu of having verbal or physical signals, it's a way of expressing strong feelings about something, often in hyperbolic ways, with the goal of being obviously hyperbolic. One of the problems with short-form internet interactions is that if you just say "this was good" it can be taken in a lot of ways - as faint praise, as disinterest, as getting out of further conversation, as something being good, as something being good but not great, etc. So saying "omg this is the best thing of all fucking time i cried for nine hours" is basically a way of saying "I really really liked it." Outside of things like that, it's a way of showing how strong your position is or how strongly you're attached to something. So - yeah. A convention, but a convention with meaning, but not always literal meaning. Not sure I'm answering the question very well, so if you have something more specific in mind please let me know!
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The strength of the language is a convention, yes, but people do still mean it. In lieu of having verbal or physical signals, it's a way of expressing strong feelings about something, often in hyperbolic ways, with the goal of being obviously hyperbolic. One of the problems with short-form internet interactions is that if you just say "this was good" it can be taken in a lot of ways - as faint praise, as disinterest, as getting out of further conversation, as something being good, as something being good but not great, etc. So saying "omg this is the best thing of all fucking time i cried for nine hours" is basically a way of saying "I really really liked it." Outside of things like that, it's a way of showing how strong your position is or how strongly you're attached to something. So - yeah. A convention, but a convention with meaning, but not always literal meaning. Not sure I'm answering the question very well, so if you have something more specific in mind please let me know!