"Mother of God Lord" or "Wow", much better than "Oh my God"

Meritxell and Toni were set up on a blind date by mutual friends. At first, their tastes, however particular, were very similar: they both liked patatas bravas, burrata, Andalusian-style fried squid rings, and fricandó. When they were on their second spoonful of the tiramisu they were sharing, they opened up to each other.

—You know, Toni? I like you.

—I like you too, Meritxell.

Thirty minutes later, they were rolling around on Meritxell's bed until they fell onto the carpet. They were devouring each other with a desire they hadn't felt for anyone else in years. Then Toni, with considerable excitement, pulled away a little, pulling down his shorts as best he could.

—Oh my God! —Meritxell exclaimed.

—What did you say? —Toni replied, feeling his excitement deflate instantly.

—Oh my God —Meritxell repeated with an accent mixing Brooklyn and Matadepera.

That night, Toni ended up getting over it. When they opened their eyes, it was past nine in the morning. After breakfasting on yogurt with blueberries, raspberries, and nuts, another of the tastes they shared, they both went downstairs. They kissed on the lips. They were happy. Even euphoric.

—I'll text you —Toni said as he got into a taxi.

Meritxell stood in front of the building, waiting for the taxi to leave. As it was starting to move, Toni, from inside the taxi and through the window, joined his fingers to draw a heart. Meritxell smiled briefly. It seemed like an unnecessary gesture to her; in fact, she felt a certain secondhand embarrassment.

Meritxell and Toni's exaggerated story could open a fictional comedy, but in reality, it's a practical and real case of a growing sociolinguistic phenomenon: the uncritical cultural assimilation of the North American imaginary, an invisible influence that is destroying our own linguistic heritage through the lexical and bodily substitution of our daily communication. Below, I detail a few that I have observed.

What the fuck: functions as an automatic marker of transversal stupefaction or indignation. This massive import displaces autochthonous lexical richness, dethroning turns of great visceral and traditional strength like "Quins collons!" or "Quina barra!"

Literally: the import of this idiom operates as a discursive tic of mass audiovisual consumption. Used to exaggerate non-literal statements, it causes a loss of irony, banishing genuine turns of phrase like "de debò".

Air quotes: this visual code, imported directly from Friends and comedies of the style, is used as a resource of ironic distancing to emphasize the figurative meaning of a word. Its mechanical adoption ends up replacing resources such as vocal intonation or a certain look. And the worst part is that this gesture suddenly appears with friends and in environments of a certain cultural level, and it is disappointing.

High five: ritual of corporate validation and consensus exported from basketball courts to any daily space. It is desperate to see a doubles tennis match where they do it at every point, even when they lose; “You are a potato, but I forgive you and encourage you” is fine, but it is excessive. It is also very common among fathers and sons, who perpetuate this alien gesture.

Digital heart: originating from social networks, it turns non-verbal communication into a repository of physical emojis, a North American and Korean mix, seeking visual immediacy by placing artificial choreography.

In conclusion, the danger of this silent invasion is the uniformity of emotions. When our desire, our euphoria, our agreements, and our farewells are designed under a North American matrix, we betray ourselves more in the name of a false cosmopolitanism.