'Totally Like Whatever, You Know?' By Taylor Mali

“Totally like whatever, you know?” is a poem by Taylor Mali written as a satirical criticism of the attitude of the youth of today’s society. The whole poem is written in a style meant to imitate a typical teenager, talking about the flaws in their way of thinking. The poet uses mockery and exaggeration to drive home their point that today’s young people are afraid to even have an opinion, much less express it. Throughout the entire poem, the poet is mocking his target, by imitating them. He exposes their flaws by acting as one of them, rather convincingly, but with an edge intended to expose how ridiculous they are. It occurs throughout the entire essay, given the essay’s nature, but one example that stands out in lines 13-15 is; “Like, don’t think I’m uncool just because I’ve noticed this; this is just like the word on the street, you know? It’s like what I’ve heard? I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?” Here, Mr. Mali is trying to demonstrate how his caricature is afraid to even write this poem, because it expresses an opinion, which is ridiculous, however, that is the point the poet is trying to …show more content…
The poet blows out of proportion the way of thinking and speaking of today’s youth, to expose how ridiculous it is, and also how frighteningly close his imitation is to reality. One example of this can be seen in lines 24 and 25, where the poet says “Has society become so, like, totally . . .I mean absolutely . . . You know? That we’ve just gotten to the point where it’s just, like . . . whatever!” This example shows the caricature which the poet writes the work from starting to state an opinion, then backing out, showing the extreme cowardice of today’s generation. While slightly exaggerated, this selection is very close to reality, which is what the poet is trying to point out, how the youth are descending to the level of fear to express oneself that parallels