Kids in the Hall - S03E08 - Freedom of Speech ("You use the word 'ascertain' too much.")
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it as shorthand for annoying overused words and corporate jargon, such as "leverage" or repetitive phrases in LLM output.
Recommended by 0 people across 0 different months, 2023 to 2026.
What it is
A short clip from the Canadian sketch show The Kids in the Hall (season 3, episode 8, 1991) featuring Bruce McCulloch and Dave Foley. A man is called out for overusing the word "ascertain" in a sketch about verbal tics and freedom of speech.
What people said
Cites dang · 2023-06 · Hacker News · on “The rule says, “No vehicles in the park””
Good point. The intro to the quiz asks you to answer the questions literally, but by asking this the author kind of assumes their own conclusion. I wonder how much consensus there would be if the intro asked you to go by the intent of the rule as you understand it, rather than what it literally says. The first time I went through the quiz, I followed the instructions and had to think about definitions a lot. Then I read your comment and went through the quiz again and just used common sense (dangerous phrase, but I believe it worked in all 27 cases). There was only one violation: someone drove a Honda Civic through the park. What was that person thinking! On HN we've always tried to avoid ha
Cites bitwize · 2024-06 · Hacker News · on “The the the the induction of jamais vu: word alienation and semantic satiation”
There's another case between these two. I once worked at a place where everybody used the word "leverage" in an infuriating way. Any time the word "use" was appropriate, they would instead say "leverage". I'm sure they'd "leverage" a piece of toilet paper to wipe their ass with. I felt like I was on The Kids in the Hall's "ascertain guy" skit ( [this video] ) except in reverse: everyone was saying "leverage" and I was the only one getting fed up with it. It almost seemed like it was coded talk, a shibboleth, a way of speaking that was an indicator you were "one of the team". At some point I thought to myself "seriously, what does leverage even mean?"
Cites andrewla · 2026-09 · Hacker News · on “Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?”
Kids In The Hall had a sketch about overuse of a word or phrase [1]. This is the world that Claude is building for us. [1] [this video]