@aidan,
aidan wrote:I did not KNOW that it was supposed to be a deflection. I just used the term the other day when I commented on a friend's profile photo on facebook.
I came late to facebook - so by the time I befriended this friend I've had for 25 years- he'd been through about five profile photos.
Since that's almost the only reason I go on facebook - to look at peoples' photos- I looked at his past profile photos and I found one that was just so wonderful and depicted his essence so exactly that I commented underneath that photo: THIS is your best profile picture. Not that your current one isn't wonderful - I'm just sayin'...'
But now that I just wrote that - I guess it is a deflection of sorts....
Yep - you're right
I woud not put a picture of my face into a book,
for public exposure of the fact that it looks so bad.
Maybe in the future, we 'll be able to select our own faces from a catalog.
I take that frase ( "I 'm just saying" )
to mean that: I 'm only
SAYING IT, I don 't certify it as being true.
For instance, I 've said, in the past,
that "
I argue that I saved a girl 's life by teaching her to play Space Invaders on my TV,
thereby to deflect her attention from her semi-hysterical misery, thus to avoid suicide."
I
don 't know for a
FACT that she 'd have committed suicide
if I had not tawt her to play Space Invaders,
but I can still present an argument (a proposition) to that effect.
That does not mean that I believe that argument.
By adding I 'm
JUST saying it,
one avoids accusations of hypocrisy.
I can
SAY that the Moon is made of
green cheese, without believing it.
(Neil Armstrong probably woud have mentioned it.)
Perhaps another way to similarly express the same concept:
"I don 't know that this is actually
TRUE, but: yadda, yadda, yadda"
David