Very observant of you. I didn’t notice the trend until I read this article (which I was brought to by this Boing Boing post) by Anand Giridharadas of the New York Times a while back.
Our cross country, track and field, and nordic skiing coach for four years had some interesting speech patterns that involved ending most of his sentences with “so” or “so yeah… so.” Great coach, though.
‘So’ used in the manner in which you are referring - at the beginning of post - can be very effective. It can be used as a continuation of a conversation or discussion. Dean Kamen has used it effectively, in my opinion, building a bridge of discussion between seasons.
I can’t stand trends like these. It is so annoying when someone uses “like” every other work. Like really. You like need to learn like how to speak English right. I’m a bit of a self proclaimed grammar Nazi and sentences like that last one get under my skin.
I always thought that so and like were being used like umm and err - as filler noise as the brain finished creating the sentence. I’m not sure how that maps to typed dialog…
I do this sometimes when talking as well, but not when writing - which I find mildly strange. I don’t do it often, so that’s good, but I wish I didn’t do it at all. It’s like using “like” and “yeah” when describing something.
The main cause is probably my environment/peers. Public high schools (or my high school, at least) tends to lack in terms of grammar and relies more on colloquial slang.