"I Resonate With That" [NAILS ON CHALKBOARD]

A Grammatical Annoyance

I think I first started noticing it after 2016, in those years when it felt like we were all online all the time, writing our statuses and fury and PAY ATTENTION admonishments into the abyss, hoping it could somehow make things change faster. It was a reaction, a commiseration, a me-too:

I resonate with that

The first time I noticed it, I thought it was just a mistake: someone mixing up the grammar, not knowing it should read “That resonates with me.” But then I started seeing it all over: in comment sections, on Twitter, in Instagram captions:

I resonate with folklore more than evermore

I really resonate with what you said

I resonate with that emotion

Here’s Josh Groban, talking about a character he’s playing in an interview with the New York Times:

And here it is in an interview with a woman who’s left the Republican Party, also in the Times,

And here’s Natasha Lyonne, describing her Poker Face character:

And here’s a woman talking about where she directs her medical crowdfunding dollars:

How do you know this usage is technically incorrect? The only way it shows up in the Times = when the reporter is quoting someone else. It would never make it past the paper’s copyeditors. The only exception, and I’m sure it’s still begruding: quote accuracy.

Or — and this varies depending on the editor — personal voice. Take a look at this passage from a Washington Post personal essay on class differences in marriage:

Or this essay about building a “better” brain in Slate:

I am not a pedant when it comes to grammar; I love making nouns into verbs (although I do not particularly love ‘architecting’) and using colons in old-fashioned and new-fangled ways. I especially love an unexpected exclamation mark (!)

So why does this particular usage irritate me? (And, according to the response when I posted that I’d be writing about this on IG, irritate SO MANY of you, too?) Why does it bug me more than, say, someone using “a myriad” instead of “myriad”? Or “over at the Jone’s house” instead of “over at the Jones house”? And why has it irritated me for years?

This is from in 2020, when it still felt good to ask questions on Twitter:

The most compelling answer to my query was from editor Garance Franke-Ruta, who suggested it comes from “self-care world” (which I would expand to include (stereotypical) I-statement therapy speak). Self-care, especially faux self-care, is all about seeking out experiences and purchases that will provide a temporary, individualistic salve from the various inequities and injustices that make life hard. To make up for decades if not centuries of bullshit, you protest by centering the I.

But “I resonate with” only ostensibly places the subject first. In truth, the subject (‘I’) resonates with the object (the piece of writing, the character, the other person), instead of the object (the piece of writing, the character, the other person) resonating with them. Again: I resonate with Cowboy Carter instead of Cowboy Carter resonates with me. Self-care speak, maybe, but also fandom speak? I resonate with positions the speaker in the orbit of the object, instead of the object as one of many that make up the speaker’s personal taste. If you search “I resonate with” on Twitter, the results are almost all expressions of fandom (“At first I wanted to be Carrie but now I resonate with Samantha”) or pinpointing a feeling of identification in a meme, Tweet, or Imagr post:

Is this just the current version of It me? Or “this [blank] gets it”?? Anecdotally, most of the people employing this phrasing seem to be Gen-Z — so some of this usage might just be an aversion to phrases of identification that feel very millennial cringe.

At this point, it would behoove us to return to some basic definitions. Resonance is what happens when one vibration joins another vibration and together their tone becomes BIGGER and EVEN MORE AWESOME. (For me, the most useful illustration of this phenomenon is a church bell clanging and then a second, third, or fourth church bell joining it to create an even more beautiful albeit cacophonous clang).

Rooted in this definition, we can still think of the interaction in terms of primary and secondary clanging: when you state I resonate with [this essay], you are joining in the primary clang of the essay. When the essay resonates with you, the essay’s clanging is joining yours.

Back in 2010, language columnist Ben Zimmer explored the enduring popularity of the word resonate — which, according to the Times’ own print records, had been annoying readers since the ‘80s. Zimmer points out that resonate first came into popular usage outside the realm of musicology in the early 20th century — and has come to share meaning with two other sound-related idioms: on the same wavelength and in sync. Which makes sense, because the best way to describe how people use resonate now is…..vibes.

For me, vibes are always underpinned with musicality — they’re an indication of aspirational harmony. I vibe with it, it vibes with me, although we’d never use either of those phrases — because vibe, in its current popular usage, is never a verb, always a noun. You can talk about how you feel about THE VIBES (the vibes were good, the vibes were bad, I liked the vibe) but vibing is for weird hippy Uncles.

So when there’s no way to make vibes do the expressive, verb-ing work, maybe that’s when you get: I resonate with this, I resonate with that. Imperfect, but sensical. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. The vibes of the phrase, reverberating in my millennial ears — they’re bad.

Languages are living things. They age and change and grow and shrink. Sometimes we use a word incorrectly on a personal level for years (see me and immergance vs. emergance, gah) and sometimes a whole bunch of people begin “misusing” a word with such frequency that the word acquires that new, misused meaning. See: literally, which was “mis”-used so widely that its (in)formal dictionary definition now includes “used for emphasis or to express strong feeling while not being literally true.”

We’re not quite there when it comes to I resonate with, but give it ten years. Our annoyance will feel, well, pedantic. And I get it, trust me, the entire phrase feels imprecise and wrong. I want to pack it back up in people’s mouths every time it falls out. But wrong to whom? If you’re saying it, you’re saying it because it feels correct. The vibes are directionally right. I resonate with resonates with you.

The generalness is the point. Because to do the opposite, to clearly stake your claim in something, to forcefully pin your identity to it (particularly in writing, online) — that’s a massive risk. Precision is too hazardous, save in situations where you’re able or willing to layer a declaration with caveats: I like this director but only this film and not the sexist parts.

That’s one of the enduring legacies of the last decade and the hostility and bad faith that ran through them. You can be silent, you can vibe, or you can post, but only if you think very very carefully about whatever you write or say. Posting, in other words, has consequences.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that: our technologies have made it far too easy to speak to both friends and strangers; the utter frictionless of being online has made us reckless and graceless.

To resonate, then, is to declare less, to soften a stance, to think it over, to sit back and watch what happens when your bell clangs alongside someone — or something — else. Maybe they become dissonant with time, and you move away, and the clanging becomes yours alone. Maybe you hear a new bell in the distance, maybe you don’t. Maybe, at that point, you’ve resonated with enough things that other things begin to resonate with you. The gravity transforms.

Can you hear it? Can you hear that sound? It’s something complicated and shifting, hungry and growing, mournful and knowing. The self in conversation with the world! And then, again, with itself! All perfectly you, in imperfect harmony. It might sound wrong. But it feels right. ●

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For discussion: How are you working through annoyance or perturbance with various grammatical shifts? What are your even more galaxy-brain theories about “I resonate with”?

I want to hear them all (just, as always with Culture Study, don’t be butts, and let’s keep this one of the good places on the internet)