There are some subreddits where this trope is completely out of control. For better or worse I follow the NBA subreddit and in the comment sections the number of people who throw in honestly as a qualifier is like way more than you would assume from natural conversation.
I really don’t understand what’s wrong with people using LLMs for these types of mundane conversations. There’s nothing to gain and it destroys value of online discourse.
I don't think anyone is using LLMs for those conversations. A lot of those replies are bots. There's a market for reddit accounts that have a solid human-looking reply/post history, to be used for astroturf marketing, so some organizations set up bots to grow such accounts. There probably are also just people who overuse "Honestly? [statement]" sentences. I've spoken to such people in person before LLMs.
