Although he generally nods vaguely when his friends pepper their conversations with the phrase “you know?”, Ned Doggett of Nashville, Tennessee, recently confessed that he almost never actually knows.
“I feel like an idiot admitting it,” said Ned. “But it’s the truth.”
Ned emphasized that he is not intentionally trying to mislead anyone or cause people to think that he is smarter than he is. “I think they have a decent sense of that already,” he said. Rather, it’s that he hates to interrupt the flow of conversation, especially since people seem to genuinely desire an affirmative response to the “you know?” question.
“I’m kind of a people-pleaser,” he said. “I’m working on that.”
Nevertheless, while Ned acknowledged that he does sometimes feel less than fully forthright, he's generally comfortable letting the “you know?” inquiries roll right over him.
“I consider it a rhetorical question,” he said. “See, not so dumb after all. I know what that means.”
