Oh, if only “you do you” meant masturbation instead of “talk to the hand, your facts mean nothing to me.”

“You do you.” This phrase is something the Tech Curmudgeon has seen on Twitter a lot lately. If it was intended as a masturbation reference, he wouldn’t be offended. In fact, the Tech Curmudgeon might be highly amused.

But that’s not the intent. “You do you” is supposed to be the “in” way to say “let’s agree to disagree.” But while that’s how the phrase is intended, that’s not how the phrase is usually used.

No, “you do you” is actually more of a “I stopped listening three tweets ago and nothing you can say will make me change my mind so fuck off.” And what’s worse, the Tech Curmudgeon almost always sees it from people who are disagreeing with established facts.

You know, facts like how climate change is happening, it’s bad, we’re responsible, and it literally takes breaking the same laws of physics that let your phone and GPS satellites function for it to be wrong. Their response when faced with these facts? “You do you.”

Facts like how evolution is real and you see it not just in Galapagos finches (which are awesome, by the way) but also in deadly diseases like influenza and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. “You do you.”

Facts like the Earth is older than 6,000 years because we not only have geologic records going back billions of years and ice records going back hundreds of thousands of years, but because we have human-created cave art that’s 7x older than that. Yep, you got it – “you do you.”

Facts like Donald Trump called for the execution of the Central Park Five, five African-American boys who were wrongfully convicted of rape and assault, with full-page advertisements in all four New York City newspapers, or how Trump discriminated against African-Americans in his rental properties in the 1970s. Everyone sing with the Tech Curmudgeon now – “you do you.”

Hey, assholes, how about “you do you.” That means go fuck yourselves.

The Tech Curmudgeon doesn’t mind people agreeing to disagree. He does that regularly with people he knows, likes, and respects. There are all sorts of subjects upon which reasonable people can disagree. But only if both parties agree on the basic facts and, even more importantly, only if the facts are actually honest-to-God facts and not wishful thinking or complete bullshit. If someone tries to agree to disagree with objective facts, there’s not any agreeing to be done – they’re wrong.

Simply. Fucking. Wrong.

“You do you” is just fine if you’re talking about favorite colors or what movie genres you like, or why you enjoy a band that everyone else thinks is shit. If you’re going to use it this way, have fun. Knock yourself out.

But if you use it in a debate where there are actual facts and data and truth to be had, you’ve just told the world your opinion is worth less than a bag of gangrenous dicks.

Or you can mean it in a masturbation sense. The Tech Curmudgeon will laugh really hard at that.