Before clicking the link I thought this was going to be about over-usage of the term by LLMs... it's not in my personal "red flag" list but it does seem to have a general applicability that's not connected to actually having something to say that fits well with LLMs

Did anyone else get Semantic Satiation while reading that article? I started wondering what the origin of "it turns out" was. I got distracted, and from that point on, it just looked weird, not meaningful.

Similarly, when a speaker says "...right?" after making a statement with the implicit expectation that you agree. Sneaky weasels.

One of my favorite additions to this phrase is Merlin Mann's use of "double turns out". This is useful for stuff like

"X is bad for you."

"Turns out X is actually great for you and it was Big Y spreading misinformation."

"Actually, turns out X is only terrible for dogs but nobody remembers that part of the story."

It turns out that writers don't always tell the truth!

It turns out Palpatine returned!

I have also noticed is a kind of ironic use of "it turns out" for presenting personal experiences as being significant discoveries in the world at large.

"To the disappointment of my Asian parents, it turned out I hadn't shipped with the firmware needed to support violin playing."

If that turns out to be recent trend in rhetoric, that is mildly surprising.

When people make ironic uses of some rhetorical device, it inevitably happens that a number of people don't get the humor and start using it unironically, like that's the correct, casual thing to use for that situation.

Feels related to the idea of "exonerative tense", a way of phrasing things to subtly absolute yourself of responsibility for your own actions.

Puts me in mind of Trump being asked about the lack of evacuation plans around the Iran war, his response was "because it happened to all very quickly", as if it were a force of nature rather than something the administration had control over.

Reminds me of Seinfeld.

"I gotta tell you, I am loving this Yada Yada thing. You know, I can gloss over my whole life story."