For People Who Think Metaphors Are a Type of Cheese.

Literalism is what happens when someone takes every word at face value, like their brain was built by a committee of pedantic robots with no imagination.

Say “I’m dying of boredom,” and the literalist looks concerned and starts Googling symptoms.
Tell them someone “stabbed you in the back” and they’ll check for a wound.
Call the sky “angry” and they’ll argue that clouds don’t have feelings.

They don’t do nuance. They don’t do symbolism.
They process language like a badly programmed AI — accurate, unbending, and completely missing the bloody point.

Why does it happen?

Because abstract thinking takes effort. It means holding two ideas in your head at once — the thing said and the thing meant.
Literalists can’t be bothered. So they clamp onto the surface meaning like a toddler with a toy hammer: simple, loud, and determined to miss the subtleties.

Where it shows up:

• In arguments where someone says “You literally ruined my life,” and the reply is, “Actually, you’re still alive.”
• In religious circles where metaphors turn into dogma, and suddenly snakes talk and people get swallowed by fish for three days — no symbolism allowed.
• In politics, where satire gets treated like a manifesto because someone’s brain cell couldn’t be bothered to read between the lines.

Literalism is the intellectual version of paint-by-numbers: technically correct, creatively bankrupt, and guaranteed to ruin the conversation.

It’s not smart.
It’s not careful.
It’s lazy thinking disguised as precision.

And if you ever wonder why someone keeps missing the point, check if they’re clinging to the dictionary like it’s a flotation device for their fragile sense of certainty.