A multidisciplinary team of linguists, sociologists, mathematicians, and computer scientists announced they finally deciphered the Miami exaggeration scale. 3,000 Miamians participated in a 20-year longitudinal study to ascertain exactly what they meant when saying things like, “Bro, I hooked up with this chick like a million times and then literally died.”

“Miamian is essentially its own dialect,” explained Dr. Elizabeth Browning, the project’s lead researcher. “Adverbs, adjectives, verbs, nouns, everything is ratcheted up to 11. We needed to decode it just to hold normal conversations. I’d call up a South Florida colleague to ask for the ambient temperature and she’d respond with, ‘Múerete. It’s infinity degrees plus one.’ It was all extremely inconvenient.”

The first major breakthrough in cracking the Miami exaggeration scale occurred when the scientists discovered they needed to divide any sentence beginning with “bro” by two-thirds.

“That was our Rosetta Stone moment,” said Dr. Browning. “For example, ‘Bro, I just bought a brand new 3 Series’ really means, ‘I leased a used 1 Series.’ The latent mathematical patterns were beautiful, truly elegant.”

Other linguistic discoveries quickly followed suit. “Get down from the car” means “Get out of the car.” “My boyfriend works in real estate” means “My boyfriend is unemployed.” And “literally” means absolutely nothing at all.

The one concept scientists were unable to interpret was how Miamians measure time.

“Our best guess is that Miamians have no concept of the forward progression of time,” claimed Dr. Browning. “Therefore, assertions of when they will arrive at predetermined locations such as parties, restaurants, baptisms, weddings, etc., are, in the best case scenarios, outrageously wild guesses. They could appear in an hour, or five, or tomorrow, or whenever they’re done mindlessly scrolling through Instagram. No one will ever know, including them.”

Asked what project she planned on tackling next, Dr. Brown declared that she and her team were already hard at work decrypting Miamians’ inability to understand traffic laws.

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Andrew Otazo

'Miami Creation Myth' author Andrew Otazo has advised officials on Cuba policy, worked for the Mexican president, fired a tank, and ran with 30lbs of trash.

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