The English language is a beautiful thing. People have been manipulating it for centuries to create truly wonderful works. Unfortunately, other people have also been manipulating it for their own means. This is how we arrive with such abominations as "totes". They are the ugly side of evolution, the aspects that need to be weeded out by natural selection. Natural selection often does not work in an orderly fashion and some words survive much longer than they should.

An interesting fact about the spread of colloquialisms is that their use is entirely voluntary. Sure, they might spread like wildfire amongst certain impressionable groups, like exuberant teens, but there are people who should know better than to utter that pointless syllable. People like teachers, who might catch the use of a word almost like an infection and simply not have the strength of vocabulary to fight of its use. Carlos is one of those teachers. Shame on him.