https://culture.china.com/zt/wenhuashidian/wangluoliuxingyu/ 加油 is the phrase I dislike the most. This phrase was originally used for encouraging people to work/study hard in order to achieve their goals. It has been overused for as far as I remember nearly a decade. Especially if you are a student such as myself, people will even use this phrase as a way to say goodbye to you while you are enjoying a sip of beer. These people need to give me a break.

I myself haven't encountered excessive use of 加油. In fact, it seems that its use has been decreasing these years. In my opinion, one cliché in Chinese (not exclusively for Mandarin) is 存在即合理. This is from the philosopher Hegel, which means “What is real is rational” in English. About a decade ago, if one used this saying, he would intend to mean that even though he sees something without knowing the reason of its existence, it presumably exists for some good reaons. But nowadays this saying is more and more used by people to exculpate for something that exists in the society but is actually wrong. And, above all, the most risible thing about this saying is that when Hegel wrote down this sentence, he used the definitions from his own philosophic system for the words “real” and “rational,” which are drastically different from their everyday meanings. Thus this sentence has been, in effect, greatly distorted given its undue use.