According to Safire, “It is what it is” has many tautophrasal relatives and ancestors. “What’s done is done,” “What will be will be.” The striking thing about his examples is how many of them preserve and burnish the established order. When God informs Moses, “I am that I am,” he is telling the prophet, “Look, get off my back, I’m God.” I’ve never argued with a bush, burning or otherwise, but I imagine they’re quite persuasive. “Boys will be boys” and “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do” excuse mischief and usually worse, reinforcing the dominant masculine code. It’s doubtful that “I just discovered penicillin!” or “Publishing Willa Cather’s ‘My Antonia’ was the most satisfying moment of my career” elicited a gruff “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” but perhaps I am cynical. Popeye’s “I yam what I yam,” however, remains what it has always been — the pathetic ravings of a man who claims superstrength, when it is obvious to everyone else in the room that spinach merely ameliorates the symptoms of an undiagnosed vitamin deficiency. A scurvy dog, indeed.

While the word “tautophrase” didn’t take off, the phenomenon it described blossomed, abetted by hip-­hop. Sure, philosophical resignation has been a part of the music as far back as 1984, when Run-­D.M.C. reeled off a litany of misfortune — “Unemployment at a record high/People coming, people going, people born to die” — and underscored it with a weary, “It’s like that/and that’s the way it is.” But grandiosity, narcissism and artful braggadocio have also been integral to hip-­hop from the start, whether they were the fruit of a supercharged sense of self or a coping mechanism for a deleterious urban environment. As with everything interesting in black culture, hip-­hop’s swaggering tautophrases have been digested and regurgitated by the mainstream. Last year, Taylor Swift somewhat boringly testified that not only are “Haters gonna hate,” they’re gonna “hate hate hate” exponentially, presumably in direct proportion to her lack of culpability. Instead of serving the establishment (monotheism, patriarchal energies), the modern tautophrase empowers the individual. Regardless of how shallow that individual is.

“Do you” certainly sallies forth from black vernacular, even if the nature of its mundane parts makes its origin Google-­proof. The phrase is affection conferred by another person: a “+1,” wrapped inside a fav, tucked inside a like. “Game recognizes game” reflects love of oneself, a kiss upon a mirror. It fixes the observed in his or her place while flattering the speaker: “I’m calling you out for possessing a particular set of skills” (in lovemaking, basketball or macramé), for I, too, am blessed with those very same skills. It takes one to know one.

Haters hate; that’s them doing them. No matter how saintly you are, the kittens rescued and orphanages saved from demolition, people yearn to bring you down. Classify your antagonists as haters, however, and your flaws are absolved by their greater sin of envy. Obviously, the haters have other qualities apart from their hatred, but such thinking goes against the very nature of the hermetic tautophrase, which refuses intrusion into the bubble of its logic. The hated-­upon must resist lines of inquiry, like “Haters are inclined to hate, but perhaps I have contributed to this situation somehow by frustrating that natural impulse in all human beings, that of empathy, however submerged that impulse is in this deadened, modern world.” To do otherwise would be to acknowledge your own monstrosity.

Which brings us to the problem of what happens when the person in question is not just an ordinary plodder, a high-­school-­age Todd or Alissa preening in the mall’s food court, but a true villain. What if, like the Scorpion, your you is not so good? “There’s been so much blood lately — should I cut back maybe on the pillaging today?” The lieutenant gestures with his longbow: “You do you, Genghis.” “Should I take this pistol with me on the 1 train?” The voice in his head that sounds weirdly like his mother’s says, “Do you, Bernie Goetz.”