^ Don't you think it serves some function of communication, though? "Like" is just to fill gaps, as you said, but I think that "dude", "man", and "bro" actually influence the message to some degree.
Wow. I'd never really considered my usage of "dude" and "man" before this thread, but now I'm really perplexed as to what function they serve. It's just a really intuitive thing. Some sentences really don't reflect the intended shade of meaning unless I stick a "dude" somewhere in there. But what are these words doing?
Hmm.
I'm almost feeling like they're a way of communicating intensity, or magnitude, of some sort, sometimes.
Imagine someone looking at you straight in the eye, and simply saying, "Dude..." and shaking their head. You're going to think that something has gone terribly wrong, am I right? You've committed some sort of ghastly faux pas, or something?