For once I am in total agreement with Mr. Segal.

It is what it is gives room to it could be some other way. I never hear this, it's maybe a hippy/ new Buddhist type phrase throwback.the language got a little distorted for a while there. How is it any more vacuous than many other phrases, for eg: far out man. You'd have to have been there.

Meh, there's a million of those trite sayings.

"Everything happens for a reason" is the most banal.

If you've got a better way to convey "I'm exhausted from considering the complexity of this topic, of which none of us are experts and we should accept that rather than blather on like idiots", I'd like to hear it.

@6 I hate that saying so much and would argue that it's also incorrect.

¯(ツ)/¯

Wow, that was a formatting fail. Slog seems to be taking out all kinds of random characters lately.

It is what it is, I suppose.

Hey, you gotta keep things simple man... I ain't got time to explain the meaning, I gotta live my life... you only YOLO once!!!

I just moved out to Colorado and first I heard it from my late 60's-cowboy co-worker, then a few days later from my roommate who just moved from Wisconsin. It's like that pointy S drawing

I first was aware of this as a phrase on TV from Bill Belichick

My mother has been living with cancer for over a decade. Last July we discovered that it had moved to her liver, and by February we had to move her to a family home because my sister and I could no longer care for her. She and I worked at the same company until she was no longer able to work.

Somebody comes and asks me about her Every. Damn. Day. She's started to see things and we can only understand her about a quarter of the time. We're pretty sure it's moved into her brain by now. The only thing I can think to say to these people when they're trying to pour their sympathy on my head is 'It Is What It Is'. That's all I have. The situation sucks, it will continue to suck even after she's gone.

Half the time I'm the one trying to comfort these people who have not seen her at her worst. What else am I going to say? You can take all your platitudes and shove them up your arse. The inevitability of her situation is my only comfort. It is what it is, and this too, shall pass. That's all I've got.

It's a zen koan.
A recognition that reality remains outside of our desires for what we want it to be.
Accept what is, and you can release yourself of suffering, Dave.

I don't get why he's objecting to this. How is this different from older, longer, similar expressions that seem to express the same point, that one's preferred circumstances don't happen to be the case at the moment, and one must just deal with that, e.g., "If 'ifs' and 'buts' were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry Christmas"; "If wishes were horses, beggers would ride."?

Actually, “It Is What It Is' is an idiomatic phrase, indicating the immutable nature of an object or circumstance. This is commonly used in American culture as a response of acceptance to something that makes little sense or has little to no validity”. Therefore it differs from a true tautological phase, “in rhetoric in which is an statement which repeats an assertion using different phrasing. The proposition, as stated, is thus logically irrefutable, while obscuring the lack of evidence or valid reasoning supporting the stated conclusion. Examples include:
The (evening) sunset was beautiful.
I need a new (hot) water heater.
Charlie proudly told his mom (he made) the (hand-made) scarf himself.
Be careful, there is a lot of (frozen) ice on the road!
I know it’s true because I heard it (with my own ears).
She always (over)-exaggerates.

@8 But everything does happen for a reason. It may not be a good reason but there is a reason for something happening. Even pure random chance is not pure nor is it truly random. It may be so obscure that no human can determine why something happens but it is still with a reason. The root cause that started the chain leading to an event can happen years before the event, but it still happened and if it had not then the chain would have broken then and not ended up with people going with the banality of "Everything happens for a reason". Granted that a lot of people are implying (or at some point outright stating) that the reason is due to a deity. Simple case: David vs Goliath. Stated reason David wins is that "God" wanted him to. The actual reason he won is due to taking a ranged weapon to a melee fight. In other words, he cheated.
A longer chain would be the Titanic. All sorts of things went wrong to cause that particular disaster but, while that chain could have been broken at any time by something going right, the disaster chain was started well before the ship was even built. That chain started before the architect even started penciling in the first line of the ship's design. One could write a book on everything that went into the ship being doomed before it was built (or even designed) altho I won't do so. Especially since it would be about the reasons of decisions being made and not a book about what the decisions were. No deity involved anywhere.
A person did not die because some deity called them home but for some other reason. We may not know why at this moment due to a lack of relevant knowledge but there is a why. There is always a why. The underlying why may go back years, and in geo-politics it might be centuries, but there is always a why. And at no point does it have to be logical to anyone that can think logically.
Just remember that there is no such thing as truly random chance and you will understand that while everything does happen for a reason, you might never be able to figure that reason out. And just to mess with the minds of those people that got this far; remember that time is a variable and not a constant.

"It is what it is" is what "It is what it is" is.

@20,
But if what you're saying is true, then the phrase "Everything happens for a reason" is still meaningless because the people who are affected may not ever know the reason nor may they care to know.

So the phrase becomes "Everything happens for a reason you may not know nor care about."

You might as well just say "Everything happens."

It means exactly the same thing. Which is to say, it means nothing.

@20 I understand your logic but I'd argue you're conflating cause and reason. The most common use of this particular idiom is to imply some sort of divine or omnipotent plan.

The cause is what actually produces the effect, result or consequence. Reason implies thought while cause implies movement, the creation of a result. In some cases reason and cause can be synonyms. For example if my thoughts (reason) lead me to take a certain action, then that reason was the cause of my actions.*

*https://www.usingenglish.com/forum/threads/96457-cause-vs-reason

@19 Well put.