To me "whenever X does that thing" usually implies you don't know if, or at least when, X will do it, but it's great when it happens.

If X does the thing at predictable intervals, it should be when X does that thing.

But you know these whippersnappers don't talk no good. ;)

Yeah - 'whenever he does that' suggests it's a recurring but not regular thing. 'Whenever he did that' means you are discussing all the times he did that, or are linking it to something else that occurred each time he did that.

It's like describing a scene from Titanic and starting it with 'whenever the ship finally sank'

That would vary each time they ran the film. :haha:

It's a generational thing, in my experience. I hear it far more often from under-30s than over-30s.

When Character X got off my lawn....

lol

I'll start watching for that. To be fair, with our education system, we only have a passing familiarity with English.

Chalk it up to an adverb gone wild. Originally used for emphasis in questions, it's now used emphatically everywhere. When he did that... = At least the first time he did that. Whenever he did that... = every time he did that.

when·ev·er

adverb

… 1. used for emphasis instead of “when” in questions, typically expressing surprise or confusion.
"whenever shall we get there?"

I blame Shakira's - Whenever, Wherever - for popularizing the word leading to excessive applications in pop culture. Maybe you had to be here.

Whatever.

It's almost always bracketed by other young vocal tics, in my experience:

"Like, whenever I went to the store, or whatever? I bought one of those new mashed-avocado-in-a-cup things."

It often indicates a distinct event, whose exact timeframe isn't certain.