Hate the look not the looker? “So” is exactly the same. It presumes that whatever profound statement follows is so inexplicable to the addressee that it must be prefaced by a word implying, basically, "you may not understand this already you dumb lot, BUT… (insert “SO” here)". What it really does is make the person using it demonstrate that they have a really annoying habit of using a denigrating placeholder to begin statements.
I believe they were primitive tacos?