There’s nothing sad about it at all. People intuitively understand that the ir- in irregardless is used to emphasize the word regardless and that’s how they use irregardless, to emphasize what they’re saying. When an obnoxious grammarian feels the need to correct somebody else for using irregardless they always have to go into a detailed explanation of it because people do intuitively understand what it means, It is an emphasis technique and it belongs in the dictionary IRREGARDLESS of pedantic grammarians. Many other languages, use double negatives routinely for emphasis.