It’s not the product of having a bad vocabulary. The English language changes all the time. And “literally” not commonly being used in a figurative sense is relatively recent the figurative meaning dates back to the 1600s.

Mark Twain used the figurative literally. As did Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, Louisa M. Alcott, and many more people widely considered to be among the best authors ever to have lived. I don’t think anybody has accused them of having poor vocabularies, or not using words “properly”

It even makes sense WRT the etymology, because it means “as in literature”, from the Latin “literalis” - “pertaining to words”

If you want to have a go at an intensifier for being used improperly, you’d do better to target “really”. It means “like reality”, from the Latin “realis” - “actual”

So a sentence like “I was really shitting myself” makes less sense than “I was literally shitting myself”, if we’re referencing fear rather than faeces