See also: fire
See also: fire Julia Karo/Shutterstock

Jody Rosen, one of my favorite writers about anything, has written a very good piece about the rise of the word "everything." You ought to read it, if you are into reading smart, funny things about language and the world and how the internet is eroding the comparative case. It's worth your time.

“Everything” is a hawker’s cry, a hard sell. Which makes perfect sense. The Internet is the most dizzying marketplace in human history, a seething bazaar that barrages us relentlessly and from all angles. We recoil at the crudity of click bait, but in this atmosphere, it’s unfair to begrudge anyone his desperation. The Internet has a way of placing all of us — you, me, the online peddler of counterfeit Viagra, the editor of The Paris Review — in the undignified position of those touts who haunt the sidewalks outside bad restaurants in tourist-­trap neighborhoods, thrusting menus in the faces of passers-­by.