BASTARD CHILDREN EVERYWHERE
A Tseverywhere post.
Your first week at a new job, everyone seems to know a word you've never heard. By Thursday it's in every email, every stand-up, and the name of a folder you can't open. It was there all along. You only had to notice it. You buy one second-hand book and start seeing the same cover on every shelf. You learn a new word on Monday and it turns up in three articles by lunchtime. The world has been doing this for years, and you've only just got the glasses. Someone mentions a particular smell in the stairwell, and now you can't smell anything else. The cigarettes, the damp, the neighbour's cooking. It's in the lift, in your coat, in the post. You open the window and it follows you in. You decide to cut down on one thing, and it is suddenly on every menu, in every advert, on every colleague's desk. The shop puts it at eye level at the till. Willpower lasts until the queue. **Why it caught on:** the picture is a still from Pixar's *Toy Story* (1995), showing Buzz Lightyear gesturing at the world while a worried Woody stands beside him. The caption "X, X everywhere" comes from Buzz's line in the film, "Toys, toys everywhere", which the internet turned into a template: name a thing in the first line, then repeat it with "everywhere" below. It spread because it fits any subject, from the trivial to the awkward, and anything you've just noticed can be put in the first line.