{"id":72296,"date":"2014-06-06T12:30:02","date_gmt":"2014-06-06T16:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=72296"},"modified":"2015-07-16T13:45:49","modified_gmt":"2015-07-16T17:45:49","slug":"the-last-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/06\/the-last-word\/","title":{"rendered":"The Final Word"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Apocalypse-Albert_Goodwin\"<\/a>

Albert Goodwin, Apocalypse<\/i>, 1902.<\/p><\/div>\n

Late in 2007, a poet and programmer named Adam Parrish started @everyword<\/a>, a Twitter account dedicated to tweeting all the words in English. The very first tweet, from 6:53 A.M.<\/small> on September 2, 2007, seems to have been blasphemous<\/a><\/em>, but after that came a<\/a><\/em>, and things settled into a familiar alphabetical rhythm.<\/p>\n

In the days of the early letters, we felt footloose<\/a> and fancy-free. It seemed, for a while, that the dictionary and its roughly 109,000 entries would last us for the rest of our natural<\/a> lives. Years passed. Words came and went at a stately<\/a> pace. The most retweeted among them were sex<\/a> <\/em>and weed<\/a><\/em>, those poles of the human condition.<\/p>\n

But things took on a sudden urgency earlier this year when x<\/em>, y<\/em>, and z<\/em> came around. None of us felt young anymore\u2014we were living in the twilight of the alphabet, suddenly, acutely aware of our own mortality. @everyword, once a fixture of the Twittersphere, was soon to be snuffed out by Fate, as we all must be. As of this writing, zoril<\/em>, zounds<\/em>, and zoysia<\/a> <\/em>have just been tweeted, each one a harbinger<\/a> of doom. The last word is expected to go up this weekend, if not later today. (One never knows exactly when Death\u2019s cold, tenebrous<\/a> hand will descend upon one\u2019s shoulder.)<\/p>\n

In an interview earlier this week, Parrish told The Guardian<\/em><\/a>,<\/p>\n

\n

Whimsy is something that I’m very interested in evoking in people. I don\u2019t like the concept of personalization on the web. When I get on the Internet it\u2019s because I want to have a shared experience. I want to see what other people see. The Internet is a way to find out what life is like for other people. One of the goals of the stuff I make is to produce these experiences, and not sell you something, which is what a lot of the Internet is about these days.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Excellent points, but as the end beckons, whimsy is on the wane. (Or not\u2014it was just tweeted<\/a> a month ago.) Parrish never discussed why he chose to begin his series with\u00a0blasphemous<\/em>, but it augurs ill for us, now that we\u2019re in the end-times. Has he been courting Satan with his word spells? Twitter\u2019s eschatologists<\/a> are predicting the apocalypse<\/a>. What will happen when the final word goes up? Is there life after zed<\/a>\u2014or, more accurately, after zyxt<\/a><\/em>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late in 2007, a poet and programmer named Adam Parrish started @everyword, a Twitter account dedicated to tweeting all the words in English. The very first tweet, from 6:53 A.M. on September 2, 2007, seems to have been blasphemous, but after that came a, and things settled into a familiar alphabetical rhythm. In the days […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[684],"tags":[14199,14202,14201,14200,126,2393],"class_list":["post-72296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-language","tag-everyword","tag-adam-parrish","tag-the-apocalypse","tag-the-dictionary","tag-twitter","tag-words"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe End of @everyword<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 6, 2014 \u2013 Late in 2007, a poet and programmer named Adam Parrish started @everyword, a Twitter account dedicated to tweeting all the words in English. 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