Not only are we (humans) awash in ads at this time in history, but the over-the-top writing used in ads has bled into essentially all …🤔 hm, well not mine, so not literally all, but a lot of writing. Whereas superlatives were “intended” to communicate an extreme, they are used to attempt to capture attention, typically without regard for the actual meaning of the words used. A result of this disconnection between words and meanings is a sea of superlatives, such that words are less useful for definitions, meaning communication itself becomes far more difficult — in a best case scenarios.
I am often reminded of the story of “The Boy who Cried Wolf,” because that story seems especially relevant in today’s deceptive culture of self-aggrandizement. This comes from Aesop, so I assume it’s extremely well-known, but just to recap: a boy is guarding sheep and [I forget why] he shouts “wolf” when no such wolf is present routinely. Eventually, a wolf comes, and nobody believes him because they have become immune to the hype, and the actual wolf eats the sheep [or something]. This exact …well, not “exact” ;P — this fable is roughly what is happening now in the information landscape, except the difference is that, to modernize the story, the boy would go to cry wolf and hear many others already doing it.
The seemingly endless superlatives undermine the meaning of language, because you inevitably wind up with several different things all being defined by the same term.
brb