The Nobody is talking about it trope - when Everybody is talking about it

From our Nobody is talking about the abuse of Nobody is talking about it series.

To the blogster, of the short, sweeping statements one encounters in the media, Nobody is talking about it is one of the more interesting ones.

On rare occasions, nobody is talking about a subject, but the blogster cannot recall a good recent example. And not simply because the phrase is dubious on a strictly logical level. The moment you say "nobody is talking about it", at least one person, you, is talking about "it". If you use "it", you must have mentioned the subject earlier, or your audience knows what "it" signifies. So, with one person talking about it, can you still claim "nobody" is?

But that's a game for linguists or Monday morning philosophers, because we generally imply that nobody serves as an attention getting device or to express that not enough people, or too few folks of importance, are talking about it.

As a result, the blogster neither minds nor critiques the occasional nobody is talking about it as long as the subject seems to not be present everywhere you look.

But it* draws the line where literally everybody, in this case all the media outlets in a country, is talking, writing, or debating about an event or issue. When everybody is talking about it, nobody is talking about it takes on another function.

It can serve to reinforce a point, to vent frustration, or maybe - who knows - to get to the wordcount a journalist needs for a piece. Hm, I'm five words short of my 300, what can I say. Got it, nobody is talking about it.

Sometimes, using it is plain stupid.

Like in a recent comment in the German WELT, in which a journalist vents about the high burden of taxes and government mandated levies and fees in Germany, reported in an annual OECD survey on the topic.

For some time now, they hit also the classic Social Democrat demographic, top performing workers who would love to work overtime. We can not continue like this with taxes and related burdens. And nobody is talking about it. Either is equally scandalous.**

His Nobody is talking about it is deemed stupid by the blogster because it is manifestly false. Perform a single web search on high taxes and secondary burdens in Germany, and you will be buried under search results that deal with the subject.



Not only that, you will also find that Germany reduced taxes for higher income earners as well as taxes on capital gains.

* Gender neutral. 
** Our translation of: Längst trifft es auch das klassische SPD-Milieu, top performende Facharbeiter, Handwerker mit Lust zu bezahlten Überstunden. Es geht so nicht weiter mit Steuern und Abgaben. Und niemand spricht darüber. Beides ist gleichermaßen skandalös.