“It’s in the water!”

The elemental exclamation identifies the aquatic and its associated processes (dissolution, saturation, flow) as the hitherto-undisclosed source of a clear and present danger. “It’s in the water,” like the properly idiomatic and humorous “there must be something in the water,” fills a gap in knowledge, supplying an explanation where there was none for a generalized condition. The two assertions are paranoid, if differently so. “There must be something in the water” parodies paranoia, heightening causal and factual logics beyond plausibility. The idiom adopts figuration and mystification to account without really doing so for a common trait or behavior within a group or an area. The joke is that nothing really is in the water. The perceived anomaly is tied to cultural and economic factors. Or there is in fact no anomaly but the illusion of one, produced by a limited sample or an error in measurement....

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