Lots of cities choose nicknames that are "appealing" or "attractive." Not Washington, DC. No, Washington—a.k.a The District, a.k.a The Urrrea, a.k.a. The Once And Future Murder Capital—has smartly named itself after a ferociously unpopular bureaucracy.

This "The Internet" thing is nice, but we often think: What it really needs is a self-proclaimed arbiter of its cultural relevance to undertake the preposterously impossible ambitious task of explaining the entire internet. In a book. Hello, Virginia Heffernan!