Except when referring to a bomb or some other real-world, real life, explosion. You know the kind of thing I mean--stuff gets ripped apart by force, blown to bits, strewn all about. When that kind of thing happens, it is fine to say "explode" and any grammatical tense version or part of speech version of that word.
But other than that--please, do not use it. I saw it again in a listserve post, a woman was saying a online bulletin board was exploding with posts from parents. Really? What she was trying to convey was that many parents had posted about a particular topic. Obviously, it was a controversial topic, otherwise she would have chosen a gentler, kinder way of recording her observation about the number of posts.
And you see the word everywhere, once you begin to look. I have to edit it out of articles writers turn in for the Seybold Report. Paid, published writers who have written for publication for years are using it, including some I pay.
Sad, really, when you think about it. What does it say about our video game-obsessed, 24/7 news cycle culture when we use such a powerful word to convey trivialties.
So, now you know why I remove it and rewrite the sentence to convey the real thought behind the word.
