Conversely, the moons gravity affects the largest bodies of water on earth but yet nothing else.
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Pieces of metal do, very slightly, try to align themselves north-south along the axis of the Earth’s magnetic field. But the effect is quite small. Compass needles are stronger magnets than the weak responsive magnetism of a paper clip, and they’re mounted in such a way that they can spin freely. The weak force on a paper clip isn’t enough to overcome friction and cause the paper clip to move. (In fact, it’s probably not strong enough to overcome small vibrations breaking up any particular magnetism in the paper clip, but a sufficiently cold paper clip would still align.)
As for the tides: the Moon’s gravity *does* affect everything else on Earth. It just only affects it very, very slightly. The oceans, which are many miles deep and flow freely, only move up and down by a few feet. Solid objects flow much less freely than this, and are much smaller than this in most cases, so they distort by much less. But in fact, the Earth’s rock and atmosphere do bend slightly in response to the tides, you just don’t notice this because the effect is very very small.
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