Phenomenon: Social Media Thizzing

Exploring a phenomenon unique to social media

Social Media: the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Thizzing: bliss, a momentary loss of self (my definition). Social Media Thizzing: a phrase to describe the phenomenon of experiencing bliss through excessive, indulgent use of social media.

New hashtag: #socialmediathizzing. So far, a miserable failure. No one has found the term as apt as I have. Understandable. Best to describe the phenomenon before I expect the whole web to catch on. Naïve to think the two terms (social media/thizzing) paired together will immediately scintillate others’ consciousness as they have mine.

Right now, I’m in an office in New York. While I write this essay (on Word), my email is open. I’m g-chatting a friend who lives in London. We have not seen each other in months and every minute or less we send each other news of our lives and inside jokes we hope will please one another. Near simultaneously, I’m reading emails, responding to work inquiries, requests, et cetera…

75% of the people I’m emailing are in the same office as I am. There is Joe, across from me, staring deep into his laptop. There is Joe’s widget on my screen, informing me of a meeting we’ll both attend later in the day.

I’m communicating with several other colleagues through turntable.fm. Not one is more than five feet away from me. We’re taking turns playing songs, building a narrative of bitter heartbreak and slow recovery. In the website’s chat box, we comment. “Get ready to feel sad, sinister, and contemplative.” “My Lloyd Dobler.” “I feel like Werther.”

I’ve opened my twitter. My brother in Los Angeles has tweeted me from his non-profit’s account, commenting on an article I published. A minute ago, I received a text from him asking, “will you be around next weekend?” He’s passing through on a quick vacation.

There’s something I want to tell one of my colleagues but not to others. Four of us share an email thread, discussing work-related issues. I open a new email, solely between her and I. One, two, three emails pass between us. There’s intrigue in these (innocuous?) messages. There’s sex.

Soon, an hour passes by, then two. I have sent text out into dozens of different web channels. I do not remember my text. Were my sentences clever or dry? My spine tingles. My eyes experience contradicting sensations in turn. Now they burn, tearing, about to burst from my skull. Now I squeeze them shut, stuff my knuckles into them, rub, then look back at the screen. The fierce digital ink of this document dazzles me. The words offer a clarity amidst phantom firework colors, purple and green. My hands shake as I relocate back into my body, establishing a single, interior “I.”

This happens to me everyday. I cannot account for my body during the two hours of social media thizzing. Gestures, facial contortions, legs, feet (was I on my toes? tapping one foot?)—are all a mystery to me. I cannot account for my thought. Indeed, the only evidence I have of my own existence is a textual trail. Is it incriminating? Liberating? Some of the text is merely word vomit—I should not have sent that tweet! Terrible grammar. Cluttered thought—some of the text is reckless and poetic. This text sends me reeling with pleasure.

I enlarge the tweet so nothing but this particular text appears on the screen. Visually, the text is stunning . The meaning is unclear but provocative. Like a cave drawing, the text seems like something queer and already ancient. An artifact.

Work demands me and I’m back in media. I’m centered, working methodically. But soon I fall, the text engulfs me, “It granulates, it crackles, it caresses, it grates, it cuts, it comes:” that is #socialmediathizzing.

More by Kyle Kouri:

Let’s All Get Anally Stimulated

Put Marilyn Monroe on YouJizz: A Plea for Internet Porn

Sexting as Foreplay and Briefly Ron Artest

Interview: Samuel Stabler, On Drawing and the Digital Age