You may already know what sext is. It is - to use this very Wikipedian word - a portmanteau of sex and text, and is used to denote the activity of being very explicit in various forms of social media. Preferably to people one knows, and that one knows approve of such things.
That this happens isn't really that big of a deal. People use the new form of media to talk to each other, and when people talk to each other, sex is bound to become a topic.
This is a given.
Then we have the sext:. Which is a genre all of its own, found primarily on Twitter. It takes the form of tweets that start with the opening "sext:", and then proceeds with what might or might not be a sext proper.
Let me show you some examples of what this might look like.
sext: lets embrace the incompleteness of the moment, of our lives and appreciate our lack of knowledge and mastery over ourselves/the world
— SUBTWEETING GOAT (@hippodamos) May 3, 2012
sext: they told me that this phone line isn't hooked up to anything anymore but it feels like you're still there. hello, maybe. I miss you.
— kimmy (@aRealLiveGhost) April 27, 2012
sext: i spend my evenings reading tvtropes for the sole purpose of getting mad at it. you think my brain is beautiful. we die of cancer.
— Rick Sanjortsum (@jorticulture) May 3, 2012
Sext: Monoliths begin dotting the landscape, their shape different depending on the viewer. You're laughing and I'm perplexed.
— creeping horror (@redfivetwo) May 3, 2012
Sext: the fallout looks like snow. we make ash angels as our skin rots away. Goodnight
— avril lavigne(@Sloth_Bhutto) May 2, 2012
sext: lateral memories of us, talking; a smile; a gesture; a nod; a sudden laughter as we realize we're in love.
— Johanna Drott (@sargoth) May 3, 2012
You may notice that the sex part isn't really that present. It might be, but it is not the point. Rather, it is the inferred relation between sender and reciever that makes the sext: what it is: a fragment, taken out of context. A piece of intimate - or not so intimate - conversation, giving hints and clues about the persons involved in the exchange. A piece of ecorelative plant life, transplanted to right where we are sitting now.
We don't know the people involved. All we know is what can be inferred from the fragment at hand, - but what can be inferred is a great deal indeed.
The reason there is a post about this, is because I absolutely love the infoecological density of the genre. First off, one need to know about sexts - a topic worthy a lengthy discussion in itself. Then there is the question of who is sending that message to who. What are they doing, thinking? What is what we see a response to? What are the discursive and material conditions for the production of the sext that we have in front of our eyes? -
What's going on in the implied fictional universe of the sexted: narrative? Why is that message?
And why is is a sext?
sext has been freed from the confines of its context, it is now a ghost word, a simulation of something with meaning. it is a contextual sign, a glaze, bearing no flavor in relation to what is left of its nature. it is a reverse interpret. a neutral intensifier that bears no contextual gravity, almost a particle.
ReplyDeleteas a header it is beautiful in its asymmetry, like glass blown into the shape of a triangle or square because the glassblower had nothing better to do.
sext: discuss the contextual weirdness and chaos of the word "sext:" as opposed to "sext"
sext: blow up the simulacrum.
like a command, only in this case the command precedes a human piece of syntax, or like a subset, where the subset is easy to interpret. like a crude refinement of linguistic coal.
sext: tweet
It's never as easy as just saying things. Things get tangled up in the saying, and the saying gets tangled up in things that just happen to be around.
DeleteCommunication is hard. Wonderfully so. ;)