SSC 2010: Tag, by Mija

Copyright 2010 to mijita (at) the treehouse (dot) net. Please respect this copyright. Don't distribute or archive this story in any way except for personal use without explicit permission. No, it's not in the public domain. Ask first, okay? Thanks.

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Tag
by Mija
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Yes, yes, you don't have to tell me. I already know there are pages where I can go and look for "trending" topics, find out what words and letter codes are being used to discuss this or that. I =know= all that.

... but it just doesn't feel quite fair.

Better to try and peer through the words and guess the "right" word, all the while knowing what term I'm =really= going to search.

Twitter is like the IRC of a decade ago in that almost anything is being discussed at any time but, unless you're already following someone who's writing on that specific topic at an exact given moment, you have to look.

But rather than looking for a specific room dedicated to, well, to an individual subject, we now search for tags.

I search for my thrill, my heart-throbbing rush.

You see, I'd been tweeting for almost a year, even tweeted a Shadow Lane party (badly for what its worth) when it occurred to me to search for =the= hash tag. I still don't look for it very often.

I've learned in the past 13 years that I can become jaded. Even the most powerful eight letters in the world can have their edges knocked off. And I deeply love feeling that secret and ever so naughty, blushing-hot shock.

Of course now, having written that, I can't resist, won't resist, didn't resist. I had to look, had to search. To see what's there, right now, right at this moment. That's always the lure.

There are those odd people who've got (or lost) something new. (Has anyone who's kinked this way ever said the word so casually? Used it to talk about a car or an iPhone? I couldn't - it would feel creepy and almost like a sacrilege. =The= word has to have more power than that.)

Then there are the personals - in 140 or fewer characters - offers to give or receive. Or offers of video clips. (I never click the links. Don't know why -- for the same reason I didn't answer the ads in the LA Weekly. But reading them? Always, so glad they're there, those ads that taught me that in this world there are Others to be found.)

Then there's the flirting. The taunts that someone "deserves it," someone's "going to get it," "wants it," "is asking for it." Their (shameless) desire right in front of me, so sweet. Right or wrong, I imagine there's part of a generation now that can flirt with our "topic of greatest interest" as easily as sex. Maybe even more easily.

I hope so.

But what about the shame-*full*? Those who can't chirp or even type in tweet tag? They're so much harder to find, yet that hint of shame, the hand-trembling embarrassment, makes my pulse race with recognition. Longing and remembrance.

That's why I search the Twitterverse for Other Words. It's why hash-spanking [#spanking] will never be enough.

Zille Defeu email

I like the self-exposure aspect of this -- it's like a longer-form PostSecret. The sharing of something about yourself that might really just be easier not to mention.... I think that the age of Twitter has not only brought a convenience and a feeling of belong to being a spanko who is looking for another spanko for a good time, or a community to join ... but it has also encouraged people to write (anonymously or bravely/proudly "out") about the odd little feelings and desires that make us human. This story, in a way, symbolizes the way people can, in a way they never could before, tear down their own walls, expose their own secrets -- not only so that they can enjoy the freedom and openness, but also helping others at the same time that they help themselves.

The other thing I like is the focus on the subtle things that arouse. It's so easy to just put #spanking in a tweet, just as it's so easy to, after you discover the local kinky community(ies) go a bit crazy with the freedom and thus loose an appreciation for the things that made your ears perk up when you worried it was just you, and were desperately hoping to find others. All this openness and freedom is wonderful (and, I think, how things *should* be!) but it's important to keep an appreciation for the little hints and sudden glimpses -- they add spice to a day, and to your whole life.

Crimson Kid email

When you're used to doing things the hard, roundabout way, why resist doing them them an easier way when that option becomes available? Apparently because it feels more rewarding to accomplish one's objective the old-style approach, even though that can also lead one onto distracting detours, for example those wrong pathways dealing with various "brand-spanking-new" items that may be under discussion but have nothing to do with bringing serious heat to a human seat. This author appears to be claiming that, even with the technology (now the "Twitterverse") available to zero in on exactly his/her feeling RE what "spanking" means and how it should be dealt with, an indirect approach to the search for it may still work best in finding truly kindred spirits.

For those of us who were spankophiles before the internet, I can understand the attractiveness of this approach as it mirrors what we once faced, trying to find references to spanking that often weren't outright ones, talking around the subject with others instead of directly about it, wondering if people's seemingly playful references to "getting it" and "asking for it" were really more than casual teasing.

There's a certain nostalgic appeal triggered by this somewhat stream-of-consciosness account, one which the author has tapped into and obviously shares, even as that indirect approach becomes increasingly obsolete in the 21st century and the "next generation" deals with numerous personal subjects more brashly and directly--without that galvanizing mixture of shamefulness and eagerness that we often felt a generation ago, something considered a kind of loss perhaps only by those who'd experienced it.