Twittergasms: The Real San Francisco Treat

May 13, 2008
VIOLET

Cable cars, dot com gazillionaires and Golden Gates aside, San Francisco is known for many things: its values, homegrown institutions like Kink.com, and generally being the object of Sodom-by-the-Bay nightmares for the entire Bible Belt. And let's not forget that everyone's favorite city also midwifed National Masturbation Month, which is getting more tech-savvy every year. This time around the San Francisco Masturbate-A-Thon—a fundraiser for SF's Center for Sex and Culture hosted by Nina Hartley on Sunday, May 25—will not only be doing its customary livecast of the wank-off, but has also launched a snazzy new blog and Facebook page and is promising plenty of Twittergasms to all comers. Read what a Twittergasm is, how to have one, and why masturbatrix extraordinaire Carol Queen says you should never, ever fake one after the jump.

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Fleshbot: So what's a Twittergasm?

Carol Queen: A Twittergasm is a post to your Twitter profile indicating that you just had a real orgasm. You can use the codes ICSW (I came, so what?) and JOSW (jacking off, so what? related term to indicate you are jacking off), and we'll track, count and include your Twitgasms — though you can also add and create your own LOLTwitgasms if it gets you hot. By typing the character string: ICSW to your Twitter profile, you say with pride: I Came! Prudes of the world will be forced to realize once and for all, that no one really cares what adults do with themselves, and everyone does it. It's a way of coming out of the closet as someone who masturbates by posting to your twitter profile whenever you come. A secret handshake of sorts, only others who follow the Twittergasm profile, or who have read about the campaign will know, so your prudish friends will be left alone until they, too are enlightened.

We will be using the popular service Tweetscan to track Twittergasms in May and we will publish the results on the Masturbate-a-thon.com site and related blogs and social network sites. Twitterers can participate in national masturbation month in several ways.

(1) Become a follower of one of these profiles:

http://www.twitter.com/jackingoff (the profile off the masturbate-a-thon.com)

http://www.twitter.com/thebiggesto (a profile that tracks the orgasms of twitterers)

(2) Use this code on your twitter profile to indicate whenever you have an orgasm:

ICSW or JOSW when you jack off. (Hint: multiple orgasms can be indicated by using a colon and a number to indicate how many: ICSW:3) No faking!

(3) Ask your friends and Twitter followers to pledge to donate a certain amount to the Center for Sex and Culture for every orgasm you have in May. Visit www.masturbate-a-thon.com/twitter.php to register your twitter profile for participation in National Masturbation Month (May 2008) and send emails to your friends to ask them to make a pledge on your behalf. Send a link to that same page where they can sign up to donate as much as they chose for each time you come. Donors do not have to be on Twitter to participate.

Fleshbot: Can't we just fake it ten times in a row so we can hang out with all the cool kids?

Carol Queen: No, never! There are three very good reasons why you should never, ever fake a Twittergasm:

(1) Because faking orgasm — and Twitgasm — robs you of pleasure. It's a sign that pleasure-seeking (masturbation or other kinds of sex) is winding down, and orgasm isn't happening, you're not going for it, and you're not really telling anybody else you're not going for it. Not only that, you're not even admitting any of this; you're sending a false signal of "I'm done"-ness, when you could just as easily be authentic and say, "You know what? I'm done, let's go do something else."

(But some of you might protest that it's not romantic or sexy to just say you're quitting before the true Tweet of satisfaction. Maybe, but see Reason #2, and actually, authentic sexuality IS sexy. Plus, faking teaches other people to pleasure you the wrong way. If you're doing it while masturbating, you're teaching *yourself* to do it the wrong way: to give up before you're discovered real satisfaction. That's just not a good message to send. Instead, decide to use the energy you expend with a bit hot fake come to get a little more into your body, learn a little more about sex and arousal, fantasize about the things you *really* want to, and resolve to respect pleasure more.)

(2) It's not nice to fool people, but it adds to everyone's misinformation and fucked-upped-ness about sex and pleasure when we fool people re: orgasm. Because that affects other people's sexuality as well as out own — it means that partners are misled as to our sources of optimum pleasure (how self-defeating can you get?), it robs others of the intimacy-building experience of going REAL orgasm-hunting with us, and it misleads other people about what's real about sex.

(3) Twitter is a social networking endeavor, and like society itself, these only really function well when citizens are above-board, real, and express their real needs and experiences. Otherwise the whole entity will be flooded with fakeness, and people's initial desire — to be connected — is sullied. Besides, it wastes airspace that can better be used to send around genuine sentiments... and Twittergasms.

· Masturbate-A-Thon: Wankblog (masturbate-a-thon.com/wankblog)

· Twitter: jackingoff (Masturbate-A-Thon profile, Twitter.com)

· Twitter: thebiggesto (Twittergasm tracker, Twitter.com)

· Masturbate-A-Thon: Facebook (facebook.com)