I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

This show, I hope, is enriching for you, because it's enriching for me.

I continually discover new voices, new poems, and new perspectives as I gather poems alongside

our terrific producers.

I draw on my own experiences as I write the episodes,

but I also get to research references from the poems,

ancient myths, scientific phenomena, word origins, and pop culture.

And because poets are wildly creative, my search history is all over the place. Research for today's episode landed me at the intersection of

pop culture and word origins. My question was, what's the history of the term thirst trap?

The internet did not disappoint.

I know what a thirst trap is.

A social media post meant to make viewers desire the poster sexually. In short, a sexy selfie.

It was first to find an urban dictionary back in 2011. By now, this term related to selfie culture is in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The phrase is a combination of the figurative use of thirsty, meaning craving attention, and the word trap.

So, a picture that captures viewers' attention. By 2018, ThirstTrap was being used in

publications like the New York Times and GQ without explanation. By then, thanks to social media and dating apps like Tinder and Grindr, it was assumed by that point that everyone knew what a thirst trap was.

People post seductive selfies for all kinds of reasons.

They might want validation in the forms of likes and comments. They might be single

in hoping to meet someone online. They might be trying to build a following or promote a product.

Someone's face or body is going to grab a lot more eyes on social media than text on a plain background,

which means we are often attaching our bodies to our labor or art.

Regardless of how you feel about this, it is in a way deeply intimate.

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