Eventually journalistic whores Buzzfeed got involved, posting several pictures from data-mined social media accounts into a list-based programming module in which to familiarize people with the definitions of the term and those who would properly fit it. Now that the cancer has spread, sky is the limit as far as infection is concerned. A user from 9gag by the name of Accipehoc (whose real name seems to be Andy Le according to TasteKid) then creates a meme which garners several thousand points of acceptance in the online community. According to most of the information I can find from this gentleman, he is an avid gamer and many memes are attributed to his name upon a simple Google search. Hence, it makes him a great vehicle for the spreading of this virus in such a comedic and unexpected way. Users on FunnyJunk, Twitter, Tumblr, Vine, Instagram and a plethora of other Web 2.0 conflagrations have used the term as of recent and now it is modern culture. In essence, it's the same thing as calling someone a "square" back in the seventies. It isn't a term that one wants to be affiliated with, as well as the term "basic" which I am also sure is based on meme culture and the literal equivalent of "square" in this generation. But I will get to that in a later article.

What I have seen, is something quite staggering that will perhaps carry far-reaching effects to future generations and their children (note to parents: stop feeding your children full of junk net culture and get them off your cellphones) although most do not yet realize it. Men and women are often using the term to judge each other, with the words slut and manwhore on the way out as the newspeak "thirst" seeks to completely replace them. The comical thing about this is that human biology points to procreation and even monogamy isn't a common thing in the animal kingdom. It's nearly exclusive to us. Animals do not marry, nor do they have certain ceremonies in which they are designated to stay together; but because of land and religious programming, we decide to do just that. While marriage is not the focus of this essay, it is this statute that gives the term "thirst" a steady hold on today's society. If we're not biologically prone to sticking with one mate for the rest of our lives, then why are we looked upon in such disdain if we choose to do what is natural and let loose our primitive urges towards attractive women?

Homosexuals do not feel the same disdain towards each other, and it almost seems that if you're a gay man or woman in society you won't have as much to worry about insofar as being with many different mates. There are plenty of bars and clubs where individuals of that sort can mingle and mate and move on about their business, but it seems like there's a bit of a difference when one is considered a cisgendered (straight) man or woman. Both men and women can indeed share this thirst for each other, and though the sexual attractions for women are different than men (women are more emotionally attracted, while men are more physically attracted) it is still a very common occurrence.

Yet men are afraid of being labeled as thirsty or considered by women as such, because it is somewhat instilled upon in society that one can no longer follow one's sexual urges. When a man sees something pleasurable, he becomes aroused. When a woman sees something pleasurable, she also becomes aroused. It has been this way since humans first walked upright. Menstrual blood was considered sacred and was used to adorn graves. The woman was known as that which "bleeds and does not die." It is not only common for men to lust after and worship women, it is hereditary. Men have been putting women on pedestals for centuries, finding pleasure in those of ill repute and asking for the most heinous of pleasures to be delivered upon them. All of this is natural for animals of our nature.

Men are afraid of looking desperate, though many truly are. Why is that such a terrible thing? The biological nature of a man is to spread his seed for future generations. The biological nature of a woman is to carry that seed and nurture that human offspring until it does the same. We're no different than other mammals and refuse to acknowledge these points. We feel that we're superior to other creatures, when we're in fact destroying this planet faster than any living being on the globe. We don't even truly understand ourselves, with our wars over thought egregores and different worldviews. I've never seen a bison imprison and torture a herd of llamas. I've never seen a giraffe launch a nuclear weapon into a heavily populated area. I've never seen a buffalo dump radioactive waste into the ocean. We keep convincing ourselves that we are indeed above the rest of the life on this planet, but I simply cannot see any indication of that other than our immense grasp of technology in the past hundred years.

With the world moving so fast and everyone addicted to their cellphones and tablet devices, it almost seems rather natural that the sexual urges that lie within man would fight harder than ever to keep the species alive. Some men are learning how to play the new game and in the process are fulfilling their biological nature quite well. Others simply refuse to play the game for the type of people involved on the playing field. Others have dug into the worlds of anime culture and are no longer concerned with humans, but with idealized 2D drawings of women popularized by the Japanese erotic market.

In any case, the thirst is indeed real. Men want to have sex with women, women want to have sex with men. Men want to have sex with other men and women want to have sex with other women. Sex is a very powerful part of our culture. It is programmed by society that one must marry and have offspring. Even in drawings, men see that which they wish to see on other women. Women see that which they wish to see on men. It's gone on since the days of classical art and Caesar Borgia's muscular portrayals of Christ. Thirst should never be a bad word, for it is only natural.

Desperate? You bet we are. If a man feels that he cannot do that which he was built for, he slowly turns to other means of fulfilment and finds depression, drug and substance abuse among other destructive faculties. Behaviors that were not apparent in the man will now appear in the form of mental disorders and inadequacies. He might not even be able to perform as well as he once could, due to being nervous and out of practice. This could affect him even further, bringing him closer and closer to a swirling abyss of despair that will eventually consume him whole and could eventually be the cause of his demise, either in the form of health problems or suicide depending on the strength of his will.

In the end, I feel that the grand plan for this is a means of further population control and something that reminds me of sex descriptors in Orwell's 1984. In 1984, the individual is paired only with a woman that he will not find attractive and the act must be as unpleasurable as humanly possible. It was mainly seen as a way to create children and nothing more, children that would serve to become spies for Big Brother. In today's society where thirst is so heavily pushed, it seems to me that this deterrent is unnecessarily pushing away men from women who might actually benefit from such an encounter.

We're all looking for class, yet barely have enough as commoners to truly match our own standards in attractive mates. Ask yourself, are you classy enough to match your own standards of class in an individual? If a person on the same level as you walked up and asked if you would be interested in a means of courtship (ie: dating), would you simply turn them away? Because in essence, you'd be turning away yourself and therefore exercising hypocrisy. We all seek idealized mates, but more often than not we miss those we will be truly happy with because they don't live up to our perfect standards. They're all thirsty, they're all basic, they're all trashy, they're all not good enough. Eventually you'll have to make a choice, so I feel that unless you would love to help the system and corporate powerhouses from accomplishing their goals of a dehumanized society, then you should start broadening your spectrum a bit and perhaps even filling up that glass just a little. You never know when you're going to need a drink of water yourself. Once again, the thirst is real and the dating world can feel akin to that of a desert. For the people struggling to survive in this hellish barren wasteland, a glass of ice water is something of a miracle.

-Eric May
@wordmageeric