Hooking Up vs Hooking Up (Or the Implications of Generational Grammar)
OK, Tim, so I may have misread that Post story about a local musician hooking up with a stranger on the L train. See to me, a Gen-Y-ish college graduate who went to school at a snotty upstate private University, the phrase “hooking up” implies sloppy, regretful sex where nobody wins yet somehow nobody loses.
To the Post, and I imagine my parents, hooking up means “getting together.” So, in this case, our friendly, pre-celibate musician was “feeling it” (and in this case, no, Posties I don’t mean literally feeling “it” ((and no, I don’t mean “it” as in “penis”))) and decided to go to a guy’s house whom she had met literally minutes before on the L train platform, where she then regretfully experienced The Sex.
Case in point: By saying a woman hooked up on a train platform with somebody before she actually hooked up in a bed and then swore off sex all together, you are inviting provoking headlines like “Sex on L Train Platform Leads to Celibacy Pledge.”
That is all. Pure motherfucking magic.
Understood. I could’ve read “hooking up” either way, too. It was her leaving the guy’s apt. that tipped me off though.
I just figured it was intentionally a misleading title as the implication of someone actually having sex on the platform is obviously more provocative.
Regardless, let’s just agree that the rest of us (you and I included) are all winners by default- simply for not having had sex with a stranger only to attempt to make a story out of it to shamelessly (truly appropriate adjective, in this instance) plug our failing career.
Abraca-pocus!
excuse my grammar: shamelessly is an adverb, not an adjective.
Shamelessly can be whatever you want here. It’s a safe zone!
i’m pretty thrilled you brought this point up. whenever my roommate tells me he “hooked up” with a girl i have to make him clarify. to him it means snogging. i never lived in any climate that accepted that definition. hooking up is having sex.
I assumed it meant that she had sex with him right there on the platform, which frankly is the only reason I read the article.
“Hooking up” is vague in the way “fooling around” is. I consider hooking up as having sex, though I know people who use it to mean what I consider fooling around (not sex, but more than just making out), and still I know people who have said fooling around to imply sex.
There really should be a formal consensus.