Lexicon ·
next
verb, also 'nexted'
- Stated meaning
- Dropping a prospect who is not responding, and moving on to the following one.
- Operating meaning
- A rejection entered as a decision by the party who received it, so that the books show a choice made and none suffered.
- Origin
- Pickup vocabulary, in use on the newsgroup alt.seduction.fast by June 2003, where it was already written in quotation marks.
The word was in use when the alt.seduction.fast archive (opens in a new window) opens. In June 2003 a poster cautioned that it was “probably a bad idea to ‘next’ a girl simply because she hasn’t returned one call or email.” In July another described the procedure in full: “Most ASF men would ‘next’ her and move to someone else.”
The method needed it. A system built on approaching in volume produces a matching volume of conversations that go nowhere, and each one has to be closed before the next can be opened. The word closes them at no cost. It is written the way a cashier calls the queue, and it can be applied to someone who has not yet replied, which saves waiting to find out whether she would have.
Under load, the word is most useful after the fact. In August 2003 a field report asked how to recover a conversation “without nexting her, which I did after she said she wasn’t the ‘average girl’ and walked away.” She left, and he filed the departure as his. Both parties ended it, and only one of them wrote it up, in the active voice, with himself as the subject.