About

The Sexual Tension Between You And is a phrasal template used on Twitter to describe an awkward or unusual feeling between yourself and a person or thing while performing something ordinary but intimate. Although Twitter users began using the phrase to describe those feelings as early as 2011, the snowclone became a popular trend in August 2020 on Twitter.

Origin

On September 11th, 2011, Twitter user @_Scottness^[1] tweeted the first known example of using the phrasal template without describing something that typically is defined as sexual tension. The tweet, "The sexual tension between you and your yogurt when you forget your spoon.." garnered over 30 retweets in nine years (shown below).

Spread

On June 20th, 2014, Twitter user @Catcher_13^[2] tweeted, "The sexual tension between you and any other teenager you see at the grocery store" which received over 80 likes in six years (shown below, left). On December 18th, 2016, Twitter user @nkelley17^[3] posted another example saying, "The sexual tension between you and the only other person on the google doc" (shown below, right). The tweet garnered over 60 likes in four years.

On August 1st, 2020, Twitter user @wendys_dumpster^[4] posted a tweet that caused an outpouring of new The Sexual Tension Between You And tweets. The tweet, "The sexual tension between you and the person adjusting your seatbelt on a rollercoaster" accumulated over 515,700 likes and 62,500 retweets in 17 days (shown below, left). On August 14th, @snakibaki^[5] posted another popular example saying, "the sexual tension between you and the girl thats fixing your necklace" (shown below, right). The tweet gained over 115,400 likes and 14,000 retweets in four days. The Tab^[6] published a collection of these tweets.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References