Buzzerflies, or Buzzer-flies. What’s that?
The feeling one gets when his or her phone buzzes, and it is potentially the special call or message he or she has been waiting for.
Etymology
Derives from buzz, buzzer, flies. Buzzer flies written separately means bait for fish in the form of an artificial fly.
How to use the word
When a person rushes to the phone, interrupting all the conversations and things he or she is doing. One could say vibro-bait, but firstly, this word is already taken by fishermen, and secondly, it sounds rather nasty and offensive to a person waiting for an important call. Using fishing associations, it is better to replace it with something like hooked.
There are other new English words with the buzz root — for example, buzzword: any word or phrase that is said to impress, but makes little sense. Convenient for presentations and pitching. For example, big data. Or omnichannel. Or vlogger.
Why
Everyone has a fear of losing technical connection with mobile networks or the Internet. Human connection with loved ones, and especially with those who may become so in the near future, is important too. There is a new term for this feeling: disconnect anxiety. As for the bazzerflies, or hooked, British scientists … well, British journalists made their own research. They found out that one of the most noticeable disorders associated with smartphones is phantom vibrations. That is phantom buzzes. BBC interviewed college students and found out that 80 percent of them regularly hear their phones vibrate and find out that nobody is calling. If this happens more than once a day, things turn ugly: it means you are psychologically dependent on your mobile.
Seems a plague of the twenty-first century. This disorder is not yet listed in the latest version of the mental health determinant of the American Psychiatric Association – it annually updates its classification and includes more and more problems related to devices and the Internet. But phantom vibrations are easily explained by simple logic: since it became commonplace to put phones on vibration, you never know if there was a call or it was just a feeling. And in this case, a false alarm looks like a much more reasonable choice than a missed call that was important.
Cover image: Shutterstock.com
