Tag? Or Nag? Or Brag?!!

This post is not aimed at hurting the efforts/feelings of people. Remember the mantra 'Blogging is Tamaasha' !

For sometime now, I have been having this weird habit of 'Not' reading a blogpost if the title of that post started with "Tag..". Somehow such posts do not fascinate me. Or invoke the urge to read on. A couple of weeks ago, I was tagged for the first time by her giving some so-called-rules that I have to say something like A for Alwa, B for Bajji...and so on. That in my own style. And that explanation of "A, B...Z" should be about me or my view on wordly things. Then once again, I was tagged by her and him. This time the rules were that I hafta say 8 things about myself that the world doesn't know yet. I thought for a while and said to myself that there are over 8000 things about myself that the world doesn't know. And above that, there are 800000 things about myself that I don't know in the first place. And then there are other people who pass out an open tag, saying anybody can take up and follow the tag! I said "Wait a min...what is this fuss on tagging all about?!". I sit back and think why this concept of tagging started in the first place.

My little brain naively suggests that first of all, Tagging gives a nice little topic for people to post a blog. And strangely, there is no second of all. Thats right! And then my brain and it's thinking goes gradually skewed. It compares the concept of tagging to the otiose e-mails that used to and still spreading around. I'm talking about the ones with "Lord Balaji"s or "Lord Jesus"s jpg attached and with a content saying "Forward this e-mail to 7 other people in next 7 minutes and you'll get have a good thing happening to you in 7 days". And such e-mails would also threaten you saying if you do not forward the e-mail, bad luck would cast its spell within next 3 days! Wow! How cool is that?!! And there are those e-mails which would say something like "This is an e-mail approved by Microsoft and for every person you forward it to, you'll have $1.50 credited to your bank account!". And the highlight is they would site examples like "John forwarded such e-mails and received $1200 credited to his account last month!". They would also say "Mike lost $750 within a week because he ignored this e-mail". Wow again! Fantastic idea! And I go thru a 'spitting-my-kaapi-thru-nose" laughter session when I think of people who forward such e-mails to a whole group of people, hoping that does some good to them. I dont understand if they really understand that they are spreading the stupidity proudly and serving to the whims of the creator of such e-mails!

After all this, my brain tries to think about the title of this post. It analyses and argues with itself. And it speculates and concludes that this dumb act of forwarding such e-mails can no way be compared to 'tagging'. In fact, this e-mail logic is not even close to 'tagging'. Because every single person who spreads this 'Tagging' is smart. I mean they all write well in their blogs. Apart from the fact that it gives an idea for a blogpost(esp for ppl who are longing for title and ideas), there are other aspects of Tagging. When X tags Y, it is an indirect way of X saying to Y that 'you are one of the top 3 bloggers that comes to my mind right now!". And this might make Y take pride and feel happy. If Y is already a friend of X, then it's way of showing friendship. And the next reason is it enables a way to showcase one's own self in a different way. Though the concept of blogging itself is to communicate things happening around the author's world/perspective, these 'tag-related-posts' would only do justice to the concept on a higher notch. And this invariably makes the author satiated. So, however we look this 'tag' idea looks good.

But hey, whats the fun in following the trend and allowing the chain to pass on, when you have this trivial happiness of breaking the chain and stopping the flow!! That's where I guess the real 'Kick' lies! So I decide not to pass this tag to anybody. You know if you don't pass this tag, Nothing will happen to you in the next 3 days. Seriously, beleive me - I did not pass this to anybody and nothing happened to me too!

Ha! the trivial happiness! For which I blog after all!