Tag, You're It

Art by Kay Thomas

“Tag yourself,” your friend jokes as they point to a scene of a mother and two children. The mother scrolls through her phone while one child spins in circles and the other child sleeps soundly in a stroller. “The spinning one, obviously,” you respond. “I’m the unbothered mom,” your friend decides— bam, you’ve both been tagged. From Sex and the City characters to cigarette carton packaging, we are a generation enamored with curating personal brands. The trend of “tagging yourself” is far more complex than picking which Powerpuff Girl you and your friends are going to dress as for Halloween. It uses the essence of images and character traits to define who you are and how you relate to the world.

Flickr was the first platform to use the term “tag,” which was later popularized by Facebook. To “tag” is an activity that developed via social media, and we were the first generation to do it. When we tag ourselves online, we identify who we are as a part of a group— we chose to own our image. When we tag ourselves in everyday conversation, we develop and curate our own personal brands by piecing together different cultural aspects that we see reflected in ourselves. We are a generation inevitably inundated with information and media and consumption of such. And when we tag ourselves, we reclaim what would otherwise go unspoken. 

Acknowledging ourselves as a collection of experiences, media, and materials is a casual way of citing our sources. By tagging ourselves out loud, we get to choose what aspects of ourselves we wish to have perceived by others, or which aspects we’d like to amplify in our own minds. However, to tag yourself can be dangerous— it can put you in a box or normalize toxic tendencies. This is why I advocate for an understanding of why we love to tag ourselves and to use the tool as a practice of liberation and self-discovery. 

So, I pose a few simple tags to you: 
Tag Yourself:

-John

-Paul 

-George 

-Ringo

Tag Yourself:

-Newports

-Marlboro Reds 

-American Spirit 

Tag Yourself:

-Pomeranian in the garden

-Squirrel in the common 

-White swans in the garden

-Frogs in the frog pond 

This format, though simple to us, may very well baffle a boomer. I venture to guess that it only took you a few seconds to decide which option you identify as. This shows the subtle superpower in knowing exactly who you are and choosing to be so unapologetically. Even in cases in which we may not feel a connection to any of the options to tag, we still inevitably pick one— a roleplay of sorts. This kind of exploration into the self lets us try on different hats and see how they fit. This is a quality of Gen Z that I so admire and feel lucky to be a part of. Tagging yourself need not be restrictive and rigid, as there is always the option not to be tagged at all, an option to “hide from my profile”— but the self-awareness that goes into these decisions is thunderous.

We are a generation of rule-breakers, deniers of the oppressive, and champions of creativity. To use the “tag yourself” format is not to stifle personality and rest in the familiar, but to expand a  sense of self. And so, this is the task I implore you to pursue. Tag, you’re it.