August 2, 2005

Have you noticed how obsessed people are about tags?

I mean, really. These people have gone so far into a little world of their own that they use words like "folksonomies" without defining them. Read on and you'll see they never step back and say something like, Hey, isn't it kind of funny to be obsessing about the tags like this? Let's go out and snap some pictures!

Credit to my son John for pointing out this phenomenon.

Bonus info: I never say "hat tip." Why should I? I sometimes wear a hat, sometimes even a man's fedora-type hat -- I wear an extra large man's hat and no non-stretchy woman's hat fits me. But even when I wear such a hat, I don't tip it at people. That's kind of a man thing. I mean, I know it's a metaphor, but I don't want to adopt the man metaphor. What's a good female variation on "hat tip"?

UPDATE: Sometimes when I put an unusual tag on a picture, I click the tag to see the other Flickr photos with that tag. Like today, with the second page of The Amsterdam Notebooks, I used the tag "zeep" (Dutch for soap) and found maybe four other pictures. And I used the tag "caryatid," and there wasn't a single other picture. Come on! People must be taking pictures of caryatids in museums and in Greece every day. Don't they know the word? But it's on the labels in museums. Anyway, I can't believe I was the only person who ever tagged anything "caryatid."

17 comments:

Nick said...

Curtsy?

Freeman Hunt said...

/nod

Kind of gender neutral.

Sissy Willis said...

Ankle flash? :)

Sissy Willis
sisu

gP said...

yes yes...tags...it beat me too. Im assimilated by them. Im planning to have my own tags...maybe for each day of the week...hahahahah

knox said...

"Mad props to"

Laura Reynolds said...

"Nod" is good

"tags" bleech! A totally uninteresting topic. What the hell are they talking about?

Finn Alexander Kristiansen said...

garter toss

Unknown said...

"Sloppy kiss"? (I had thought of "curtsy" too but I see that I am not alone.)

Ann Althouse said...

Stever: I think there is room to do some creative things with tags in Flickr (and Delicious -- insert the periods wherever the hell they belong -- I'm not devoting brain cells to this particular quirky punctuation). It can be interesting to do tags. I like what my son John has done with his tags, and he's put some creative thinking into tagging.

purple_kangaroo said...

How about, "I found this over at ___'s blog"?

Steven Taylor said...

I used to say Source: XXXX

and switched to Hat Tip, which has become h/t.

I have tried (although not very hard) to come up with my own unique version, but to no avail.

Banjo Jones said...

wink

JackOfClubs said...

I just say "Via: [Link]". If there is a long line of links before you get to the original article, I say "Food Chain: [Link]-[Link]-[Link]" in the order that I read them.

Contributors said...

Female hat tips? Depending on the source it could be: 'Wrist Flick' to express disdain. 'Hair Flip' to express attraction. 'Shoe Throw' for anger. 'Finger in Face' for bad move. 'Eye Roll' for idiot. And 'New Negligee' for 'Worth a look.'

Ann Althouse said...

I do normally use via, but it didn't seem apt without a link someplace. This was an in-person tip, from my son.

Unknown said...

What on earth are you talking about? Tags? I belive you've spent too much time online, to not only know what those are but to be positively sick of them by now.

Re: "hat tip." Grumble. And no one actual makes carbon copies on carbon paper anymore, but you know what cc: means. Quit being difficult.

Smilin' Jack said...

What's a good female variation on "hat tip"?

"Hat tip" is for the unlettered masses. You academics are expected to cite properly, with footnotes.