Enough With the Tag Bombing Already

This is a rant

If you write on this platform, you know what I’m talking about. For the last month-plus, tag bombing on this platform has been out of hand — and I’m not Tim Denning popular, you know?

I want to pull out my hair when I see notification after notification that I’ve been blanket-tagged in someone’s work, like this:

Over the past six weeks, I’ve noticed an uptick in this behavior due to some daily poetry challenges. I enjoy writing challenges. I do not enjoy being tagged on them by multiple writers daily.

When I click notifications that my name has been tagged, I don’t know if it’s for a personally relevant reason (acceptable to me) or for an impersonal challenge under a tag bomb (unacceptable to me). Out of curiosity, I go to the work I’ve been tagged on. If I’m part of a tag bomb, I shake my head in resignation, anxiety, and seething anger, and back out of the page.

When you include the same person day after day of tagging on multiple works for over a month, it feels suffocating. It feels icky. It feels plain bad.

Please stop tag bombing me.

As writers, we are used to walking on some eggshells in order to not alienate our audience. I can hear the eggshells crunching, echoing, and reverberating through the platform now, as I wonder how many readers I’ll lose for writing this.

But I’m there — I’m at the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m writing a PSA in the (probably) naive hope that this is what needs to be said aloud that no one else is saying and that some writers re-evaluate their behavior and decide to stop being writing terrorists.

Perhaps, you enjoy being tag bombed. If you don’t, here are the following ways I’ve been coping, and you can too.

Stop being a writing terrorist with your tag bombs, mmmkay?!

1. Ignore Notifications

Avoid checking e-mail and getting on the platform. This way I don’t see the million bajillion notifications that I’ve been tagged repeatedly days on end until one day I get the gumption to finally check. When I do that, I delete all the emails and ignore the notifications on the platform.

Lesson: Tag bombing is counter-productive and not beneficial for the writer assigning tag blankets. Instead of inviting us into your world of creativity, you are nagging us to look — every stinking day. I know this is blunt and may hurt your feelings. I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I do want to preserve my brainpower and free will to read whatever the hell I want to read.

Medium Staff, would you consider a rule against tag bombing/blanket tagging? Maybe even writing a Medium guide to writer’s etiquette, like the one I wrote here? Medium Etiquette Guide For Beginners

By the way, I’m guilty of tag bombing. I’ve been doing it weekly on newsletters for Age of Empathy for almost a year. When a friend and writing peer kindly private messaged me to ask me to take her name off the list and I saw Eric Pierce announcing he’d no longer be doing it in his FanFare newsletters, I knew it was time to quit. No more newsletter tag bombing.

2. Clap Everything Quickly

There’s also the option of clapping all these works you’re notified on without reading the poem/article/satire/etc — because who has time for that? As writers, we are trying to pound out content, often on the daily. We want to support every writer, but the reality is — we can’t. We are not superhuman, immortal writers, with ultra-speed reading skills who can interact with all the quality writers on the platform. We just can’t. You can’t. I can’t. We can’t.

Lesson: Stop it already! Stop the tag bombing. Please, please, please stop! I’ve let my irritation simmer for over a year — and the last month and a half have been trying — very trying. Stop!!!

The alternative? Create a handwritten list of writers who you want to support — they may be new writers, your friends, or writers you’ve enjoyed reading for some time. Make it a goal to read those 10 writer’s articles each week. Highlight, clap, and comment. Engage with these writers. You can focus your energy without feeling overwhelmed.

Alternatively, follow Mary DeVries's lead, and try reading all the articles published in a publication for a week. She tagged me because she started out with Age of Empathy — you know what? It made my freaking day! Here’s the link to that article:

It was a personal tag, relevant to my publication and me. I wasn’t off-put by being grouped into a 50-person tag bomb from a writer who’s hoping to bank read-time from their penchant for excessive tagging. It’s not a good look. Stop!

Alternatively alternatively? Tag a few people when it’s relevant to your article to tag those people, as I’ve done here. Writers and readers tend to be flattered instead of annoyed when you tag them to share links to their stories or publications.

3. Practice Nonviolent Communication

The idea behind nonviolent communication is that you communicate directly with kindness and love, especially when you are expressing disagreement. A few days ago, I posted in a supportive writing Facebook group that I’m in about this issue and asked for recommendations.

I think most writers use tag bombs because they want to forge authentic connections with other writers and readers. Nonviolent communication honors that this authentic connection is what all people seek.

Because I feel less supportive of writers who are tag bombing me, and actually turned off by this behavior, and feel like not reading their work, I decided the kindest course of action was to be direct and kind. This can feel scary. I don’t want to hurt feelings or come across as unsupportive, but ignoring a writer’s body of work because I find myself building up resentment is equally unsupportive.

Lesson: Be direct and kind, stating your request simply. I decided to visit the pages that I’d most recently been tag bombed on and left a private message that stated something like,

“Hi Jane/Joe Doe, I hope you are doing well. Thank you for thinking of me. I find being tagged overwhelming. Would you please remove my name? Thank you, Aimée”

The writers responded very quickly with kindness and respect. Best case scenario. And, you know what? I’ve gone to read their work now. It was a huge relief to stop seeing my name @ed over and over and over and over again in my notifications.

Commit to Engage More and Tag Less

Thank you for sticking it out with me to the end. I noticed that when I quit tagging writers compulsively and started commenting on their work instead, I received more support and curious visits to my profile page.

I’m sure there’s some psychology to this. Most of us do not want to be nagged. We want to feel supported and offer support when we have the energy and opportunity.

Please let your readers choose how and when they spend their energy. It’ll be better for everyone.

Thank you to J.J. Pryor for giving me a kick in the gut and adrenaline in the uterus to human-up and write this PSA. I know I’m not the only one who feels stressed the eff out when my name pops up in a trilliongobzillion notifications a day.

Here’s JJ’s article that inspired me:

Aimée Gramblin is still figuring out who she is and that’s okay. You can read all her Medium essays here.