Tag Yourself / Tag Your Friends
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About
Tag Yourself and Tag Your Friends refer to fandom surveys in which participants are presented with a lineup of celebrities or fictional characters and prompted to identify which are the most relatable to themselves or their peers. Recognizable by the poorly drawn avatars of the characters and ill-phrased descriptions of their traits in Comic Sans, the illustrative surveys went viral on the popular microblogging platform Tumblr in late January 2016.
Origin
The earliest known variation was posted by Tumblr user Goblinlord[2] on January 24th, 2016. The survey post, which featured MS Paint-style illustrations of six bird-like original characters with the caption challenging its viewers to "reblog and tag which bird you are," garnered more than 101,000 notes within the first 72 hours.
Precursor: 4chan "Choose Wisely" Threads
On the online image board 4chan, a popular forum game is creating lists of options which only allow one of these to be chosen. Popular themes in these lists include the viewer finding themselves in a dangerous situation and having limited options of help, or coming accross magical items which grant special abilities or cause lifechanging events.
Spread
The illustrations usually consist of poorly drawn character art with mislabeled names and heavily opinionated descriptions of their characteristics. On January 24th, numerous variations began circulating on Tumblr, many of which garnered tens of thousands of notes in the following 24 hours. Some of the early variations to pass the milestone of 30,000 notes include:
- Suraito[1] – 32,000+ notes
- Goblinlord[2] – 86,000+ notes
- Dajo42[3] – 43,000+ notes
- Cyberjail[4] – 44,000+ notes
- Ghost-pkmn[5] – 36,000+ notes
- Eridan[6] – 39,000+ notes
- Kastraz[7] – 49,000+ notes
- Sincerelydeerly[8] – 33,000 notes
- Sord[9] – 40,000+ notes
- Valhalls[10] – 41,000+ notes
- iwstw[11] – 39,000+ notes
The following day, the @tagyourselfmeme[16] Instagram feed was launched, highlighting notable examples from the series. Over the next 10 months, the feed garnered upwards of 33,800 followers. Also on January 25th, Twitter user @gentleskies[18] tweeted a Pepe the Frog-themed variation of the survey (shown below).
On January 27th, The Daily Dot[15] published an article titled "The 'tag yourself' meme lets you choose your own destiny." On February 9th, Smosh[17] published a listicle highlighting various examples of the meme. On May 9th, 2016, Instagram[14] user _memethief posted a Dat Boi-themed version of the meme. On November 4th, the news site Mic[19] published an article referring to Tag Yourself as "the best meme of 2016."
Various Examples
Additional numerous examples can also be found on Tumblr through the tags "tag yourself"[12] and "tag yourself meme."[13]
Search Interest
External References
[2] Tumblr – Goblinlord
[5] Tumblr – ghost-pkmn
[8] Tumblr – Sincerelydeerly
[12] Tumblr – Tagged 'tag yourself'
[13] Tumblr – Tagged 'tag yourself meme'
[14] Instagram – _memethief
[15] The Daily Dot – The tag yourself meme lets you control your own destiny
[16] Instagram – tagyourselfmeme
[17] Smosh – 22 Weirdest (And Best) Examples of the 'Tag Yourself' Meme
[18] Twitter – @gentleskies
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Top Comments
Greninja
Jan 25, 2016 at 07:30PM EST
Dreamworks Moderator
Jan 25, 2016 at 08:07PM EST