Gather 'round, friends. Grab a seat. Everybody comfortable? Good, because we need to talk.
*takes a deep breath*
Y'ALL NEED TO STOP FUCKING SNITCH TAGGING.
SEE ALSO: The 'big story coming' tweets need to endDon't give me that look, you know good and gotdamn well what snitch tagging is. It's when you're minding your own business, shit talking someone on Twitter (which is exactly what that godforsaken website was made for, by the way), AND THEN SOMEONE RUINS YOUR FUN BY TAGGING THE SUBJECT IN THE FUCKING THREAD.
It's basically the opposite of a subtweet, and subtweets are what fuels Twitter.
Prime example of snitch tagging: that time someone tagged Elon Musk in a tweet about him by Noah Shachtman, editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast.
I'm sorry that some snitch tagged on you, Noah. And I am sorry that I am republishing it here. Credit: Twitter, Noah Shactman, Wade Black WHY IN YOUR LIFE WOULD YOU EVER DO THAT?! Shactman literally justsaid that Musk was being aggressive towards the media, so what in the name of all that is holy would possess you to call Musk on over?!
No, this is not acceptable. Snitch tagging needs to end.
If we wanted to alert someone that we were being shady about, we would tag them.
The case against snitch tagging is simple. If we wanted to alert someone that we were being shady about, we would tag them. That's what tagging is for. Twitter has built a whole robust system of it, with @ mentions and hashtags and photo tags. If we didn't tag them, you can bet your sabotaging ass we want to shit talk that person with our friends but we don't want to start DRAMA™ by looping them in the convo.
Sure, the person that you're stealth dragging could find the tweet by searching their own name on Twitter, but then any type of roasting that person stumbles into is on them because that's a special type of millennial narcissism and who even does that?! (Okay, we all do it, but still.)
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Hey, you looking SHOOK in the back, don't worry: a snitch tag isn't when you tag your friends in someone else's tweet that you think is funny. That's called sharing the love.
A snitch tag is specifically when you tag the person who is being shaded, so that they get a notification alerting them to what their eyes frankly do not need to see because this tweet is aboutthem but it's not forthem.
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Here's why snitch tagging is so bad. Twitter is basically a hyper-public message board that's so flooded with noise that it feels like we're each talking in our own secluded vacuums. As the saying goes: AIN'T NO ONE PAYING ATTENTION TO YOUR TWEETS.
Snitch tagging is ruining Twitter because it means fewer interesting stories get told.
But, of course, that's all one big delusion we've collectively agreed on. While the crowded nature of Twitter gives us courage to tweet things we wouldn't normally say on more earnest and/or curated platforms like Facebook, Twitter was designed precisely to broadcast your thoughts to people who you don't necessarily know.
It's all a very delicate balance. And snitch tagging brings down the whole system.
Ultimately, snitch tagging is ruining Twitter because it means fewer interesting stories get told.
Take for instance that time journalist Nicole Cliff wanted to tweet about a memoir she, for what I can only assume from the first tweet, extremely did not like:
Credit: Twitter, Nicole Cliffe Now, whatever it is that Cliffe said about that forgotten memoir is lost to the world because one of y'all snitched!
Likewise:
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Who here doesn't want to read about TV couples are doing it IRL. That was a trick question. EVERYONEwants to read about on screen romances that became real, but we will never know because SNITCH TAGGING RUINS EVERYTHING.
Twitter user @ramsincanon said it best:
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Fortunately, there is one easy solution to a snitch tagger. Block 'em.
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Moral of the story: STOP FUCKING SNITCH TAGGING.
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Phew. I'm glad we had this talk.
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