No three tag limit here

ADB-160403#171

Tags, or graffiti signatures, pepper the downtown landscape of Toronto. They are scribbled in Sharpie® and Liquid Paper®, they are spray painted in contrasting colours, the are even printed on stickers. Often they resemble letters that have taken halucinagens and then fallen into a blender. This is called wildstyle. Sometime they mean [artist x] painted this mural, sometimes they mean this is [gang x] territory, and sometimes it’s just an enebriated skrawl from someone with a silver marker in their pocket. But regardless of where they come from, they are everywhere.

Gas meters, doors, pipes, walls, street signs, electrical boxes, mailboxes—anything with an almost flat surface is a canvas. Canada Post used to have plain red mailboxes, but tagging got so prevalent on their bright canvases, that they introduced the kaleidoscope pattern, a busy wallpaper of postal codes in different weights and colours. These new boxes look like a mail carrier ate their deliveries and threw-up. Any tag would get lost in the midst of this mess and is not worth the effort. So who really won that fight?

Tags, or keywords associated with data, pepper the social landscape of the internet. They are built into Facebook and Instagram, they are created using hastags (#) on Twitter, the are even found on the bottom of posts here at Medium (although limited to three). Often they resemble buttons that reach out to similar themes of content. This is called metadata. Sometime they mean [user x] posted this content, sometimes they mean this is [topic x] territory, and sometimes it’s just an enebriated skrawl from someone with too much to say. But regardless of where they come from, they are everywhere.

Selfies, photos, livestreams, quotes, videos, posts, status updates— anything with an image or a few words is taggable content. Medium used to have pain old stories, but tagging got so prevalent on other platforms, that they introduced post vectors, a way of measuring how frequent and how special certain words are. These new equations look like a math professor hacked your Wordpress account. Too many tags would get lost in a sea of noise, so Medium created a tag limit. Three.