Tiny: We need to talk about tags.
Me: “Tags”?
Tiny: You know, on blogs and social networks. Like, for example, “Giant/tiny”.
Me: Okay, what about them?
Tiny: Why does “giant” always have to come first?
Me: It doesn’t, I suppose.
Tiny: Then why don’t you ever see “tiny/giant”?
Me: I’m sure it’s used. I think I might have seen it just the other day.
Tiny: You “think”? Show me.
Me: [Pulls up Tumblr, types in Search field] Hmm. [Scrolls] Even when I put it in quotes, I just gets hits on either “giant” or “tiny”. [Keeps scrolling] Wow, look at him.
Tiny: Don’t change the subject. I wanna know why everybody’s tags start with “giant”.
Me: I guess it’s alphabetical.
Tiny: How convenient. Just like “macro” comes before “micro”. Just like “big” comes before “small”. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
Me: I didn’t design the alphabet.
Tiny: What an ego. This is bigger than you. Everybody tags this way.
Me: So what? It’s just a tag.
Tiny: It’s everyday things like this that normalize the idea that giants take precedence over tinies, that you’re more important than us.
Me: What?
Tiny: We have a hard enough time being seen without you hulks blocking the view. Even that slash is hard to see between the two ‘t’s; people will think you tagged it “gianttiny”, rhymes with “monotony”.
Me: That’s a bit of a stretch.
Tiny: And some people just use “g/t”. Don’t they know that also means just “giant”? It’s like we’re not even there! It’s tiny erasure!
Me: You could say it’s a . . . “micro-aggression”.
Tiny: Shut up! This isn’t funny!
Me: Okay, I’m sorry, I get it.
Tiny: So give me a reason why we shouldn’t start insisting on “tiny/giant”.
Me: Well, for one thing, I think there’s a couple of users in the community with that handle, and people might think we’re attributing everything to them . . .
Tiny: Yeah, it would go straight to their heads and they’d end up with egos as big as yours.
Me: . . . and, more importantly, we already have enough confusion in the tags. Some people use “giant/tiny”, some people use “macro/micro”, some people ignore half the fetish and just put “macrophilia” or “giantess”. We finally have some degree of consistency, but if we unilaterally start switching the order now, it will just result in people having to do twice as many searches to find the same number of posts.
Tiny: I can’t tell you how reasonable that sounds coming from someone who’s been introduced first their entire lives.
Me: [Sigh] Okay, howabout from now on, we use a lower-case ‘g’ for “giant” and a capital ‘T’ for “tiny”. The spelling is the same, so it still comes up in searches, but we remind everyone that both giants and tinies are important.
Tiny: Hmm. I guess that works. Except, um, you know it’s hard for me to type capital letters.
Me: Don’t worry, I’ll press the Shift key for you.
Tiny: Thanks. [Hugs nose]
Originally posted: 23 Feb 2016
El Amante Menguante 