In his famous tragic play, Romeo and Juliet, the author, William Shakespeare had his leading lady, Juliet Capulet, tell this to her lover, Romeo Montague –

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

(Here Juliet compares Romeo to a rose and tells him that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention. If he was not named Romeo, he would still be handsome and be Juliet’s love.  She loves the person named ‘Montague’, and not the Montague name or the Montague family.)

I bet Mr. Shakespeare did not see it coming in the era of social networking and trolling how fellow Indians would take this quote a bit too seriously and master the art of tagging incorrect names on social network posts.

We Indians are a bunch of emotional people and, like the rest of the world, take to social media for expressing our feelings. Looking at the calendar events of 2017, it is clearly evident that although we all are very competent and tech-savvy, and can type a sentence in our over-smart phones within a minute or a second, some of us do require to pay serious attention to tagging to ensure that the messages reach the correct person.

Why you ask? Because, in this era, it’s all in, and about, the name.

First, outraged by Snapchat’s CEO, Evan Spiegel, allegedly calling India ‘a poor nation’, the Twitterati Indians targeted to slam Snapchat but ended up unleashing their vitriol on Snapdeal instead. Amidst the trending #uninstallsnapchat hashtag, the e-commerce application faced a brand image crisis along with the loss of substantial number of customers, owing to the mass uninstallation, before the mistake was rectified. Thankfully, they realized that all ‘Snap’s are not the same.

Then, our very own Cheddi Singh, actor Sonu Sood, had to face the wrath of the angry Indians for sharing the same name with the famous singer, Sonu Nigam, who took to twitter to express his discomfort over morning Azaan (prayer call). The difference in the last name between the two personalities was overlooked and thrown out of the window while the Twitterati Indians floated #BoycottSonu hashtag threatening to boycott the actor and his movies. Baffled by the online hullabaloo, our own Bhaiyya-jee must have smiled ear-to-ear while expressing his surprise/shock in a Twitter post.

The saga of incorrect tagging did not stop at this.

When cricketer Zaheer Khan announced his engagement to the Chak De! India actress, Sagarika Ghatge, on social media, he was flooded with congratulatory messages on Twitter. Amidst all these warm wishes, the then coach of the Indian cricket team, Anil Kumble’s congratulatory post created a riot of laughter and series of trolls on the micro-blogging site when he mistakenly tagged journalist Sagarika Ghose instead of Sagarika Ghatge.

Soon after he corrected his mistake, the same goof-up was seen coming, and later corrected (post deleted), from the official Twitter account of IPL franchise Delhi Daredevils.

Along with the Twitterati team, Sagarika Ghose, too, joined the fun and posted –

Last but definitely not the least, as I am sure many more are yet to come, the Indian Twitterati broke into a frenzy yet again when a leading media house mistakenly tagged former diplomat, Shashi Tharoor, to announce the demise news of veteran actor, Shashi Kapoor, who recently passed away at the age of 79.

The impact of this incorrect tagging was so intense that Mr. Tharoor’s office started receiving calls from journalists, and he had to tweet back to announce his continued existence.

These hilarious mix-ups of names just create the much-needed exuberant atmosphere amidst the other dark news concerning the nation on a domestic and global level.

Coming back to Mr. Shakespeare’s quote, ‘What’s in a name’, I wonder what would be the possible response from the Twitteratis if Romeo and Juliet were born in this era of social networking sites, and either one of them tags a wrong person in his/her romantic tweet. Well, I would like to rest my brain from this ongoing saga of incorrect tagging and leave this on you to contemplate.

As for the rest of the Indian Twiterratti, ‘Kisiko bhi tag kardo, it’s all the same yaar! Naam me kya rakh hai? Bas, bhawnaao ko samjho’.

Image Source: Google