Thoughts: The "Random" Tag. · 10:15am Mar 6th, 2014
Honestly, I think the tag is there to mark pointless stories that have absolutely no merit behind them at all.
Now I know there's probably a masterpiece or two out there with the random tag, so I'm not throwing the 'it sucks' blanket over the entire field. But I've come to notice that just about every story I see with the random tag is either a lazily-written, steaming pile of walrus shit that's been pissed on by a cat, or more useless than a moped on a freeway if the moped had two flat tires and ran on bubble juice and the freeway was specifically designed to be driven on by rocket cars.
Generally, I associate the random tag with stories that have an excuse plot--and to clarify on the term 'excuse plot', I mean stories that exist solely to jack themselves off. If a story exists to simply end on a punchline, it's not really all too much of a story; it's just a joke, literally. It's a joke with a lot more words than need be. The story is that one guy at the bar who gets everyone to gather around so he can spin an entire tale just to slap his knee at the end and cackle at a penis joke, and while everybody else laughs too, it's apparent that the entire thing was a complete waste of time and there's that awkward bit of silence afterwards where nobody knows what to say so they go back to silently drinking their respective beverages.
All metaphors aside, the tag stands for everything that's wrong with a short story. Maybe they're good for a quick kick and a laugh, but that is literally all they are, and in the end, boil down to utter pointlessness.
But they can be funny sometimes, so I've got to give it that.
The random tag's purpose is allowing an author to start at any point in their "stories" timeline without having to give a good lead-up to it. It is the excuse for that one work of fiction to have been shrunk to less than 2000 words and be much worse than it has any right to be, yet still get posted.
That or you're completely correct which saddens me.
Random isn't all bad. But you're right. Most of the time, it just leads up to a dumb joke.
You have to admit, my stories deserve the random tag and use them well. Otherwise I have no idea why you spazzed when I thanked you for watching me. I think I can do what the fuck comedy pretty well.
I also love the way you write. You made my rump wiggle, and I just got out of a math test I bombed and am having a minor panic attack over.
I love you.
The random tag is for lulz, silly.
There's one other reason that's not as common but even worse: it's 'random' from the author's perspective. By this I mean, for example, that a particular author writes a lot of sad/dark stories, when they write a happy story they tag it as 'Random' because it's random from the perspective of their previous works.
But yeah, 'Random' is almost entirely useless and a waste of time.
1901396
That's what the 'Comedy' tag is there for.
1901416
no u
I find the Random tag to be pretty neutral. I don't actively search for stories with the random tag, but I don't actively avoid it in the way I would most Crossover/Human/Anthro stories. It's pretty much just a tag that I look over.