Whatever happened to taglines?

RIVER BENDER - October, 2007

What's a tagline?

A tagline is a one-liner at the end of an e-mail message. You'll see them occasionally on incoming messages but not in abundance like they were on mail sent before the Internet existed. I miss them and thought they were funny and witty. It was up to the person writing the message to decide what tagline, if any, to add to the end of his message and everybody seemed to try to outdo each other. Here's a tagline I saw recently at the end of a message from NBCUG member Nils Hokansson: "Sailing - the fine art of getting wet and becoming ill while slowly going nowhere at great expense." (The Hokanssons own a sailboat in Fairfield Harbor).

How taglines got started:

In the late '80s the Internet was still in the academic world. Unless one subscribed to a computer service like Prodigy or Compuserve there was nothing left but local Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) to dial into (at 2400bps). A BBS was simply a personal computer set up by someone in their home for members to dial into. Many of us in New Bern used Donnie Benners' BBS. Since there was only one phone line we downloaded chat mail in a packet to read offline using a reader. One was called the Bluewave reader that allowed replies to be sent back in a packet to the BBS which then inserted them back in the thread of conversation. It was fun and quite effective. Then something interesting happened. Many offline mail readers inserted an identification marker at the end of every mail message so that readers would know that the person sending the message was using their mail reader. These identifiers were usually less than 20 characters in length. It didn't take long for folks to start inserting witty phrases or parting barbs in the extra space for that line. The name tagline thus came about because it was the last thing a reader saw in a message.

Collecting taglines:

As folks began creating amusing taglines BBS owners began collecting them and putting them in shareware files for others to access. In those days, there was a lot of shareware swapping going on and if you downloaded a file from a BBS you were expected to upload one the owner didn't have. It was up to the individual to decide if the shareware was worth enough to send the originator a few bucks for it.

BBSs disappeared when the Internet arrived but you can still see a meager listing by states at  http://www.usbbs.org/. When I left the D.C. area in '93 there were 650 BBSs listed. Now they're almost all gone. None exist in New Bern. Shareware, however, is still available in such places as http://www.shareware.com, but you can find taglines easier by typing "tagline" in Google at http://www.google.com.

Tagline examples:

I is a college student.

I'd rather be over the hill than under it.

Jesus is coming, look busy

I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure

Oops. My brain just hit a bad sector

I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either

Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic

Why be difficult, when with a bit of effort, you can be impossible

I think, therefore, I am. I think.

If at first you don't succeed, put it out for beta test.

If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.