Have you been tagged? Were you invited to write the hottest chain letter in Internet history?

Thousands of people the world over are creating lists of 25 random pieces of information about themselves and then tagging their friends inviting them to play along. It's the current rage on Facebook. It's become such a phenomenon that major newspapers are writing about it, including USA Today and the New York Times.

Facebook, with over 150 million members worldwide, doesn't track what specifically is posted in user's notes, but "25 Things About Me" is so popular, it's practically viral. USA Today quotes Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker who says that over the past week the number of daily "notes" has more than doubled and the number of daily tags of a Facebook member in a note has

 grown by five times.

"I would say that anecdotally I've never seen a note spread as quickly as this has on Facebook," Barker says. "What is really unique about this is it's a really meaningful piece of content. Some of the these notes are touching and frankly very insightful."

The New York Times said, "On Facebook, the apparent epicenter of the craze, nearly five million notes on people’s profiles have been created in the last week, and many of them are lists of '25 Random Things.' The note-creation figure is double the previous week and larger than any other single week in Facebook history, and Facebook executives say that the 'Random Things' craze is driving it."

Many of our students at THS have participated in the "25 Things" epidemic. Student confessions range from "I love to make people laugh" to  "I secretly wish I was British."  Even teachers from THS are joining in. One teacher "confessed" that she loved diet Coke. Another teacher confessed she "is so left-brained it hurts!" 

"I'm Conforming," or "Giving in to Peer Pressure," or "Random Me" are popping up as "25 Thing" titles. Most of the random lists are written because people have been tagged repeatedly by their friends and decide, finally, to "cave" or to "follow the crowd." Despite being tagged, there isn't the sense of urgency or a time frame given, but after reading lists of family and friends, people realize that they do have things to share that are both big and small, and that 25 isn't too many or too much.

Some writers admit that the list was difficult to fill, but they did find 25 things to say.  Others add an additional fact (or 2) because once they got started, they realized they had more to say. Either way, "25 Things" is sweeping the Facebook world. Who are you going to tag?