In your Facebook status, list 12 albums that have stayed with you over the years, and that mean something to you personally. Then tag some friends to pass on the trend. Sounds easy enough right? There is actually more involved to this simple request than one may think.

These new trends of nominations have taken over Facebook for the past couple of weeks now. It all started with the outrageous “neknominations”, in which people videotaped themselves shamelessly consuming alcohol, passing it along to their friends as a challenge.

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Thankfully this form of nominations slowly transitioned into another more productive form “feed the deed”, where people instead filmed themselves doing a good deed. Somewhere along the way, the nomination trend has landed to where we are now, which some may call “recnoms” or “album nominations”.

As stated in the beginning of the article, this form of nomination requires Facebook users to list 12 albums that have some sort of sentimental meaning to them. This is a more expressive form where Facebook users can share their personal taste in music. It seems like an easy task to complete, but in reality is actually quite difficult. Just like in the neknomination videos, viewers constantly judged participators by their actions and choices. Having participators openly know that they are being judged based on their music creates a sense of fear as well as stereotypical issues.

Different genres of music all have their own titles, which includes a huge variety of country, indie, r&b, hip hop/rap, EDM/house, classical, and so on. These genres of music are usually categorized and affiliated with different social groups based on stereotypes. We have all thought of these stereotypes in our heads and linked music choices to certain social groups. Some commonly heard categories include “Hipsters” who are identified with listening to indie rock or obscure alternative music, the “Mainstream” who typically listen to Top 40 or whatever is played on the radio repeatedly, or even the “Partiers or clubbers” who blast their EDM or house trap music.  These are only a few common associations that are not written in stone.

The fear that is brought upon participators with listing their choice of 12 albums is simply which social group they will be affiliated with based on their choices. No one wants to be associated with a social group that they don’t feel a part of.

Though some are the opposite and do not experience fear, but see this as an opportunity to try and label themselves as part of a social group that they want to be associated with. This is starting to become problematic since even though music is meant to be expressive, it should not necessarily be expressive of ones social status.

So instead of worrying about everyone judging you based on your personal preferences, remember to be true to yourself. Music is a representation of you, not your social group. The daunting task of your Facebook nomination really can be just as easy as the instructions sound.

Or you could just forget the whole thing all together by not posting anything, and you can enjoy your own music without sharing it with the rest of your online world.