By Chancelor Shay, Account Executive
You just wrote a solid 115-character quip on your deeper
analysis of a common observation that you’re sure will get at least
five retweets and a handful of favorites from your followers. But you have 140
characters worth of space. You can’t just waste 25 characters, but the current
draft already reflects perfect wording. What do you do? Of course! Add a hashtag!
That seems to be the thought process behind many of the
tweets I see stream across my somewhat-cluttered Twitter stream. As a
professional communicator, it’s bothersome that these tweeters don’t have the
courtesy to ask themselves, “How does this add value to my message for my
followers?” Meaningless hashtags are so prevalent that I considered whether or
not the majority of tweeters understand what a hashtag is and its purpose. It’s
not as absurd a question as I thought, made apparent when lifelong broadcaster
and Emmy Award recipient Vin Scully asked “What
is hashtag?” on live TV.
The simple answer to Scully’s question, of course, is a
search indexing tool for Twitter that allows the site to more easily sort messages
focused on a specific topic. The hashtag allows for a collective discussion
around a single topic, whether it be a conference or trade show, current event
of interest to masses of people, or an informational theme such as
“dailymotivation” or “fitnesstips.” This helps the Twitter community build
their social network with people who provide content they’d enjoy.
But just how the use of texting has evolved from its initial
purpose as it’s been adopted, so too has the hashtag.
We’ve seen the “hashtag as the punch line of a joke” tweets.
Ending a message about a trip to Dog Beach might be #Wetdogsmellairfreshener.
Capping off a confession of love for Nutella we could expect
#NoreallyIcouldeatNutellaateverymeal. Or concluding an observation of road
workers sitting down on their lunch break someone might announce #Mytaxdollarsarepayingforyoutoeatasandwich.
I’m not convinced others will search any of those hashtags with interest in
joining the conversation.
Then there are hashtags that were invented specifically so
that anyone interested can join the conversation and offer an opinion. These
are hashtags like #WeCan’tDateIfYou and #ThingsshorterthanKimKardasiansmarriage.
Rather than being a reactionary product to something else, there is no
reasoning for these hashtags to exist beyond the fact that they can exist.
The variations of hashtags are so vast that, in their quest
for constant irony as a counter culture, hipsters adopted the hashtag #hashtag.
Is it ironic? More like self defeating.
So are hashtags a trend? Will they go the way of Ed Hardy T-shirts
and Von Dutch trucker hats?
Essentially, as online conversing continues to become the
status quo, the hashtag is showing characteristics of natural language. People
are manipulating, misusing and experimenting with it. They’re the opposite of a
trend because they’re not one thing and are constantly evolving. In that sense,
I guess, explaining the “right” way to use a hashtag is like explaining the
right way to deliver a joke or what facial expression is correct for the
subject of discussion. You can’t define what’s “right.” In the same way you
can’t stop that one co-worker from winking after each sarcastic statement he
makes, you can’t stop tweeters from hashtagging every other word in their
message. But you can unfollow them. #Winning
