I know my blog is supposed to be about aliyah and how incredibly funny and frustrating at times life in Israel can be, but in all fairness, I did say when I created it that I would use it in part to vent about things that annoyed me, and so here it goes, in fair warning to all of you readers, I’m about to let it out...
What is it with people and hashtags? maybe I should capitalize it so you can sense how much this bugs me. WHAT IS IT WITH PEOPLE AND HASHTAGS???? There, that’s better.
I’m certainly no expert on technology and when faced with a blue screen or an official-looking message from “the Windows” people on my computer I’m fast to call on my hubby’s help, but I am a writer, a marketing writer nonetheless, and so to me, the cross-hatch figure has stopped being merely the thing on touch-tone phones that noone ever used, and become the very necessary, totally infamous #hashtag, so you could say that I posses some sort of entitlement when I laugh make mental corrections of the use of hashtags on my friend's (as defined by Facebook) posts.
In case some of you don’t know what a hashtag is, which if you don’t use it in ridiculous-excess-Jimmy-Fallon-style is totally respectable, here is a little preamble: a Hashtag is a marker used to group together 140-character tweets by subject. Say you want to group all tweets relating to things that should exist but don’t, then you would accompany all of your tweets about the great ideas you have, such as a “nobody cares” button on Facebook or push-up Pringles cans with a “#WhyDontTheyMakeThat” hashtag. Hashtags are also supported by other social media platforms like Instagram and most recently Facebook.
Well, I am all for the use of hashtags. I think they are a great marketing tool for companies and an efficient way to catalog and later find sometimes useful, sometimes not so useful things. Some hashtags are funnier than others and I do get a kick of seeing what people come up with, but what really makes my day is when #hashtagsgetoutofcontrol and I see people who evidently have no idea of what a hashtag is or what it does, make widespread use of the poor little pound sign making their phrases an incoherent mess of strung-together words. So without further ado, if you feel the compulsory need to use hashtags, keep in mind the do’s and don’ts of hashtagging so people don’t go all “#whatwereyouthinking” on you :
- #Don’t #hashtag #every #single #word
- #donthashtagridiculouslylongstringsofwords
- Don’t use hashtags in platforms that do not support them
- Don’t try to be funny or sarcastic with your hashtags
- Mind your spelling. misspelled hashtags will left your post out of the group and make you look dumb, like the guy who #dieofbeaties from eating too many Oreos dipped in Nutella
- If it can be misread, it will be. Susan wanted to throw an album party and she is now kicking herself because her advertising backfired when she used the hashtag #SUSANALBUMPARTY. Proofread your hashtags with the mentality of a 12 year old boy.
- Don’t use space or punctuation on your hashtags
- #FOMO, #LOLOLOLOL Need I say more?
- Don’t use irrelevant hashtags that do not relate to a category. #larrydidnotwanttobeinthepicture is not only a ridiculous long hashtag (see #2 above), but how many pictures did Larry not want to be in that you must group them all together?
- Don’t even get me started on spoken hashtags. Leave the finger gesturing for other uses will ya? and if you see someone yelling “hashtag (accompanied by the hand gesture) oh em gee”, you have my permission to punch them in the face and then kick them while they are down.
Now that you have an idea of the basics, go out and hashtag the hell out of everything!
