Hashtag Activism

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Thanks to the advent of twitter and changes to facebook, people can "tag" their posts using the # symbol before a word. I don't use twitter and I find the usage of hashtags to be annoying.

Well, most people should know that common Internet petitions do not work and that those that feel better about themselves for signing them are called "slacktivists." Well, now users on twitter and facebook can gripe about what is wrong with the world without doing any good about all the while thinking that they are. They write short little posts, set them to public, and tag them with the popular (called "trending") tag for an injustice (usually popular for only a week or so). It makes them feel good inside without going through any effort. This is even less effective and is now called "hashtag activism."

My message to the world: go out and do something and be the change you want to see in the world; don't just complain about it on the Internet!

[Easy Bakes 253]

# = pound sign.

[hym 358]

# = pound sign.

It has many names including "number sign," "pound sign," and "hash."

Technically though, calling it a hash tag is incorrect. A hash tag is technically the hash symbol plus what follows it.

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Hashtag activism is a fad. It will fade away in several years time...

[Duke87 1,070]

 

# = pound sign.

It has many names including "number sign," "pound sign," and "hash."

Technically though, calling it a hash tag is incorrect. A hash tag is technically the hash symbol plus what follows it.

 

I have been told by many recorded voices on the phone to press the "pound or hash key". This kind of annoys me since it's basically trying to use two names at the same time. Pick one!

 

I hate referring to it as a "pound sign", since that's confusing. In my mind this is a pound sign: £

 

I like the term "octothorpe", even if it's a fabrication of a couple engineers in the 1960s, because it is not biased towards any one particular use of the character (it has many unrelated uses - it's odd that way), and because it avoids stale constructions which are used for many other characters such as "___ sign".

 

 

 

As for hashtagging, it's fine when tweeting since it's a fundamental trait of Twitter. But anywhere other than twitter, it is improper to use it in any fashion that is not tongue in cheek.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I didnt know this was a thing. Now i have been enlightened that it is a thing i dont care. Also some epetitions do succeed whereas hashtags are silly. I have never used Twitter.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

Technically speaking, "£" is also a pound sign. Pound stirling to be exact

 

About hashtags, I find them annoying when they are used outside of Twitter. And I don't even use Twitter

#sarcastichastag

[LexusInfernus 908]

While apparantly everyone is deriding hashtag acitvism as slacktivism, I disagree. It sometimes works. Its a form of putting pressure on companies or governments to do or not do something. Its a very easy way to show that there is public support or opposition against certain things. And yes, companies and governments respond to this. Not always, but there have been a few notable examples of companies responding to this 'slacktivism'. Just recently Nintendo apologized and promised that they would in the future be more inclusive about things like homosexuality in their games, as a result of a twitter campaign against Nintendo following controversy about their new WiiU game. 

 

The thing is, not everyone has time to organize political campaigns with street demonstrations and what not. Twitter allows everyone to very easily weigh on on a topic and give their support to certain causes. 

[AkemiAzula 280]

#makeapropersimcityfivenoworelsewhoeversreadingthis

That is literally the first time i have ever used a hashtag albeit an abuse of it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The only time I use the octalthorpe (#) is when I wish the script line I am writing to be a comment.  I suppose use of the twitter version simply enables data mining.

[Compdude787 916]

I hate it when hashtags are used on Facebook or, worse, in common speech. It gets so annoying!

[TekindusT 3,809]

As an active Instagram user, hasthags are part of my posts, obviously. The more, the more popular, the more visitors you will recieve. That's how it is. 

 

I must be one of the few people who actually uses hashtags correctly, as far as it looks by seeing people's posts on Facebook. I mean, if I tag something with "#city" it is because a city appears on it! Because I want that, if somebody is looking for it, my picture will be among the hits!

 

What I hate is seeing selfies of girls (they are girls generally) who post a bazillion of totally unrelated hashtags just to pop up if you're searching whatever else. Oh, and don't forget those who tag #ohthisisanextremelonghashtagjustsayingwhatiwouldjustsaynormallybutmuchmoredifficulttoread. There's a place in hell reserved for this kind of people. At least you could capitalize the first letter of each word...

 

These two kinds of people are the ones who to blame to think why the use of hashtags is increasingly frowned upon in social networks.

 

Suming up, a couple of examples:

 

Good: "It's finally #Summer in #Berlin, that time of the year! #awesome" 

Bad: "#OMG#It's#finally#Summer#in#Berlin#layinonthegrasswithabeerinmyhandandsunbathing..." BTW, the hashtag ends when a punctuation sign is found, like an apostrophe. Most people don't know that.

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

#this-rate-hashtags-are-going-the-way-of-the-dodo

[AkemiAzula 280]

I dont hate them. They have their place. Misuse is no more common than quote unquote bad grammar. Obviously some ppl appreciate em or nobodyd use em.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

#this-rate-hashtags-are-going-the-way-of-the-dodo

Terminated to 'this' at the first hyphen.  Tsk, tsk.

[Easy Bakes 253]

will they have to change the commands in voice mail systems?

 

press # ( pound) to send your message

to press hashtag to send your message?
 

[hym 358]

will they have to change the commands in voice mail systems?

 

press # ( pound) to send your message

to press hashtag to send your message?

 

 

Why would they?  One of its names is the pound sign.  Calling it a hashtag is incorrect.

[krbe 193]

Pound looks like this: £. They ought to change the character at once!!!

[Odainsaker 2,133]

Gee, all this time I thought pounds was lbs.  Those silly Brits and Americans...

 

Thankfully, I'm not shackled to Twitter.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I would love to hear the opinions of all Simtropolites on the effectiveness, usefulness, and enjoyability (or annoyance) of Hashtag Activism. On facebook, one person responded saying that we should all go out and be active, on Minecraft Forum, somebody started spouting off nonsense about "feminazis," and here people are arguing about what to call the # symbol (I personally pronounce it as pound but number works as well).

 

--Ocram

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Let's be grammatically clear:

 

<hashtag> ::= #<expression>

<expression> ::= <single alphabetic word>

<single alphabetic word> ::= [A|a|B|b| ... |Y|y|Z|z]+

 

No separators are allowed.  Multiple hashtags may be used back to back.  I don't believe there is a limit on length but since it originated on twitter is must surely be less than 140 characters.

 

If you don't read BNF (the grammar above) then have fun looking it up.

 

If the broadcast news media would please to forget hashtags as soon as possible, this phenomenon should die a natural death.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Well, hashtag activism seems to ocassionally prove popular enough to move into real life, but like all internet movements there are a small minority of bad actors in which the media can latch onto to, using broad strokes to demonize movements.

Examples include #BlackLivesMatter (which has made progress towards racial justice but has been used by rioters) and #MeToo (which has revealed many cases of unwanted sexual encounters: harrassment through sexual abuse but “Grace” and the Babe online tabloid have polarized audiences over where to draw the line: https://nyti.ms/2EIbKzZ) and #ThisEndsNow (sister hashtag to #MeToo)

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Well, that's what you get when a discussion is condensed into labeling keywords - and that's just what hashtags are.

Rather than focusing on - and discussing - what's the actual problem and where the grey areas are, people voluntarily divide into opposed groups and turn a complex matter into a (no pun intended!) black-and-white affair where everyone is either friend or enemy, and any stupid remark from either side is happily picked up by the other side to attribute to all of the group from which the remark came - and vice versa, of course. It's like putting up a nice fat canvas onto which anyone can project all of their prejudice, resentment, and - ultimately - fears.

And then they whine that society is oh so divided. Duh.

Of course humanity has managed to shoot itself in the foot in this precise way even before hashtags existed. You could argue that any attributions like "I'm a ______ist" used to be the hashtags of the analogue world.

That's why I refuse to associate with any movement, group, or party. When you try to shorten things, information gets lost. Shorten them to single keywords, and they become meaningless.

[Fantozzi 4,064]

Well, first computers I worked on were not graphical and when you wrote text and wanted special features you needed to put tags on the text to make it special.

So I know what tags are.

But what is this hush to make up a hushtag?