Remember the good ol’ days when“#” only meant “number” or a “pound sign”? Yeah, me either. The past two years, the “#” has had its 15 minutes of fame as the #HASHTAG. Even though the hashtag has given us the funniest of comebacks and the wittiest of jokes, it’s easy to see that the hashtag is having a slow and crucial death. All I can say is… #sorryimnotsorry.
Hashtags were originally used to tag terms and phrases on Twitter so all the tweethearts out in the online world could search Twitter through specific hashtagged terms. By searching through hashtags, people were able to search for tweets only about #SanFrancisco for example, instead of sorting through hundreds of the usual “oooooommmmggg last night was crazy…lolol”. But as everyone packed their bags to hop onto the bandwagon, hashtags pulled a Cady Heron as they became the top of the social hierarchy. If you did not know what a hashtag was, you did not know what a social life was. Everyone and their moms (literally – moms too) began using hashtags on Facebook just for the sake of using them. Using hashtags on Facebook is like an Instagram filter – you don’t need to use one, but you use it anyways to look cooler. If the little blue twitter bird mascot knew how people were stealing his hashtag and abusing it, he would fall dead from his tree.
The hashtag has become overhyped, overused, and overeager. Not only are people using hashtags on the wrong social networking sites, they are misusing hashtags too. It’s always the funniest thing to see that the same girls who used to ask “What does pound sorry bout it mean?” for “#Sorryboutit,” are now the girls typing “#MissMyBoyfriendTodayWhatShouldIEat4Lunch???” …Stop. Hashtags can try to make a comeback, but that would be like trying to get “fetch” to happen. It’s not going to happen.
Everyone put on your prescription Ray-Bans and pretend you’re a photographer, because we’re about to be hipsters and make the claim that hashtags are just too mainstream to be cool anymore. As Tamra said on The Real Housewives of Orange County, “If everyone says you’re dead, it’s time to lie down.” Rest in peace, hashtag. I gave you the best 2 years of my life. I was half a n00b when I met you. #YOLO.