Hashtags and Twitter

You can hashtag any random word, a string of jumbled letters, a ridiculously long phrase, heck! you could hashtag a smiley and it’ll still look legit (legit what, exactly?)!

Two things I’ve noticed on my first day on Twitter:

1. I can’t seem to stop myself from hashtagging. #ugh #WAI?

2. The 140 characters limit is choking me.

I can’t really pinpoint when exactly did I start this annoying habit of hashtagging my thoughts even though I knew full well making another statement that can stand on its own can do the job. I think it has to do with the sense of urgency(?) and accessibility it entails, like it’s hashtagged because it’s important, it’s highlighted and it’s important (to whom?), and because you can compartmentalize it, you can share it – this thought, this experience – whenever, wherever. You can hashtag any random word, a string of jumbled letters, a ridiculously long phrase, heck! you could hashtag a smiley and it’ll still look legit (legit what, exactly?)! It’s definitely interesting - hashtags, I mean. Another interesting thing is how my first predicament totally contradicts my second one.

My seemingly constant dilemma on Twitter is for me to restrain myself from babbling. Or sometimes typing out a perfectly normal sentence.

Yes, I complain about my habit of hashtags - a way of compressing a thought into a word or two – yet I still find myself too confined by the 140 characters set up for me by Twitter.

I’ve had eighteen tweets so far (and if I’m feeling really geeky I would’ve pointed out that twelve of those are replies and one’s a retweet, leaving five to be “actual” tweets but I won’t do that right now, no. Oh wait.) and around three of them – two being my very first two tweets – I’ve stumbled on a few seconds longer than I should’ve because I’ve exceeded past the limit. Needless to say, I kind of hate it.

About these ads

by araalinea