#RiseOfTheHashtags

#It #seems #every #word #on #the #Internet #now #has #to #have #a #hashtag #in #front #of #it.

Failing that, at the end of a normally-written sentence, people will put a series of hashtags after it, in an attempt to summaries it; and then confuse. #lol #satire #observation #hashtag #blog #twitter #pizza #sexy #YOLO #watermelon

If David Cameron were himself a hashtag, he would be the most popular prime minister of all time, and there would be no doubt of him getting a second, and third term in power, as well as going down in history as more popular and successful than Churchill. But he's not; he's just a man who dreams of being a hashtag. #justsayin #talkincrap

Where ever you look there are hashtags now. Music videos have started to contain hashtags. TV shows give you a hashtag at the beginning, then carry on to give you different ones throughout the show. Advertising in all its shapes and forms, come with at least one hashtag emblazoned upon them. Every social media site now seems to be supporting the hashtag. Even when you phone up call centres, they tell you to press # to be connected with a customer service agent. #killmenow #sarcasm

The hashtag may have been an innocent way of joining a discussion on Twitter, but since the hashtag phenomenon has been bastardised by advertisers for the purposes of promotion, they might as well have renamed it the cashtag. In fact, they might as well go as far as to replace the hash with a dollar sign.  $socialmedia

I remember the days of AOL keywords. Now, those were the days. The hashtag is the AOL keyword of this decade, and our kids will look back on the hashtag and laugh at how behind the times we were. "Hah, get with the times Grandad." What will our response be? #feelingold

I think the second worse crime of all if the spoken hashtag. The first of course being when someone takes a #selfie of themselves on a train as they go through a tunnel, because they have to be constantly doing something on their phone, and a drop in signal isn't an excuse to stop. The spoken hashtag adds nothing to the conversation, other than proving that you think you're cool. If you have to add #sadface to the end of your face-to-face conversation to make your point, then the person opposite must be completely and utterly socially inept. Personally, I think it just makes the entire encounter #awkward!

The final straw in my web of annoyance (#cliché) is that Flickr in now in the process of trying to jump on the bandwagon. It was once just a general tag which was added to images to help others find them; doing your own search engine optimisation, so to speak. Now, they have added a hash in the front of every word or phrase, for no other reason than to seem current, in  an attempt by Yahoo to make it thrive again. #firstworldproblems

Television programs also have an awful habit of wanting to connect with their audience, and the hashtag has given them a means of doing it. Presenters ask for you to share your opinion, so they can read them out, and even going so far as to hire a presenter whose job is solely to read out Tweets; namely on This Morning and The Voice… Perhaps Holly Willoughby is allergic to reading tweets aloud. #jokes

The problem with this, is that I tend to not care what other people think, and if I do I am more than capable of looking myself. I don't need my television programs interrupted for a presenter to read the most flattering Tweets about the show. I know Twitter, and you can guarantee half of them are swearing. #rude

And it causes awkward conversations. I keep having to explain to my 82 year old Grandmother what Twitter is, and she really isn't 'getting it'. She has no need to understand or 'get it', but thanks to television producers and executives, they're forcing her to try. The only people who care what Twitter is saying, is those people who are on Twitter. #harrystyles #omg

And besides, the hashtag is a force for evil. It allows Justin Bieber fans to be easier identified for abuse.  It's like walking down a high street proclaiming that you support the Nazi regime, and NOT expecting people to want to tell you that you're wrong in a variety of different ways. And #teamfollowback. Please, #getalife. If your biggest aim in life is to have thousands of followers on Twitter, then you need to step back and think hard about what you're doing. Why would anyone want to follow you, when all you do is ask for more followers? Tell a joke. Have a debate. Have a hobby you're passionate about. I'll do anything for followers, but I won't follow back. #meatloaf #nowplaying

Perhaps I'm just overly #cynical, but I prefer the days when hashtags on the Internet were used just on Twitter, only by the Twitter users. And used by web designers to pick colours in their HTML code. #oldskool

This new world of the hashtag being integral to every part of life, is unknown to me, and frankly I find it a bit scary. I am fearful of the day when we have to include a series of relevant hashtags in an academic essay, just before the reference list.

#end #toodles #thanks4reading