The Hashtag (#) madness

I have noticed that in recent times there has been an incredible increase in the use of hashtags (#) on different social networks. As far as I remember, it was first started on Twitter to collate articles or discussions related to a particular topic. This was done by marking those topics by using specific hashtags. It has now trickled down to facebook and I must say, it is being misused and abused to the core. People are using it without even knowing how it works and all because they saw someone else do it and thought it was cool. Herd mentality I tell you.

To start with, lets understand how a hashtag works:

A hashtag is a type of label or metadata tag used on social network and microblogging services which makes it easier for users to find messages with a specific theme or content. Users create and use hashtags by placing the hash character (or number sign) # in front of a word or unspaced phrase, either in the main text of a message or at the end. Searching for that hashtag will then present each message that has been tagged with it.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashtag

So as you see, it was supposed to mark or collate topics related to a specific subject. This is now a days also being used for statistics. If you see any news channels, after any big event the first thing they report is the hashtag that is trending and have a discussions about that. The main problem at hand is ignored, just the hashtag and who all used that hashtag is all that seems to matter. I really dont see any point of such a statistic, but who am I to say. Today its the hashtag, tomorrow it will be something else and people will blindly follow it.

Talking about this in the facebook perspective, I dont know what goes through peoples mind when they hashtag the craziest of the things. Take for example a recent post by a friend of mine. She put a pic of her working out and put this huge hashtag saying "#shouldnthaveeatenthatpizzaforlunch, #burningofftheextracalories". How does that even make sense? Why would something as random as that trend in any social network? Whats the rationale behind using that phrase as a hashtag? You think there are other people who think they "shouldnt have eaten that pizza for lunch"? FB already gives you a hundred million options to let people know how you are feeling, where you are and whom you with and and a gazzillion other options, and that's still not enough. You still need a barrage of hashtags to tell people about all the extra feelings for which FB doenst have as a standard template. Madness I say, utter foolishness.

It makes sense if facebook pages (business, entertainment or stuff like that) make use of hashtags, it will draw traffic to a page there by increasing the reach, but for regular posts as well? Why? People are already paranoid about privacy. They have the highest security settings on FB and everywhere else and still they want to use hashtags which inherently draws attention to you. If people really cared about privacy that much, they should refrain from using these stupid hashtags. FB has ruined people by making them live in a virtual world and being more bothered about what others in a different part of the world are doing and not about the person sitting right beside you. That's another topic of discussion, you will soon see a post about that.  

So there, thats what I think about all your stupid hashtags. Please..oh damn, i dont even know what to plead for but you get the drift. The picture below summarizes my feelings perfectly.

 #hashtags #hashtagmadness #crazypeople #stupidpeople #herdmentality. There you go, my share of hashtags :P