Hashtag Drama

Whatever to things like diamond rings being big ol’ status symbols? You’d see a woman with a few big rocks on her fingers and you knew she was either rolling in the money or was hooked up with a man that was (I have a friend who still thinks diamonds = status, by the way). She’d be all doo-dadded up, flashing her shiny stones and we were supposed to be enthralled and impressed. And she was easy to ignore, ultimately. You smiled and nodded then went about your business without her feeling any less important and no hurt feelings were involved.

Why can’t Twitter be more like that? Now it’s the follower count that is the status symbol. That and who can have the most “influence” over a hashtag. The people with the high follower count, of course, have more influence over how a hashtag is adopted in the Twitter community, but for purposes of this post we’ll separate the two.

The people with the most followers like their little world up on cloud nine, which makes me wonder if they secretly loathe losing even one follower (the follower who most likely has never even been acknowledged by the person with all the followers). Their follow count is their diamond encrusted Rolex. They are important. And they really are to certain people. Some people really do think that high follower counts equal some kind of celebrity status and so jump on the bandwagon. I don’t know how long before they realize that the big numbers are probably spammers trying to get their own numbers up (the ettiquette of following back is also the subject for another post). Ah, the drama.

At any rate, some people who introduce hashtags to the Twitterverse feel validated to the extreme when their hashtags are introduced. They lay claim to them and then make decisions on their use. Except their influence doesn’t extend that far and some people use their hashtags however they want. This causes great angst to the first users of that particular hashtag and much hair-pulling and Twitter-arguments ensue in the chaos. But many people don’t even notice them that much and continue to use the tag however they want—much to the originator’s chagrin.

It’s funny when you see it happening in real time. “I introduced that tag and my community decided how it was going to be used. There are guidelines!” Really? For a tag? Interesting. I wonder if the originators of the #tcot tag thought the same thing when liberals usurped it to fling mud on the other side. Were they crying? Who knows what they were thinking because the two, who developed a website to go around the tag, have since parted ways. I wonder if the #followfriday guy is sad because of how his tag is used.

There are two people on Twitter right now who have parted ways over the use of a hashtag. They’ve rounded up their own supporters and have divided them into sides. They are fighting for influence over a hashtag. Why? Because if that particular tag takes off, then people are going to search for it and then will be led to one of their sites. Which one? Why, whoever is more influential, of course.

Hashtag drama—who woulda thunk it.

---

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically each day to your feed reader.