The history of the hashtag is so wild: an ad-hoc folk invention, made official, but now can rarely be used without falling into one of several cringe registers.
Is its fate a necessary consequence of its structure, or an accident that could have been otherwise?
Conversation
Interestingly, the hashtag is alive and well on other platforms (Instagram, TikTok)
Even though it started on Twitter, the format doesn’t lend itself to the way that most people use hashtags:
Spam a bunch hidden beneath the “see more” button to aid the discovery algorithm
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Yes, on TikTok it seems that people only use the hashtags fraudulently. I almost never see authentic uses!
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At some level, the misbehavior has coopted the intention and now is the whole thing
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