The semiology and phenomenology of hashtaggery intrigues me. From what I understand, it all began very simply: on Twitter, hashtags—those little checkerboard marks that look like this #—were used to mark phrases or names, in order to make it easier to search for them among the zillions and zillions of tweets. For instance, if you wanted to make a comment about Sarah Palin, you could include her name in the tweet, or you could make the comment and follow it with her name marked by hashtag. That is, you could tweet,

“I would rather have a moose for President than Sarah Palin!”

Or, making good use of a hashtag,

“I would rather have a moose for President! #SarahPalin”.

The tweet with the hashtag was more likely to come up in a search for tweets about Sarah Palin, as well as being punchier and more exclamatory. The practice is now a Twitter standard.

Hashtags have also undergone mission creep, and now do all sorts of interesting things. Frequently, they are used to set apart a side commentary on tweets, sort of like those little mice in the movie “Babe” who appear at the bottom of the frame and, in their squeaky little mouse voices, comment on what you’ve just seen and what you’re about to see. A typical commentary-type hashtag might look like this:

“Sarah Palin for President??!? #Iwouldratherhaveamoose”

This usage totally subverts the original purpose of the hashtag, since the likelihood of anyone searching the term “Iwouldratherhaveamoose” is next to zero. But that isn’t the point. This particular hashtaggery is weirdly amusing, because, for some reason, starting any phrase with a hashtag makes it look like it’s being muttered into a handkerchief; when you read it you feel like you’ve had an intimate moment in which the writer leaned over and whispered “I would rather have a moose!” in your ear.

Another way hashtags are being deployed is as disclaimers—a more sophisticated, verbal version of the dread winking emoticon that tweens use to signify that they’re joking. For instance:

“I just made out with your husband! #kidding”

What’s even more interesting is that hashtags now sometimes comment on hashtags, so that the 140-character tweet ends up as layered as a birthday cake; i.e.:

“I just made out with your husband! #kidding #hewishes #likeIwouldadmititanyway”

The sneakiest way to use a hashtag is to set apart a word or phrase or name in your tweet and make it look like you very accidentally blurted it out, which is an extension of the muttered-into-a-handkerchief usage, but with a slight Freudian twist. Here, the hashtag is like a bit of chicken wire between what you are consciously and deliberately saying, and what just happened to slip out, especially useful when you are making a comment and pretending that you absolutely, positively will not name names, and then, whoops, it just came tumbling out. A hashtag is not a secure perimeter, after all! Just look at how holey a hashtag is—it’s only chicken wire, and sometimes things—bad things, names and particulars, details, information, those sorts of things—do manage to make it through. To wit:




Subscribe to The New Yorker