Sunday, May 22, 2022

Hashtags ~

I'm a nerd. I do computer things. I read about computer things. I tried different computer things.

When I was a support specialist where I work I was heavily into using and adapting homegrown database applications. We used Microsoft Access software to interpret and analyze data. A lot of people pooh-pooh Microsoft access but it can be a powerful start to some pretty major databases.

In the real world hashtags were started on social media to make it easier to find posts that were similar to each other. Nerds started using hashtags to tag their data and be able to search across systems like Twitter and Facebook and come up with trending subjects based on the way the data was tagged with the hashtag.

That use of hashtags was ruined by comedians on Saturday Night Live and other venues that made fun of them and encouraged the use of hashtags as commentary instead of data tagging. You can see this when someone posts my new dog #betterthanyours #yourdogsucks #mydogcanbeatupyourdog.

I got in trouble using hashtags once at work. I made a log entry about an event that had happened that day. I hashtagged it so that I could gather data over time on this sort of behavior. Because the log was kept in a system that is seen nationwide someone on high saw my entry and thought I was making commentary about their performance that night. And they called me and demanded that I remove the entire log entry telling me that I was being unprofessional and foolish. I laughed it off and left it the way it was. I never got in trouble over it. But that just highlighted to me several years ago how the nerd concept of tagging data had been corrupted by the comedians and people looking to sarcastically comment without actually saying what they were thinking.

Now I use hashtags to tag things on my social media like this week's discussion topics. I use hashtags to tag text files and move them around in my automatic system of capturing data. I use hashtags to tag posts like this one. They're not always a pound symbol like the #, sometimes there a utility like that little tilde thing at the top of this post.

But hashtags are useful! They're not always smart alec comments by people who don't want to say what they're actually saying. Or they want to insult others in a cute way. I tend to use hashtags for what they were designed for. But like everything else it has multiple uses and depending on the person of the situation they could mean almost anything!

I hope you tag something today with a hashtag. Good luck!