Hiding From The Hashtag Effect (Core Post #5)

The concept of hashtag hijacking is very intriguing to me. It shows how hashtags have the power to not only organize information, people, and worlds, but also to subvert meanings, challenge public opinion and perhaps fight the opposition? The #ManicureMonday case that Losh analyzes in the #Noise chapter of her book reminded me of the “Nothing but respect for MY President” tweet of a woman cleaning Don*ld Tr*mp’s Walk of Fame star. Although the original tweet had a hashtag (#RaisedRight), what really caught on and became a meme was the full sentence in the tweet. People quickly started using the same tweet as a format to share the stars of other people (or characters- Shrek!) that they respected. Not only as a humorous meme but also as a way to fight back conservatives supporting the ideology from the original tweet. This case points to how the concept of hashtags organizing movements, trends, discussions, etc., can transcend the hashtag. Maybe we’ve gotten used to hashtags enough that we can create that same hashtag-power in other forms, not really emphasizing a hashtag, but still getting that Twitter Moment spot in the search/trending page.

As Losh points out in the first chapter, Hashtags are very much an organizational tool, helpful in building communities or labeling information in a handy way (3). Something that I think is interesting is how people have found ways to reject that organization and attempt to be left out of the data grouped by hashtags; ways to trick the system and stay invisible, similarly to those masks that stop face recognition software from detecting someone’s face. Search engines, especially on Twitter, are so sophisticated now that you wouldn’t even need to use a hashtag to become a part of a trend or highlighted moment. I see it regularly on my Twitter feed where critics or film twitter people will write celebrity names in unconventional ways to stay invisible from not only the system but also the angry and surveilling fan bases. Some examples are using asterisks to substitute letters like I did with Tr*mp above, but my favorite is when they switch letters. I’m always reading Saylor Twift in my feed and I think it’s brilliant.

Tying this back to our discussion from last week, can we then look at Hashtags and Twitter Moments as surveillance?