Ask HN: What is your qualitative perception of hashtags?

7 points·roryreiff··6 comments

They've evolved into a better way of expressing certain emotions and such.

For example I've seen things like "I'm sorry you're leaving! #dumb" which helps convey that the person is laughingly sad that the other coworker is leaving.

Stuff like that.

I think this is the way that most people come across their usage and start using them themselves. It's almost a "under the breath" type of comment. As in "Eating dinner #ImFat" or "About to watch Halloween movies #soScared"

We use them appended to our error logs to be able to filter out logs by sections of the code; for example #userSignupFlow #asyncTask, etc.

I also use hashtags on Twitter to find things happening at an event where I am (conference, talk, etc.), and post pictures that I take etc/quotes from the speakers, etc.

On Instagram, I use hashtags in my searches to find pictures of cities where I have lived/visited that I miss; my girlfriend is an artist, and does public art, and uses them in a similar way to find people posting pictures of her works.

My strictly personal view is that they make you sound like an idiot, or a professional marketer.

They should never be used verbally, I think most people can agree on that. However, I don't think using them online makes you sound like an idiot. Adding tags/categories/characteristics to your data can only be advantageous online.

I like to think of them like telegrams #stop They seem somewhat anachronistic #stop

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