HOW HASHTAGS CHANGED THE WORLD. HOW HASHTAGS CHANGED THE WAY 01 WE TALK // PAGE 02 02 WE ADVERTISE // PAGE 12 03 WE SOURCE CONTENT // PAGE 20 04 WE ADVOCATE // PAGE 32 05 WE BUILD COMMUNITY // PAGE 42 For a generation especially interested in brevity, that’s a pretty“ cool way to talk. —Lauren Schuhmacher, Huffington Post1 01. HOW HASHTAGS CHANGED There’s a story about hashtags “tag” tweets. It slowly gained THE WAY WE TALK and how they’re changing traction, until 2009 or ‘10 our speech patterns. It goes when suddenly hashtags something like this: (and their users) went rogue. These errant tweeters took The hashtag arose in 2007 as hashtags from their good and a way to categorize and purposeful tagging function, #ParaLanguage #BenjaminFranklin #Memes 1 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lauren-schuhmacher/how-the-hashtag-changed-t_b_3407787.html 03 and changed them into of parenthetical commentary things like “I love you guys! Gizmodo article: How the something terrible – a form on the rest of the tweet. Hashtag blessed!” Hashtag is Ruining the English Language.2 For example: “The colloquial hashtag has burst out of its use as a sorting Yup.The hashtag is a tool and become a linguistic linguistic tumor. L @DANNSAYER tumor – a tic more irritating than any banal link or lazy The tweet that invented the Late night milk and cookies and I accidentally just image meme,” declared Sam hashtag: dunked my earphones, fml #FirstWorldProblems Biddle in his oft-referenced The narrative doesn’t end there adjusted), to Instagram (#dog L @CHRISMESSINA of course: Hashtags escaped #hat #thisismyhat #Sunday how do you feel about using # (pound) for Twitter, and spread, like a plague, #thisismydoginmyhat groups. As in #barcamp [msg]? to Facebook (“they don’t even #followmeplease #aghhhh), to use hashtags” irate bloggers everyday speech, where it is complained, until Facebook now acceptable to say (say!) 04 2 http://gizmodo.com/5869538/how-the-hashtag-is-ruining-the-english-language 05 Sometimes we agree with this language and hashtags, we HASHTAGS ARE “PARALANGUAGE” Now we could do sarcasm version of events. We’ll hear don’t think they’re destroying and self-deprecation. Paralanguage is something you someone drop a hashtag into the English language. already use, every day. daily conversation in an “Among Twitter’s triumphs It’s the non-verbal cues that ironic but not-so-ironic way, And neither do linguists, who is the reinvention of seem delighted by hashtags accompany speech and help us and think, hashtags are self-mockery.” express meaning and tone – ruining the English language. and their mission creep away from tagging and into con- shoulder shrugs, intonation, So says linguist Ben Zimmer, facial expressions. But in the In case you have no idea versation. In fact, a number of who argues in the Boston world of text, it is difficult to what we’re talking about, stop linguists see Twitter’s fast-paced Globe that hashtags have given communicate those non-verbal reading this right now and environment as a microcosm us a “sly new way” to under- ideas – like sarcasm or Google the video of Justin where they can study language mine what we say. When we self-mockery. Its part of the Timberlake and Jimmy trends that often parallel complain about milk covered language trends offline.4 Not reason that “JK” and “LOL” headphones and append Fallon speaking with hashtags.3 are so heavily used. Emoticons See? Please don’t ever say one linguist has called “#firstworldproblems, it shows do their fair share of sub- “Hashtag: Blessed.” It’s terrible. hashtags a tumor. So far. we know our own complaints stituting as paralanguage as are ridiculous. well. But hashtags expanded But after a little research about So if they’re not a tumor, what are they? Here’s what we found: that ability drastically. 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57dzaMaouXA 06 4 http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W11-0708 07 Zimmer tells the story of the HASHTAGS ARE OUR GREEK as performers, view ourselves Gabe Doyle, a linguist at spread of the hashtag from tag CHORUS from an ironic distance. Saying Stanford, makes the same point to tic very differently than Biddle: “hashtag #happy” elicits a about tweets as meta-com- “The spoken hashtag is part mental picture of the speaker mentary, but he compares “Suddenly, a humble indexing of a general trend—one rarely viewed from a distance, hashtags to the narrator of a tool became a sophisticated treated as a scourge, gener- labeled with the word happy. book and a chorus in a Greek new technique for self-depreca- ally barely perceived, and ac- play. He calls it a shift in tion in type.” tually a sign of the zeitgeist.” McWhorter claims that this viewpoint from first person to -McWhorter, New Republic, perspective would have been third person.6 Hashtags aren’t a tumor – they’re 20125 impossible before movies and a sophisticated new technique. television began to deeply And put that way, it doesn’t They help us add a much-needed In 2012, when spoken hashtags permeate modern life. seem like the sign of our tonal layer to our communica- were first ‘causin a ruckus, times that the New Republic tions. New Republic published an In this framework, Hashtags are article makes it out to be. article that claimed hashtags a way of distancing ourselves Forget television – hashtags were a sign of our modern from our own words – com- are serving as a very ancient times – part of a recent trend mentary on what we’ve just said literary device. to see ourselves in the third or experienced. But is that person, to frame ourselves really a sign of the zeitgeist? 08 5 http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/magazine/104238/Twitter-language-writing-speaking 6 http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/the-hashtags-not-ruining-anything/ 09 WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR Oxford English Dictionary Yeah. That’s right. We’re the group “Condescending Corporate SPEECH? added “TL;DR” (short for Too generation that uses meta- Brand Page”10 mocks bad social Long; Didn’t Read)8 to the linguistic terms in everyday media marketing efforts from Linguists are pretty much divid- dictionary in 2013 – at least in speech. Feel brilliant yet? Good. corporations. They like to point ed. Some say verbal hashtags their online version. out when companies fall prey are a passing fad. Others don’t. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR to creating the #corporate- In a recent Mashable article,9 hashtagthatnoonewilluseever. Anne Curzan, a linguist who SOCIAL MEDIA? specializes in the history of the Linguist Gerard Van Herk For example, asking consumers to English language, points to argues that internet speak has If you’re trying to create a hashtag tag posts of their Halloween Benjamin Franklin’s dislike of made us smarter: that will stick, there is at least costumes with #spookysavers. the verbs colonize and notice, one lesson we can take from the 7 comparing it to modern objec- “Today’s youth are much more linguists: Nope. tions to LOL or using “friend” aware of the social and stylistic as a verb. uses and meanings of different Hashtags that straddle its multiple A common failure with these genres and language types, hashtags? They often only use the uses (tagging and paralanguage) As if to prove that new internet- and are able to discuss them are most likely to be successful. tagging function of hashtags– words will someday be as using metalinguistic terms like not the metacommentary inoffensive as “notice,” the meme,” he writes. The fairly funny Facebook satire function, or the paralanguage 7 http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/03/01/txtng-rules/ 8 http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/august-2013-update/ 10 9 http://mashable.com/2014/09/25/what-is-internet-speak/ 10 https://www.facebook.com/corporatebollocks/photos_stream 11 function. There is an easy litmus test to avoid creating the #corporatehashtagthatnoone- willuseever. Ask your-self: Would you say it in daily speech? Would Justin Timber- lake? The answer should be yes. 12 THE DECLINE OF BANNER ADS It’s not news that banner ads have become a poor invest- Twenty years ago,11 the first ment. Modern day banner banner ads ran on the web. ads have a click rate of less They were psychedelic and un- than .1% (or 1 in 1000 people) abashed and stood out beauti- which means you are more fully against the gray webscape likely to complete NAVY SEAL of 1995. The early banner ads training than click a banner 02. HOW HASHTAGS CHANGED were cheap and effective, ad.13 What’s worse, a small THE WAY WE ADVERTISE boasting a jaw-dropping 50- percentage of internet users 90% CTR.12 They were lucra- (about 8%) do 85% of that tive and spread like wildfire. clicking – and those humans Until everyone, including the (or bots) probably aren’t the inventors, realized how terrible high quality traffic advertisers banner ads are. are looking for. 11 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/technology/personaltech/banner-ads-the-monsters-that-swallowed-the-web #BannerBlindness #TheRiseofContent #UserGeneratedContent 12 http://www.launchbit.com/blog/why-banner-ads-are-dead-and-native-ads-are-the-future/ 13 http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/horrifying-display-advertising-stats 15 We could spend a lot of time customers – are smart. They and your brand with something simple: Instead of trying to analyzing why banner ads are learn quickly what is an ad and annoying that they want to avoid? create ads that look like content, in decline. The New York Times what isn’t, and they don’t want create the content itself.