What is a hashtag?

[Mikawa Ossan]

What the heck is a hashtag? I've seen that under "Quick Links", there's a hash tag subscription button, but this means nothing to me...

Even worse, sometimes I'll be talking to some of the younger people at work, and out of the blue, they'll say something like, "Hashtag: You need to take better care of yourself." What is this?

 

[Mike Cash]

Twitter reference

 

[Mikawa Ossan]

Oh, so it has something to do with Twitter, then? That's another thing beyond my comprehension. But at least I know what THAT is.

 

[Hezam]

i've been confused about it as well but after some search i found out what hashtag means, i have Facebook,Twitter, instagram, LinkedIn and Google+ accounts but i rarely use them, i don't use them anymore because i don't like social websites because of the complex way of communitating with others, i don't like making too much relations/contacts either. It bugs my head.

 

[maycaklur]

tag sign for word

 

[forumas]

Hash tag is "#". It become popular on twitter, but today is popular everywhere, even on TV.

 

[steves]

#oldpersonproblems

 

[SusuKacangSoya]

As a 16-year-old, I am having problems grasping that you guys don't know what a hashtag is.

It's just a tagging mechanism, like usual image and forum tags on imageboards and forums and the such. Usually you can open a specific hashtag and see all posts with that hashtag in it. It's most popular on Twitter, but now everybody else is trying to use it as well...it becomes silliest when on TV.

#roflcopter #rusrs

 

[Grandpa Frank]

As a 65 year old , I have no clue about things like hashtags and how 2/3's of the internet work , LOL. I wish I had a 5 year old grandchild to teach me all this new stuff.

 

[Mike Cash]

As a 16-year-old, I am having problems grasping that you guys don't know what a hashtag is.

That works the other way as well. As a 49 year old I have trouble grasping that there are people who have no experience of life without:

The internet
Cell phones
Personal computers
TIVo
DVDs
CDs
Microwave ovens
Touch-tone dialing
GPS/Car navigation
Electric car windows
Satellite radio
Satellite television
Digital cameras
PET bottles

And probably a lot more I can't think of or just simply don't know about.

I have trouble even just here in Japan grasping that among my Japanese acquaintances there are people who have no experience with or memory of:

JNR
Ticket punchers
No consumption tax
500 yen bills
Yellow or red public phones
No self-serve gas
No drive-thru
ATMs rare, hours barely longer than banking hours
Convenience stores rare
Gigantic vending machines blocking stuff
Can drinks 250ml, "big" size 350ml (and rare)
Largest drinks: one liter, glass bottle
Pocket bells
Pref. roads not numbered, signage poor
Rattling rice cooker lids
And more.....

A couple of weeks ago I was "talking shop" with a coworker regarding some changes in our industry and how much better things are now than they used to be. He listened politely but didn't join me in reflecting on the changes. Later on it dawned on me that even though we're both adults and coworkers now, at the time I was reflecting on he was a kid about five years old. What to me was the recent past was to him ancient history.

The thing I would really like you to remember, and which will be even harder to grasp, is that after a certain age there is a tendency to no longer keep up with new things. At first we stop trying to keek up, while feeling like we really should be trying. Then after a while we're more comfortable admitting we don't know, don't care, and may even actively resent well-intentioned efforts to teach us.

#dontgiveashitwhatahashtagis

 

[WonkoTheSane]

From my perspective, at 42, it's just that I'm more discerning about what I care to keep up with. At a certain point I just became more adept at separating the wheat from the chaff, the intelligent discourse from the pointless drivel, the useful advances from the solutions searching for problems. Hashtags are a great way to find pointless drivel... In general I don't care what everyone has to say about a few things, I care what a few people have to say about everything.

I also don't care about Twitter generally... Anyone who hears the name and doesn't automatically know that it will be a cacophony of superficialities has no imagination. There is so much that is interesting in this world, I'm always amazed at how many people spend their time on the banal.

 

[elio]

any sentence or word with the symbol "#" at their beginning are considered hashtag here in our country.... sounds funny and silly though...

 

[steves]

any sentence or word with the symbol "#" at their beginning are considered hashtag here in our country.... sounds funny and silly though...

OMG that is #crazy! :woot::woot::woot::woot:

 

[Mikawa Ossan]

I remember when # was referred to as "pound".
It's funny to me that SusuKaCangSoya finds it hard to comprehend that someone wouldn't know what a hashtag is, when to me it's something very new. I can kind of see how it's useful in its own way, but Twitter is a world I have no desire to be a part of.

I think that as we become older, we just stop caring so much about these new things. I used to keep up with video game consoles until I just lost interest. That happened as soon as I bought my PS2. I had friends who were really into it, but for some reason it didn't appeal to me any more.

I stopped keeping up with TV and movies in the late 90's. I was going between Japan and America too much to keep up with both, so I pretty much stopped keeping up with both. Of course, I knew what was happening in Japan better due to exposure, but it really wasn't a priority any more.

Things like social media are of little interest to me as well unless they have some use. For example, I find LinkedIn to be of some value, but I have a hard time being interested in Facebook, twitter, and the others. That's not to say I don't try these new things, as I do have a Facebook, LinkedIn, and .... that Japanese Facebook-like thing... what was that called again? But just because something is new and/or everywhere doesn't mean it has value.

 

[Nulambda]

I'm 23 and I really don't know what a hashtag is. To me, it's just something the young people have been spouting.

 

[Mike Cash]

I'm 23 and I really don't know what a hashtag is. To me, it's just something the young people have been spouting.

You're one of the young people.

 

[Nulambda]

You're one of the young people.

That's the joke.

 

[Grandpa Frank]

For my generation , # was what we played tic tac toe on.