Tweets: Modern Hieroglyphics

I made a Twitter account in high school, was active for a short period of time and have since become a user only when forced. In high school, Twitter was pretty poppin because people made a few juicy accounts about our school only.

There was one called @PaliDimes or something like that which people dm people they thought were dimes (10/10, hot, etc.); people were pretty into it.


There was another one something to the effect of @PalisadeConfessions where, you guessed it, people dm confessions for 15 seconds of anonymous twitter fame.

It's interesting to me that twitter was a definitive, if small part of my high school experience. Imagine Sixteen Candles if Samantha had a twitter account: hell to pay on homegirl's feed.

Although, I guess twitter puts a little birthday emoji next to your name on your birthday, so maybe if twitter had been an 80s' thing, her hip younger brother would have noticed and told her parents, thereby avoiding that whole plot?

 When I'm my mom's age, I can remember twitter as a part of a normal teenage experience. That, and Instagram, Facebook, the dress, and, of course

#Thehashtag

I've always found long hashtags that link to nothing because no one ever uses it particularly charming. For example, #whatevenisahashtag: so meta.

 After this week, I know I like those kinds of hashtags even more because I understand it defeats the whole purpose of a hashtag.

Upon original exposure, I thought of the hashtag as more of a "main point" highlight, not really as a search channel- which is way more useful.

Did the hashtag start on twitter?

Yeah, I guess it started with Chris Messina, the Google guy, on Twitter. Its use has spread profusely across all platforms, even on non-social networking sites. 

I'm not big on social media, so I don't really use a whole lot of hashtags, except for the occasional irl "#blessed," which I'm sure everyone does from time to time.

Hashtags are a part of modern verbal vernacular, in this way, despite their use being completely virtual, which I'm sure anthropologists will talk all about in 80 years.

It's interesting to consider, given twitter's recently sparky political climate, that tweets will be integral parts of history textbooks.

For the first time in history, a president has access to direct communication with the U.S. and the world, which is really an exciting thing given the distance in the past. Imagine having to gather around the radio to hear the president's next "covfefe" situation.

And back then, things like FDR's "Fireside Chats," the radio show he used to do, were groundbreaking. People were so happy they could hear from their president from the comfort of their own phones.

Imagine how close they'd feel to their president now.


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