Hash Tag...and I'm IT!

#

Yeah.  I don't get it either.  Apparently a whole bunch of people...or maybe it's just my friends...don't as well.

# has always been either a number sign or a pound sign to me.  In fact, if you call the base to refill your prescription, it will go through a whole series of prompts telling you to "enter the last four digits of your social security number...followed by the pound sign" and then "enter the numeric portion of your prescription...followed by the pound sign".  It does not tell me to enter a hash tag sign.  Because up until 26 August 2007, it wasn't.  Then some guy named Stowe Boyd decided, probably under the influence of a lot of alcohol (most stupid things people do, were), to call it something else.  How he managed to get everyone to follow suit is beyond me.

It's kinda like those sayings which, long before the Internet, managed to circulate around from person to person, and show up in our American lexicon.  Face it, someone came up with things like "Going to hell in a hand basket."  Why a hand basket is beyond me as well...because if I'm going to go to hell...I hope they deliver me in something larger.  Getting into a hand basket would be a hell of a feat of manual contortionist dexterity, I tell you.

But, back to hash tags. 

I went on my Facebook (yes, it's my Facebook...it was invented solely for my amusement and entertainment) the other day and asked people what they were and what do you use a hash tag for.  Why you use one.  What happens when you type one and click on it (because they become blue when you type them on Facebook...and therefore "clickable").  And, if no one had previously commented on a hash tag I just "invented", would it be mine forever, like when you register a .com name.

Again, I was met with shrugs and gasps and other things you cannot see when you're on the Internet, so you have to invent acronyms to convey these things...like "SMH" and "ISMSRN" (which hasn't been invented as I just coined it).  So, I decided to take a look.

Apparently Facebook recognizes hash tags but they only work from a computer and not a "mobile device"...which I think is code for "cell phone".  It was probably coined by that Boyd guy on 1 May 2009.  It seems everyone who said anything remotely new is now listed on the Internet so you can make sure when you say it, the proper person gets the nod.  Again, a nod you can't see...which, btw is as good as a wink to a blind horse.  (BTW is another acronym...probably credited to yet another person...and probably erroneously...like Christopher Columbus discovering America.)

But I'm digressing once again.

Anyway...the first hash tag I claimed in the vast Internet wasteland was "# IHateHashtags", followed by "# Mariann" and "# Pomtini" because "# MartiniTime" was already taken by someone.  Then I started getting really giddy thinking I am, sometime in the future, going to be contacted by people with gobs of money, buying them from me for astronomical sums...like they did for "Drugs.com" and "Sex.com".  I was, for all intents and purposes...getting extremely fond of all things hash-ish...and  hoping to make an Internet score of monumental proportion...so I just kept clicking away.  My newfound love was indeed the drug I was thinking of.  And anything that I thought of...well, I hash tagged it.

One of my friends remarked that, for a person who thought they were stupid, I was certainly hogging them all.  So...let it be formally known, that I invented the word "Hashhog" - followed quickly by "Hashhogging" and "Hashhogger" - and I have all three of them with a little pound/numeric/hash tag sign in front of them...out in Internetland, to prove it.

After making a few more I decided to stop, fearing for a backlash from Facebook...which is nothing like a blackslash...so please don't confuse what I say.  The Internet knows what I say...so I can always look it up and throw it in your face later. Anyway, I stopped because I didn't want to get put on "Facebook Probation" for a week like I did those couple of times before - for "over-friending".  I was being cautious and prudent-like...best not jump on the hash bandwagon only to get thrown off before my hash world-domination comes to fruition.

And honestly...I still don't know what I've done, if it will make any impact, or if anyone out there will ever visit my vast hashdoms...which is not the same as a hash den...but probably would give me the same heady delight...say, if someone out there offered to buy one of them from me for a couple million. 

So let it be known that I am focused on a mission to claim every single word combination left to claim -- that can be formulated in the spaces they allot (and there has to be a limit because one of my other friends tried making a long hash-string of words, but it didn't work).

In the meantime...start using the words "hashhog" and "hashhogger" -- and don't forget to join me for drinks at # Pomtini and drop me a line at # Mariann...because...well, someone hash to.