#Passive Aggressive Hashtags

I caught myself doing one of my biggest pet peeves yesterday. I caught myself using the passive aggressive hashtag.

Twitter users know what I’m talking about, but for non-Twits, here’s the deal:

Hashtags are used to unify tweets about a specific topic. During the Superbowl, when everyone was using the #Madonna hashtag,  you could click on it and see all the tweets pertaining to Madonna.

Great idea, right?

Well somewhere along the line, the hashtag has become an excuse to be completely passive aggressive and get away with it. It’s not in the actual tweet, but it’s still in there. Still, it’s something so obscure that will never be trending #knowwhatImean?

Now I wonder when the hashtag stopped being something to identify with and started being A. passive aggressive comments and B. a sort of parenthetical comment without the parentheses?

For example, these are a few hashtags taken directly from my Facebook friends at the moment:

#ifeelold

#kissingmanualnotincluded

#cantstopsleeping

It seems that the current Tweet equation is three parts:

Objective comment + Link or Instagram photo describing the comment + Passive aggressive hashtag.

It seems even more that you can get away with saying almost anything as long as it’s behind the pound sign and not actually part of the comment.

For more examples, I could say this:

Yay! My sis is having a baby! #ultrasoundpicsonfacebookfreakmeout

Or

I love kids so much! #getoutofmycoffeeshopyoubrat

What do you think? Have hashtags become an excuse to make passive aggressive remarks?