April 16, 2025 • 41 mins
Since their debut as a social media tool, hashtags have fundamentally changed how we think about and use technology, our vocabulary and our activism. In this classic episode, we delve into the history and impact of hashtags, especially when it comes to women.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Smitha. I'm welcome to stuff
I've never told you, addiction about heart radio, and welcome
to an episode. This was an idea. This classic was
an idea of yours, Samantha that I thought was really interesting,
(00:26):
and it was about the history of the hashtag, which
I have been thinking a lot about technology and the
good and bad ways it's changed our world, but the
hashtag was one. It was a thing that really changed
the way we go about some things.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
On the Internet or the older generations. The pound zine.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yes, which is funny because it often gives confusion when
you have a code like a gatecoad to get into
an apartment complex or something, and sometimes you don't know
if you're supposed to use the pound sign or the
hashtag or if it just means like number and you
have to guess. Oh, I don't even know if that's
a problem anymore, but that was a problem in my day. Anyway,
(01:19):
Please enjoy this classic episode. Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
I'm welcome to Steffone never told you a protection of
iHeart radio.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
And today we are back. Happy New Year. Because this
is kind of the first full episode we've done in
a while, and it's kind of short. I'm guessing maybe not,
but it's very interesting. Yeah, because we are continuing with
our look into technology and women, apparently this is the
thing we're doing that we didn't mean to but kind
of happened. And of course we couldn't ignore the impact
(02:03):
of social media in this conversation, and in our recent
episode with bridget we talked about the current state of
Twitter and all the things that are happening there, which
led us to take a closer look at the history
of hashtags. You know, it's one of those like, oh
where did that come from? Moment and how women have
not only been impacted by its use, but has actually
(02:23):
shaped the effectiveness of hashtags as well. So we had
to jump into that. But before we do, and do
you use hashtags or as we know it pound?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
You know, one of the like funniest generational divides I've
ever experienced is that of the what do you call
it pound? Or do you call it hashtag? But also
like you know, when you would go visit Maybe this
is just me, but you would go to visit an
apartment building and they'd give you the code and I
would just disregard the hashtag and just put in the number,
(02:58):
but you have to put in hash yeah, and I
would just have stuck out there. I do use hashtags.
I think we're gonna be talking about this more when
I get to like the fan fiction section of the
because you know, we have to have a fan fiction
section of this, of course, because I feel like I
(03:19):
generally use them in the way that is not I
use them in the humorous way I guess, which they can.
They are very very useful and grouping information that is important,
and especially around like protesting and very like big issues.
But there is like the fun side of them, which
I never want to forget because I feel like a
(03:40):
lot of times, as we rightly should, we talk about
the more serious matters of this, but there are the
fun kind of parts of it. And I really like
coming up with the you know, super long, ridiculous hashtag
or either you know, like the humorous one where I'll
you know, hashtag nailed it definitely did not nail it.
(04:02):
So I do, but I usually use them in a
less serious way, I guess if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah, you know, coming on to Sminty the show and
I took over the social media, I was like, I
can do this, which I found out I can't. I
tried to study and look into what is effective and
what isn't because you know, at that point in time,
we thought social media would be a big part of podcasting,
and not that it's not, but for us it hasn't
(04:29):
been as a big our. Marketing people are like, don't
worry about it type of thing. But I was really
into it. I was like, I want to make this,
I want to cultivate it whatever whatnot. Because the host
before me, you you didn't take care of the social media.
I think Bridget did right. Yes, they were powerhouses. I
still don't quite get them. But I one of the
things I looked up is how to use hashtags, which
we're going to talk a little bit about. Not really,
(04:49):
we're going to mention again about being used. So I
tried to be more serious with it and try to
find all the hashtags. I had a kind of a
nonprofit project that I did about women domestic violence survivors
and telling their stories, and I used that as well
to group the stories and I used it for WordPress,
(05:10):
which is not exactly the same thing. So we're going
to talk about that as well. Uh, but you know,
realizing that this is how you reach out now that
it just doesn't happen just because and it's almost harder
when you don't use it, so you have to be
very purposeful. So I did use it that way as
a person on my own. Yeah, I do silly things
as well. I will write full sentences as well, because
(05:34):
I'm like, oh, this is ridiculous. But also I do
have a hashtag for peach myth puzsins. No one uses
it but me.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Oh, I'll get in there, Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Get in there. I use that one often, just like
okay because all of my uh I will guarantee, guarantee.
So if y'all want to see pictures of my dog
outside of following me hashtag peaches mcfuzzin, you're welcome.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Perfect.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
You know what, that would be interesting too if we
looked at the trends, because of course a part of
the search that you can do to kind of widen
the scope outside of just the people you follow or
follow you or now all the retweets and the likes
that come our way. And I hate that, by the way,
where you just see other people's likes. I'm like, why
do I have to see this? Anyway. But some of
(06:22):
the things that are trending for me specifically is Speaker
of the House vote, which yes, today is January fifth,
tween twenty three. There is a mess, yeah right now
with the situation, so I do find it interesting. Another
hashtag is hashtag national Birthday. I did not know, did
you know? No? Okay, well now you do. Another trend
(06:46):
is hashtag House of Representatives. Of course, and this is
on Twitter, because we are going to largely talk about Twitter,
especially at the beginning, because this is kind of where
it began, specifically the hashtag not tags. We'll get into
that once again. Yeah, so for Twitter, what's trending for you?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So, so I just had an interesting time. I haven't
used Twitter on my phone in forever. I use it
on my lab. I'm the only person who uses this laptop.
I feel like, oh wow, right now it's Prince Harry, oh,
Speaker of the House vote, Republicans in ruin. I'm suppressor.
(07:23):
So usually there's something Star Wars related that is not
like trending at all, but because I'm Star warssus, it's
always up there.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I like it. Yeah, well, you know, maybe because there's
no shows right now.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Well, yesterday, Ezra was trending. I saw that, and I
was nervous about it. Darth Vader is usually trending for me,
and I can't quite figure out why. But I mean
I can, but I'm also kind of like this made
people just treating about Darth Vader all the time.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Probably, I guess we're pretty similar, except for I don't
have any Prince Harry, even though I've seen all the stuff. Ugh, ugh, monarchies.
Let's let's abolish them. Come on, JK. So we know
of hashtags. We're getting there. I still like when you
were talking about hashtag the door code, it really bothered
(08:15):
me because I was like, it's pound, it's pound, whatever,
What are you talking about? If you tell someone to
code it's pound, how dare you? But yes, because it's
been around, we haven't really talked about it too much,
but we do want to take that deep dive and
look at the history. So before we start, we're going
to look back at the beginning of the hashtag and
when you look at the origin of hashtag or again
(08:37):
pound as it was known to me. Most talk about
the moment in two thousand and seven when Christmasina, who
was at Twitter at the time sent out a tweet
asking how likely people would use hashtags for their tweets.
And by the way, apparently the Twitter founders were not
fans of either of these terms hashtags or tweets, so
that didn't happen till two thousand and nine, and they
(08:59):
allowed that like yeah, is officially that that's fine whatever.
And it was during around the same time a stoboid,
a blogger was using something similar on his own blog
post and later stated quote in yes, y'all, I did
deep dive on their blogs from way back when. It's
also worth noting that Messina and I were involved at
(09:20):
the time in a Twitter and blog based discussion about
a membership in group versus what I call groupings. In
a post at the time, Messina specifically referenced my writings
on groupings. A grouping is a collection of people that
share attributes in common, like the use of a certain
tag on their blog posts or frequent a certain bar,
(09:41):
or a study such as martial arts. And he went
on saying, my argument then see hashtags equal Twitter groupings
was that tags in Twitter would wind up being used
in the same way and indication of the nature of
the contents of the tweet, but in aggregate, everyone that
uses the hashtag ted x are a grouping and that
(10:02):
self selected identification could be an important cultural marker. And
that's pretty much what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, And Chris Messina himself talked about wanting to explore
options like tags used in blogs and point to sites
like Jaiku, which was similar. It was a similar social
media site like Twitter, and it was created around the
same time and Flicker, which still uses tags to show
trends and topics. And in fact, Messina took the tag
(10:29):
San Diego fire as a tester, which was a way
for bloggers to inform the public of the ongoing wildfires
at the time, and in his blog, Messina states, I'm
more interested in simply having a better eavesdropping experience on Twitter.
To that end, I focused my thinking on contextualization, content filtering,
and exploratory serendipity within the Twitter sphere. Sphere, Twitter sphere,
(10:54):
I love this, Like yeah, so then go oh yeah,
all right, continued. It occurred to me that IRC or
Internet relay chat, presents a proven model for these needs
with its foundation on channels, and so that's what I'm
generally going to call them now. In thinking about implementing channels,
(11:15):
it was imperative that I not introduced any significant changes
into the way that I currently use Twitter, anymore than
I have for any other features that have been added
to Twitter, for example, at replies or direct messages. Channels
would need to be a command line friendly edition and
one that would require absolutely zero web based management to
make the most of it.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
And that's what he did. And it was again in
two thousand and nine that Twitter officially adopted this new
way of communicating, which would expand onto other social media platforms.
And for more clear definition of its intention, quote, the
purpose of the invention was to create a metatag that
allowed users to track dynamic content in relation to a
(11:56):
particular event or topic. Because we've said this a few
times and because we're going to go into it, we
didn't want to talk about the differences between tags and hashtags.
So again we mentioned earlier tags have been around and
what's a part of the inspiration to hashtags? And if
you look at Flicker today, the tags are still in
use and it helps categorize and even advertise an individual
(12:20):
post or picture. I mean I remember using it on
my Zanga posts. Yeah, I did, and Honestly, it just
clicked for me. I was like, oh, yeah, that's what
those are. This would be and this would be around
like two thousand, two thousand and one, y'all.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, yeah, And they still use them on things like Tumblr,
and we use them when we write our metadata, right,
we have to write out keywords and that's for searchability.
So it's not quite this. Well it's very similar, but
it's not quite the same, but we have to write
out like you know, this episode is about hashtags, and
it has this and this and this for every episode,
(13:05):
and we have in earlier episodes, of course, talked about
the power of tags in fan fiction, like with AO
three Archive of our Own, which is like one of
the biggest names in fan fiction. More to come about it.
Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Oh but yeah, we
(13:26):
talked about in our episode. It was called it was
a Monday Mini called a love letter to fan fiction,
but it was mostly about AO three. Where that was
a big thing that differentiated AO three was the tags,
so you could search for very very niche things and
as someone who's like posting on AO three for the
(13:46):
first time, like it'll show you if it exists, you
can create one if it doesn't exist. People do like
to have a lot of fun with them, as I
said in that episode, especially like the no Beta we
die like younglings, very sad, but like Beta, who is
your editor? And they're funny. They're like one of my
very favorite parts of that experience is just reading the
(14:08):
creative tags that people come up with, and it's a
really great way of getting a sense of something without
reading it beyond the summary, because it's like the summary
can only tell you so much without spoiling everything, but
the tags can give you a real idea of like
what you're getting into, and they can warn you if
(14:29):
it's going to have something that might upset you. Like
they're just a really effective way of being entertaining but
also conveying a lot of information and you can search
for something incredibly specific with them, right.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I did read as we were researching this on one
of the Reddit posts about fain fiction, but there was
kind of a moment of like people being really upset
for people adding the tags when it wasn't really there
and or harassing people through those tags.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah, well, so there is It's complicated to explain, but essentially,
like if you don't want to spoil people. You can
archive your tags where you can like basically the tax
would change via chapter as opposed to you know, the
whole story. This makes probably no sense if you're like
never had this, had this experience, but essentially like you
(15:19):
can archive your like author has chosen to archive warnings,
but still that usually means that they just don't want
you to know there's going to be a major character
death or whatever, and they'll tell you in the chapter
that it happens, like, hey, this is really not your thing.
I personally haven't had experience with her assing people through tags.
(15:40):
I've definitely seen tags where I'm like, oh, we would
not get along, okay, But I do have a very like,
like I've said, I feel like I've found a very
niche generally save community right in my Star Wars area.
I definitely believe I can see it for sure. I
(16:02):
can see it for sure. And there are things that
are definitely like done in poor taste of like making
fun of a character death and you know, not everybody's
super happy that that character died or something. Yeah, but yeah,
it's in. My experience has been mostly delightful, and people
will tell you if they're like you shouldn't have that tag.
You should take it down. That's also my experience, probably
(16:24):
not everyone's, but.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Which is interesting because that is very specific in that
you can request that. That's kind of rare, especially with
the hashtags, because you just kind of beire to ignore
it and move on or something like that. But that
is necessary for you to dive into a thing. So
that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Mm hmm. Yeah. I could talk about it forever, but
we need to talk about more hashtag stuff. The widespread
use of tags and hashtags have been adopted by most
social media platforms, even though Twitter initially received backlash at
its beginning, Messina said, quote in the beginning, people really
hated them. People didn't understand why we need hashtags, and
(17:00):
the biggest complaint was that people just didn't like how
they looked.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
It is interesting because it is highlighted, so you were
able to click on it and it will take you
to kind kind of a page of other posts that
has that tag. Again, I've didn't meant I was one
of those people. I even mocked the usage of them
by making them the most ridiculous tag because like, what
is this, oh hashtag? And the fact that it's part
of our vernacular. Literally, people will say hashtag something. Of course,
(17:25):
usually it's tongue in cheek, but I've definitely seen people
seriously saying it, and it's become part of our vocabulary,
which is very interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah, and I think that was part of the backlashes
when especially like in my in my realm like health
mostly women health creators, or being like hashtag blust or whatever, Right,
that became a real joke. It's been a We did
an episode, well Past hosted an episode on it, so
(17:55):
you can check that out if you want to. But yeah,
that didn't change the trajectory of how important this initiative
would be for our social media today.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Right, So let's talk about what's happening today as hashtags
took off and is now used for a variety of reasons,
including becoming an influencer, which we've talked about a lot.
If you look up hashtags today, and of course we did,
there are articles after articles on how to use hashtags
to build up your following and your brand. Like I said,
I looked those up myself when I initially started with Sminty.
(18:29):
Social media coordinators often use current trends to promote a
brand or a person in order to gain more followers
and more viewers. And this equals money obviously, and or
brand deals or all those things. Many articles online today
taua how to or the power of the hashtag. One
article written for entrepreneurs a say of hashtag, the hashtag,
(18:51):
that ubiquitous pound sign followed by keyword are part of
the language of social media. Who better to use these
hashtags than entrepreneurs?
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Right?
Speaker 2 (19:01):
And then they say hashtags are simple and explosive way
to increase your engagement as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, and I will say, we recently discussed the cold emails.
We get a lot at the sminty email address, and
a lot of them are we can maximize your social
media presence. We can work your hashtags, which I find
very fascinating, and uses for hashtags have already been adapted
for newer social media like TikTok. TikTok takes the usage
(19:33):
of hashtags a step further by using it as part
of an individual's algorithm with hashtags like fyp or the
for you page, and also helping to create specific subcultures
within its system. Some of the popular subcultures include hashtag, cottage, core,
hashtag moms of TikTok and hashtag fictok, which often are
(19:54):
geared more towards women or female identifying users. Hashtags are
so widely used on TikTok TikTok business sites use it
as a way of advertising. Two creators to hop on
the trend. For example, in August of twenty twenty one,
they tweeted the number of hashtag views such as hashtag
small business to encourage small business to join TikTok and
(20:15):
to use the platform to grow their businesses. And just
in case you were wondering, hashtag small business had thirty
three point eight billion views at the time.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Right huge. But one of the uses of hashtags that
had had us thinking about the origins of hashtags happened
to be the usage of hashtag activism. Currently on social
media platforms, the hashtag say their Names to save their
Lives has been circulating to publicly discuss the revolution occurring
in Iran and the many people who've been kidnapped and
(20:46):
detained due to their protesting or supporting the protests occurring
there now. And just a reminder, as far as I
believe still, Iran has cut off internet access for those
in Iran, So many of the activists are outside of
Iran trying to relay what is happening so that we
are in the know. And hashtag activism has been around
for over a decade now, if not longer, and even
(21:09):
has its own Wikipedia page, and according to the Wikipedia page,
hashtag activism quote refers to the use of Twitter's hashtag
for Internet activism. The hashtag has become one of the
many ways that social media contributes to civic engagement and
social movements. The use of hashtag on social media provides
users with an opportunity to share information and opinions about
(21:31):
social issues in a way that others followers can interact
and engage as part of a larger conversation with the
potential to create change.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
And it has done that. Some of the biggest hashtags
used for activism was at the hands of women, more
specifically women of color. The conversation of hashtag activism is
such a large topic in social justice movement books have
been written in studying this specific subject, including one written
by Sarah Jackson, Moya Bailey, and Brook Fuco Oils titled
(22:01):
Hashtag Activism Networks of Race and Gender Justice, which was
published in twenty twenty, which we do want to talk
about throughout the rest of the episode. Here's a description
from MIT Press dot MIT dot edu. In this book,
they explore how and why Twitter has become an important
platform for historically disenfranchised populations, including Black Americans, women, and
transgender people. They show how marginalized groups long excluded from
(22:25):
elite media spaces have used Twitter hashtags to advance counter narratives,
preempt political spin, and build diverse networks of descent.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Throughout the book, the authors speak of the impact of
hashtags throughout the current movements that have affected throughout the US,
and in the book they define the usage of hashtag
and its uses. They write quote hashtags, which are discursive
and user generated, have become the default method to designate
collective thoughts, ideas, arguments, and experiences that might otherwise stand
(22:55):
alone or be quickly subsumed within the fast paced pastige
of Twitter. Hashtags makes sense of groups of tweets by
creating a searchable shortcut that can link people in ideas together.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
The origin of hashtag activism sprung up around twenty eleven.
It is noted that one of the first usages of
the activism could be pointed to the hashtag airb Spring,
which started spreading in early twenty eleven in order to
bring awareness to the anti government protests in North Africa
and in the Middle East. The overall usage of hashtags
(23:27):
has created more space for disenfranchised voices to be heard.
In the books, they talk about the importance of the
platform and the importances of hashtags for the marginalized community.
They write, members of these marginalized groups, in the tradition
of counter publics, use Twitter hashtags to build diverse networks
of descent and shape the cultural and political knowledge fundamental
to contemporary identity based social movements.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah, and we wanted to take some time to talk
about specific examples of some of this hashtag activism. Some
of the more influential and viewed hashtags used have been
for social justice movements. For feminist movements, we have hashtag
me two, hashtag Yes all Women, hashtag the empty Chair,
and hashtag while we Stayed, and more recently hashtag shout
(24:12):
your Abortion, which has created a larger narrative around different
movements within the feminist movement. These movements are often considered
to be, as we said, a part of the feminist
Twitter or feminist TikTok, which typically provides space to feminists
to move forward in the movement or the current issues
at hand. Hashtags like yes All Women garnered a global
(24:33):
level of attention, which at one point the hashtag being
tweeted by more than one million accounts. Of course, with
another hashtag trending at the same time, hashtag not.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
All Men Rights, and hashtags like not All Men and
Men's Rates have been used as a response to the
different feminist hashtags, and they continue to be part of
the conversation in that specific subculture. But there were others
that were considered ally hashtags, like the empty chair, which
was created by journalists Elon James White, which was created
(25:05):
after the Bill Cosby hashtag. The hashtag was created after
the publishing of the Powerful cover photo of eleven women
and an empty chair in reference to Cosby's assault accusation.
The empty chair has been used to quote signify the
eleven other women who have accused Cosby of assault but
weren't photographed for the magazine, but was also representative of
(25:27):
the many women who didn't come forward. The hashtag was
eventually used for anonymous accounts of assault and harassment. Many
women experienced but couldn't come forward with. The movement was
a monumental one for survivors, as Jackson, Bailey and Wells
Wright published over the course of several days, hashtag the
Empty Chair worked primarily to show the scale of sexual violence,
(25:50):
the scale at which survivors are silenced. It did so
through two types of discourse, one affirming belief in survivors
and the value of women's experience regardless of when or
if they come forward, and the second calling attention to
the often invisible scope of the problem.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Right, of course, this is a bigger conversation about Alice Ship,
and we're going to kind of get into it in
a minute and how it may go awry. But another
subset comes from what is typically regarded as black Twitter movements,
like hashtag black Lives Matter or BLM, hashtags say her
Name and hashtag I can't breathe, a trended due to
the continued violence against the black community, often at the
(26:29):
hands of law enforcement, and much like the feminist hashtags,
these were typically started by women of color. Like most
issues when it comes to social justice and social movements,
is women of color, typically black women, who start these
trends and hashtags. It's all about intersectionality and that's what
they do. And as the research shows, Black Americans actually
(26:50):
make up the majority of Twitter users and this was
of course as of twenty twenty. Things have changed. We
need to get those statistics because things are rapidly changing
in the world of Twitter. Know this and many have
made a mass exodus. So how have these hashtags helped
the marginalized communities? As we said before, many of these
powerful hashtags and trends begin with Black women and oftentimes
(27:11):
goes into larger movements outside of the platforms. It allows
for community among the different marginalized groups and solidarity which
is oftentimes unseen during times of distress. An example of
that that I actually didn't know much about until recently
is hashtag fast tailed girls. When there was conversation of
(27:31):
young black women being too loose or too fast and
having a conversation of them being sexualized at an early
age and just being sexualized just for existing, and it
brought a larger commoderie among black women to be able
to speak out against the misogyn noir based on this.
So it was an amazing movement to see and it's
so important for us to look at because we don't
(27:53):
hear about these conversations, and it doesn't take off unless
something like a hashtag really happens.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
There is also a chance of preserving history and seeking
visibility and justice for those who may never receive it
by courts. We've talked about that before, as well as
the author's write in the hashtag Activism book Quote. A
similar commitment to historical memory is seen in hashtags say
her name tweets highlighting historical cases of state violence against
(28:23):
black women, such as the nineteen eighty four killing of
Eleanor Bumpers by the NYPD, alongside more recent ones as
a digital utterance, engaging a variety of political demands around visibility,
state violence, feminism, and racial justice. Hashtags say her name
plays two primary roles on Twitter. First, it eulogizes women
of color killed as a result of misogynoire is stick violence,
(28:44):
insisting that their lives and stories matter. On Twitter, this
came to include CIS and trans, black and LATINX women
and girls killed by police or while in police custody,
as well as those killed as a result of a
larger culture of neglect regarding the safety of black and
brown women. Second, it demands visibility of these stories in
the name of specific interventions into systemic and intersectional forms
(29:05):
of oppression. This visibility is frequently accompanied not only by
the invocation of names and stories, but also by statistics,
political demands, and calls for policy interventions.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Right and oftentimes we can see of the result of
what happens. One of the prime examples would be hashtag
Brianna Taylor. We saw a result of what we went on,
including the trials and the arrests and the firing and
the corruption that happened years later. And it is because
of hashtags like say her name that has really brought
(29:37):
about a change in what we see and what we
witness and the accountability that sometimes is and sometimes isn't there.
And I think that's a bigger part of that conversation,
as in fact, they talked about in this book that
hashtag Trayvon Martin still exists today, still used today in
order that we still remember what has happened and the
tragedy and the injustice that happened because of that incident,
(30:00):
and making sure that we have a conversation of the
bigger implications. And I think it really brought an awareness
to these injustices that hadn't been around in the last
century until the last decade of some of these movements,
So I think it's also a bigger conversation and that,
and of course again you have to credit black women
who are the ones at the forefront of bringing this about.
(30:22):
No matter what we say about the Black Lives Matter organization,
there's a lot of ups and downs, and there's a
lot of conversations about being a bit kind of crumbling,
but the actual movement in itself has held strong. It
has meant a lot for those who have no voice
and those who are oftentimes oppressed, so you can't ignore
the impact of it all. Of course, there are some
(30:44):
good and bad with this, and we want to talk
about that, as we know. As good great as some
of these hashtag activism is, there's also the bad. As
we talked about not all men wasn't great. There's also
talking when we had that conversation with women white ways
and taking on you know, feminism and forgetting that there
is an intersectionality to it, and being called out and
(31:06):
then making excuses. There are a lot of conversations about that,
and then of course we have the not so great
hashtags that we wish didn't exist and oftentimes are detrimental, racist,
very very damaging and violent even that have existed as well,
so you can't have one without the other. However, there
(31:27):
has been implementations used in order to redirect and one
of that would be the hashtag of flooding. And if
you're wondering what hashtag flooding is is the act of
hijacking a hashtag on social media platforms to change its meaning,
which apparently has been around for years, and that's from
the article twenty twenty was the year activist mastered hashtag
(31:48):
flooding from matchable dot com. We talked about the power
of fangirls and fans and one of the things that
we can ignore is that the BTS fans did some things,
including flooding Donald Trump related hashtag in order to rally
with the gay community. They took their own spin on
(32:09):
the hashtag proud boys hashtags. It was beautiful to see Biggs.
It was ridiculous and funny at the same time because
all you would see is pictures of BTS. I think
that's when I really understood how powerful the fan groups
really were. Another one would be hashtag my NYPD. Originally
was something that the police department tried to do to
(32:31):
look better and asking for good stories or good interactions.
Instead got flooded with accounts of assault or harassment or
police brutality. It did not go well, and I think
there was even one tweet that says, I don't think
you thought this through in reply to the NYPD request.
(32:51):
But of course that can also turn for a flip.
You can also have that in different ways, which we've
seen recently. The Elon Musk stands are out there and
the minute they must have it, like on alert, if
anyone talks bad about Elon Musks, they come out in droves.
I was kind of floored by that, because I know,
(33:13):
I don't know many people that treat him as this god,
which apparently for some are. Of course, we're not talking
about bots, so that's a whole different conversation, and that's
the other part to that is that some of this
flooding is coming from bots as well. Another example of
the flooding that was really great White Lives Matter that
happened after in response to Black Lives Matter, got really
(33:38):
reamed over by BTS fans as well, and you love
to see it. You love to see it as well
as the Q and non stuff. But again that also
came with Pizzagate, which had its own booms. So there's
a conversation about whether or not this is great or
concerning and what does it look like in the future,
And for flooding, who knows this according to who kind
(33:59):
of controls that arrative, who kind of controls that social platform,
who has the most monetary gain. Of course, you know,
Facebook was a part of that problem when they refuse
to take down this information because they were making too
much money off of it. So there's kind of this
whole level of conversations. As we kind of wrap it up,
(34:32):
we want to talk about the good, the bad, and
the uncertainty when it comes to social media. With this
activism as well hashtag activism, we know that the activism
does bring out community and organizations things that you may
never know about. One of the first things I saw
during like the Black Lives Matter protests during Ferguson with
Michael Brown being murdered as well as the death in
(34:56):
New York, we saw people coming together and one of
the best ways that happened was through the hashtag Black
Lives Matter, organizing and creating protests all around the country
and seeing that support and coming together. We saw that
with a women's march really coming together as a country
and having the rally. As in fact, we know there's
another women's march coming up late January twenty second, we'll
(35:18):
have to go back and look that's seeking to have
a conversation or at least protest against the Roe v.
Wade overturning. And those are some amazing, amazing things that
we want to keep looking at it. And if we
look towards black women, they really are the ones that
have used these and the most creative, succinct ways and
tactics in releasing these hashtags. Of course, we have to
(35:41):
look at the bad As we talked about, there's a
lot more conversations about possibly being watched by police states
essentially we know around really watches it. There was several
arrest based on people's posts in supporting protesters and they
were arrested just for that, and that is concerning UH.
(36:02):
There has been groups where specific hashtag was made by
police by law enforcement in order to catch people, essentially
in order to get names in order to surveil The
Standing Rock protests had many many of the police officers
trying to find individuals to arrest, to arrest all of
(36:23):
those things. But the good news on that was there
was many supporters who also checked in and did the
hashtags in order to confuse and bombard anybody who would
use those types of methods. But it is concerning, obviously,
obviously the continued harassment. We know that if you take
a stance and if you link to that again, a
lot of Musk supporters right now are on full one
(36:47):
going after anyone and everyone. Again, I don't know the bots,
maybe there are hopefully that they don't come after me.
I'm not important though, but I've seen it. I've even
seen recently in conversations for conversations for black women, to
support black women. We know the trial for Megande Stallion
just happened. He was found guilty, but to watch what
(37:09):
was happening on Twitter, to watch the hashtag MegaNet Stallion
hashtag believe her Believe black women. They were attacked every
single time there would be one to one where some misogynist,
missogyn noir would be coming out full full force, and
it was based on these hashtags. It was really really
gross and ugly. They continued to harass individuals who would support.
(37:29):
They continued to harass her to the point that she
just regrets. She said she regretted doing this. So there's
a lot to talk about with the bad. And then
there's the uncertainty I talked about earlier, the allyship that
has happened with hashtags like the empty chair he for
she all of these things, but unfortunately a lot of
(37:50):
these hashtags don't have a plan with it, they don't
haven't called to action with it. They are just more
of like, I want to tell you my story and
I want to tell you I'm not as bad as them,
which happened a lot, which is very counterintuitive to what
needs to happen. That's the conversation of, like, you're not
understanding what hashtag activism was originally intended to be, and
you're now overtaking the original intent, which was a call
(38:14):
to action for those to come together. So it's kind
of like, uh, I get what you're trying to do,
but good intentions aren't always great. And that's that conversation
that we need to have. Why are you creating this?
Are you doing this in support? Or have you taken
over something that you shouldn't be taken over? Have you
made the story about you or are you taking credit?
Alyssa Milano is kind of a prime example of that.
(38:36):
She took a movement that wasn't a hashtag yet, but
it was a movement that Torona Burke started and I
believe two thousand and seven of me too, and took
it on to Twitter and took credit for it until
she got called out. I think she would say she didn't.
She was just trying to push forward a movement, which
was great, but you have to be able to give credit.
And again, this is kind of the erasure that happens
(38:57):
over and over and over again with these movements. Oscar
so White another one of those kind of trying to
change those narratives, which is really really great, but then
it kind of also falls apart when nothing changes and
it seems to stay the same. So there's a lot
to be said about that. As we're watching Twitter, it
(39:17):
seems to be going I don't know, I know nothing
about Twitter outside of what I read. It has changed, obviously,
the platform has changed greatly, But when it comes down
to it, because Twitter was as a forefront essentially of
the hashtag movements, it seems uncertain about what we're going
to see with these types of hashtag activists of what
does it look like. TikTok has created its own brand
(39:40):
of hashtags of the use of hashtags, so it'll be
interesting to see how it evolves and then how and
whether or not they're going to include the people who
were the big proponents to this, which are women of color,
black women, right.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
And I think something like this is so important to
talk about because you know, even if, as we said
in that episode of bridget you don't use Twitter, you know,
like about these movements we're talking about, You've seen, experienced
the outcomes from them, You've heard of them, and they
have become a part of our vocabulary and vernacular, and
(40:17):
you know they can be these really creative, fun things,
but also just these real tools for change that are
It's always good to keep in mind where that comes from,
the people who you should credit, and just how you're
using them, because you never know. You should always check
(40:37):
your hashtag before you post it, right, associated with something
else that you don't want it to be associated with.
Are taking conversation away from something you shouldn't be taking
conversation away from. Exactly, Yes, yes, yes, well this was
a fun one. This was a fun one and we
do have a lot more of this technology stuff coming along,
(40:58):
so look out for that. Also. Yeah, just let us
know if you've got any thoughts about hashtags, hashtag history,
favorite hashtags that would be wonderful. You can email us
at Stephania mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can
find us on Twitter, Mom Stuff Podcast, or on Instagram
at stuff one Never Told You. Thanks as always to
our super producer.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Christina Hashtag, thank you, and.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Thanks to you for listening. Stuffan Never Told You is
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts or my heart Radio,
you can check out the heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Annie and Smitha. I'm welcome to stuff
I've never told you, addiction about heart radio, and welcome
to an episode. This was an idea. This classic was
an idea of yours, Samantha that I thought was really interesting,
(00:26):
and it was about the history of the hashtag, which
I have been thinking a lot about technology and the
good and bad ways it's changed our world, but the
hashtag was one. It was a thing that really changed
the way we go about some things.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
On the Internet or the older generations. The pound zine.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yes, which is funny because it often gives confusion when
you have a code like a gatecoad to get into
an apartment complex or something, and sometimes you don't know
if you're supposed to use the pound sign or the
hashtag or if it just means like number and you
have to guess. Oh, I don't even know if that's
a problem anymore, but that was a problem in my day. Anyway,
(01:19):
Please enjoy this classic episode. Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
I'm welcome to Steffone never told you a protection of
iHeart radio.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
And today we are back. Happy New Year. Because this
is kind of the first full episode we've done in
a while, and it's kind of short. I'm guessing maybe not,
but it's very interesting. Yeah, because we are continuing with
our look into technology and women, apparently this is the
thing we're doing that we didn't mean to but kind
of happened. And of course we couldn't ignore the impact
(02:03):
of social media in this conversation, and in our recent
episode with bridget we talked about the current state of
Twitter and all the things that are happening there, which
led us to take a closer look at the history
of hashtags. You know, it's one of those like, oh
where did that come from? Moment and how women have
not only been impacted by its use, but has actually
(02:23):
shaped the effectiveness of hashtags as well. So we had
to jump into that. But before we do, and do
you use hashtags or as we know it pound?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
You know, one of the like funniest generational divides I've
ever experienced is that of the what do you call
it pound? Or do you call it hashtag? But also
like you know, when you would go visit Maybe this
is just me, but you would go to visit an
apartment building and they'd give you the code and I
would just disregard the hashtag and just put in the number,
(02:58):
but you have to put in hash yeah, and I
would just have stuck out there. I do use hashtags.
I think we're gonna be talking about this more when
I get to like the fan fiction section of the
because you know, we have to have a fan fiction
section of this, of course, because I feel like I
(03:19):
generally use them in the way that is not I
use them in the humorous way I guess, which they can.
They are very very useful and grouping information that is important,
and especially around like protesting and very like big issues.
But there is like the fun side of them, which
I never want to forget because I feel like a
(03:40):
lot of times, as we rightly should, we talk about
the more serious matters of this, but there are the
fun kind of parts of it. And I really like
coming up with the you know, super long, ridiculous hashtag
or either you know, like the humorous one where I'll
you know, hashtag nailed it definitely did not nail it.
(04:02):
So I do, but I usually use them in a
less serious way, I guess if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah, you know, coming on to Sminty the show and
I took over the social media, I was like, I
can do this, which I found out I can't. I
tried to study and look into what is effective and
what isn't because you know, at that point in time,
we thought social media would be a big part of podcasting,
and not that it's not, but for us it hasn't
(04:29):
been as a big our. Marketing people are like, don't
worry about it type of thing. But I was really
into it. I was like, I want to make this,
I want to cultivate it whatever whatnot. Because the host
before me, you you didn't take care of the social media.
I think Bridget did right. Yes, they were powerhouses. I
still don't quite get them. But I one of the
things I looked up is how to use hashtags, which
we're going to talk a little bit about. Not really,
(04:49):
we're going to mention again about being used. So I
tried to be more serious with it and try to
find all the hashtags. I had a kind of a
nonprofit project that I did about women domestic violence survivors
and telling their stories, and I used that as well
to group the stories and I used it for WordPress,
(05:10):
which is not exactly the same thing. So we're going
to talk about that as well. Uh, but you know,
realizing that this is how you reach out now that
it just doesn't happen just because and it's almost harder
when you don't use it, so you have to be
very purposeful. So I did use it that way as
a person on my own. Yeah, I do silly things
as well. I will write full sentences as well, because
(05:34):
I'm like, oh, this is ridiculous. But also I do
have a hashtag for peach myth puzsins. No one uses
it but me.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Oh, I'll get in there, Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Get in there. I use that one often, just like
okay because all of my uh I will guarantee, guarantee.
So if y'all want to see pictures of my dog
outside of following me hashtag peaches mcfuzzin, you're welcome.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Perfect.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
You know what, that would be interesting too if we
looked at the trends, because of course a part of
the search that you can do to kind of widen
the scope outside of just the people you follow or
follow you or now all the retweets and the likes
that come our way. And I hate that, by the way,
where you just see other people's likes. I'm like, why
do I have to see this? Anyway. But some of
(06:22):
the things that are trending for me specifically is Speaker
of the House vote, which yes, today is January fifth,
tween twenty three. There is a mess, yeah right now
with the situation, so I do find it interesting. Another
hashtag is hashtag national Birthday. I did not know, did
you know? No? Okay, well now you do. Another trend
(06:46):
is hashtag House of Representatives. Of course, and this is
on Twitter, because we are going to largely talk about Twitter,
especially at the beginning, because this is kind of where
it began, specifically the hashtag not tags. We'll get into
that once again. Yeah, so for Twitter, what's trending for you?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So, so I just had an interesting time. I haven't
used Twitter on my phone in forever. I use it
on my lab. I'm the only person who uses this laptop.
I feel like, oh wow, right now it's Prince Harry, oh,
Speaker of the House vote, Republicans in ruin. I'm suppressor.
(07:23):
So usually there's something Star Wars related that is not
like trending at all, but because I'm Star warssus, it's
always up there.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I like it. Yeah, well, you know, maybe because there's
no shows right now.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Well, yesterday, Ezra was trending. I saw that, and I
was nervous about it. Darth Vader is usually trending for me,
and I can't quite figure out why. But I mean
I can, but I'm also kind of like this made
people just treating about Darth Vader all the time.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Probably, I guess we're pretty similar, except for I don't
have any Prince Harry, even though I've seen all the stuff. Ugh, ugh, monarchies.
Let's let's abolish them. Come on, JK. So we know
of hashtags. We're getting there. I still like when you
were talking about hashtag the door code, it really bothered
(08:15):
me because I was like, it's pound, it's pound, whatever,
What are you talking about? If you tell someone to
code it's pound, how dare you? But yes, because it's
been around, we haven't really talked about it too much,
but we do want to take that deep dive and
look at the history. So before we start, we're going
to look back at the beginning of the hashtag and
when you look at the origin of hashtag or again
(08:37):
pound as it was known to me. Most talk about
the moment in two thousand and seven when Christmasina, who
was at Twitter at the time sent out a tweet
asking how likely people would use hashtags for their tweets.
And by the way, apparently the Twitter founders were not
fans of either of these terms hashtags or tweets, so
that didn't happen till two thousand and nine, and they
(08:59):
allowed that like yeah, is officially that that's fine whatever.
And it was during around the same time a stoboid,
a blogger was using something similar on his own blog
post and later stated quote in yes, y'all, I did
deep dive on their blogs from way back when. It's
also worth noting that Messina and I were involved at
(09:20):
the time in a Twitter and blog based discussion about
a membership in group versus what I call groupings. In
a post at the time, Messina specifically referenced my writings
on groupings. A grouping is a collection of people that
share attributes in common, like the use of a certain
tag on their blog posts or frequent a certain bar,
(09:41):
or a study such as martial arts. And he went
on saying, my argument then see hashtags equal Twitter groupings
was that tags in Twitter would wind up being used
in the same way and indication of the nature of
the contents of the tweet, but in aggregate, everyone that
uses the hashtag ted x are a grouping and that
(10:02):
self selected identification could be an important cultural marker. And
that's pretty much what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, And Chris Messina himself talked about wanting to explore
options like tags used in blogs and point to sites
like Jaiku, which was similar. It was a similar social
media site like Twitter, and it was created around the
same time and Flicker, which still uses tags to show
trends and topics. And in fact, Messina took the tag
(10:29):
San Diego fire as a tester, which was a way
for bloggers to inform the public of the ongoing wildfires
at the time, and in his blog, Messina states, I'm
more interested in simply having a better eavesdropping experience on Twitter.
To that end, I focused my thinking on contextualization, content filtering,
and exploratory serendipity within the Twitter sphere. Sphere, Twitter sphere,
(10:54):
I love this, Like yeah, so then go oh yeah,
all right, continued. It occurred to me that IRC or
Internet relay chat, presents a proven model for these needs
with its foundation on channels, and so that's what I'm
generally going to call them now. In thinking about implementing channels,
(11:15):
it was imperative that I not introduced any significant changes
into the way that I currently use Twitter, anymore than
I have for any other features that have been added
to Twitter, for example, at replies or direct messages. Channels
would need to be a command line friendly edition and
one that would require absolutely zero web based management to
make the most of it.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
And that's what he did. And it was again in
two thousand and nine that Twitter officially adopted this new
way of communicating, which would expand onto other social media platforms.
And for more clear definition of its intention, quote, the
purpose of the invention was to create a metatag that
allowed users to track dynamic content in relation to a
(11:56):
particular event or topic. Because we've said this a few
times and because we're going to go into it, we
didn't want to talk about the differences between tags and hashtags.
So again we mentioned earlier tags have been around and
what's a part of the inspiration to hashtags? And if
you look at Flicker today, the tags are still in
use and it helps categorize and even advertise an individual
(12:20):
post or picture. I mean I remember using it on
my Zanga posts. Yeah, I did, and Honestly, it just
clicked for me. I was like, oh, yeah, that's what
those are. This would be and this would be around
like two thousand, two thousand and one, y'all.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, yeah, And they still use them on things like Tumblr,
and we use them when we write our metadata, right,
we have to write out keywords and that's for searchability.
So it's not quite this. Well it's very similar, but
it's not quite the same, but we have to write
out like you know, this episode is about hashtags, and
it has this and this and this for every episode,
(13:05):
and we have in earlier episodes, of course, talked about
the power of tags in fan fiction, like with AO
three Archive of our Own, which is like one of
the biggest names in fan fiction. More to come about it.
Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Oh but yeah, we
(13:26):
talked about in our episode. It was called it was
a Monday Mini called a love letter to fan fiction,
but it was mostly about AO three. Where that was
a big thing that differentiated AO three was the tags,
so you could search for very very niche things and
as someone who's like posting on AO three for the
(13:46):
first time, like it'll show you if it exists, you
can create one if it doesn't exist. People do like
to have a lot of fun with them, as I
said in that episode, especially like the no Beta we
die like younglings, very sad, but like Beta, who is
your editor? And they're funny. They're like one of my
very favorite parts of that experience is just reading the
(14:08):
creative tags that people come up with, and it's a
really great way of getting a sense of something without
reading it beyond the summary, because it's like the summary
can only tell you so much without spoiling everything, but
the tags can give you a real idea of like
what you're getting into, and they can warn you if
(14:29):
it's going to have something that might upset you. Like
they're just a really effective way of being entertaining but
also conveying a lot of information and you can search
for something incredibly specific with them, right.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I did read as we were researching this on one
of the Reddit posts about fain fiction, but there was
kind of a moment of like people being really upset
for people adding the tags when it wasn't really there
and or harassing people through those tags.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah, well, so there is It's complicated to explain, but essentially,
like if you don't want to spoil people. You can
archive your tags where you can like basically the tax
would change via chapter as opposed to you know, the
whole story. This makes probably no sense if you're like
never had this, had this experience, but essentially like you
(15:19):
can archive your like author has chosen to archive warnings,
but still that usually means that they just don't want
you to know there's going to be a major character
death or whatever, and they'll tell you in the chapter
that it happens, like, hey, this is really not your thing.
I personally haven't had experience with her assing people through tags.
(15:40):
I've definitely seen tags where I'm like, oh, we would
not get along, okay, But I do have a very like,
like I've said, I feel like I've found a very
niche generally save community right in my Star Wars area.
I definitely believe I can see it for sure. I
(16:02):
can see it for sure. And there are things that
are definitely like done in poor taste of like making
fun of a character death and you know, not everybody's
super happy that that character died or something. Yeah, but yeah,
it's in. My experience has been mostly delightful, and people
will tell you if they're like you shouldn't have that tag.
You should take it down. That's also my experience, probably
(16:24):
not everyone's, but.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Which is interesting because that is very specific in that
you can request that. That's kind of rare, especially with
the hashtags, because you just kind of beire to ignore
it and move on or something like that. But that
is necessary for you to dive into a thing. So
that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Mm hmm. Yeah. I could talk about it forever, but
we need to talk about more hashtag stuff. The widespread
use of tags and hashtags have been adopted by most
social media platforms, even though Twitter initially received backlash at
its beginning, Messina said, quote in the beginning, people really
hated them. People didn't understand why we need hashtags, and
(17:00):
the biggest complaint was that people just didn't like how
they looked.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
It is interesting because it is highlighted, so you were
able to click on it and it will take you
to kind kind of a page of other posts that
has that tag. Again, I've didn't meant I was one
of those people. I even mocked the usage of them
by making them the most ridiculous tag because like, what
is this, oh hashtag? And the fact that it's part
of our vernacular. Literally, people will say hashtag something. Of course,
(17:25):
usually it's tongue in cheek, but I've definitely seen people
seriously saying it, and it's become part of our vocabulary,
which is very interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah, and I think that was part of the backlashes
when especially like in my in my realm like health
mostly women health creators, or being like hashtag blust or whatever, Right,
that became a real joke. It's been a We did
an episode, well Past hosted an episode on it, so
(17:55):
you can check that out if you want to. But yeah,
that didn't change the trajectory of how important this initiative
would be for our social media today.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Right, So let's talk about what's happening today as hashtags
took off and is now used for a variety of reasons,
including becoming an influencer, which we've talked about a lot.
If you look up hashtags today, and of course we did,
there are articles after articles on how to use hashtags
to build up your following and your brand. Like I said,
I looked those up myself when I initially started with Sminty.
(18:29):
Social media coordinators often use current trends to promote a
brand or a person in order to gain more followers
and more viewers. And this equals money obviously, and or
brand deals or all those things. Many articles online today
taua how to or the power of the hashtag. One
article written for entrepreneurs a say of hashtag, the hashtag,
(18:51):
that ubiquitous pound sign followed by keyword are part of
the language of social media. Who better to use these
hashtags than entrepreneurs?
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Right?
Speaker 2 (19:01):
And then they say hashtags are simple and explosive way
to increase your engagement as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, and I will say, we recently discussed the cold emails.
We get a lot at the sminty email address, and
a lot of them are we can maximize your social
media presence. We can work your hashtags, which I find
very fascinating, and uses for hashtags have already been adapted
for newer social media like TikTok. TikTok takes the usage
(19:33):
of hashtags a step further by using it as part
of an individual's algorithm with hashtags like fyp or the
for you page, and also helping to create specific subcultures
within its system. Some of the popular subcultures include hashtag, cottage, core,
hashtag moms of TikTok and hashtag fictok, which often are
(19:54):
geared more towards women or female identifying users. Hashtags are
so widely used on TikTok TikTok business sites use it
as a way of advertising. Two creators to hop on
the trend. For example, in August of twenty twenty one,
they tweeted the number of hashtag views such as hashtag
small business to encourage small business to join TikTok and
(20:15):
to use the platform to grow their businesses. And just
in case you were wondering, hashtag small business had thirty
three point eight billion views at the time.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Right huge. But one of the uses of hashtags that
had had us thinking about the origins of hashtags happened
to be the usage of hashtag activism. Currently on social
media platforms, the hashtag say their Names to save their
Lives has been circulating to publicly discuss the revolution occurring
in Iran and the many people who've been kidnapped and
(20:46):
detained due to their protesting or supporting the protests occurring
there now. And just a reminder, as far as I
believe still, Iran has cut off internet access for those
in Iran, So many of the activists are outside of
Iran trying to relay what is happening so that we
are in the know. And hashtag activism has been around
for over a decade now, if not longer, and even
(21:09):
has its own Wikipedia page, and according to the Wikipedia page,
hashtag activism quote refers to the use of Twitter's hashtag
for Internet activism. The hashtag has become one of the
many ways that social media contributes to civic engagement and
social movements. The use of hashtag on social media provides
users with an opportunity to share information and opinions about
(21:31):
social issues in a way that others followers can interact
and engage as part of a larger conversation with the
potential to create change.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
And it has done that. Some of the biggest hashtags
used for activism was at the hands of women, more
specifically women of color. The conversation of hashtag activism is
such a large topic in social justice movement books have
been written in studying this specific subject, including one written
by Sarah Jackson, Moya Bailey, and Brook Fuco Oils titled
(22:01):
Hashtag Activism Networks of Race and Gender Justice, which was
published in twenty twenty, which we do want to talk
about throughout the rest of the episode. Here's a description
from MIT Press dot MIT dot edu. In this book,
they explore how and why Twitter has become an important
platform for historically disenfranchised populations, including Black Americans, women, and
transgender people. They show how marginalized groups long excluded from
(22:25):
elite media spaces have used Twitter hashtags to advance counter narratives,
preempt political spin, and build diverse networks of descent.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Throughout the book, the authors speak of the impact of
hashtags throughout the current movements that have affected throughout the US,
and in the book they define the usage of hashtag
and its uses. They write quote hashtags, which are discursive
and user generated, have become the default method to designate
collective thoughts, ideas, arguments, and experiences that might otherwise stand
(22:55):
alone or be quickly subsumed within the fast paced pastige
of Twitter. Hashtags makes sense of groups of tweets by
creating a searchable shortcut that can link people in ideas together.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
The origin of hashtag activism sprung up around twenty eleven.
It is noted that one of the first usages of
the activism could be pointed to the hashtag airb Spring,
which started spreading in early twenty eleven in order to
bring awareness to the anti government protests in North Africa
and in the Middle East. The overall usage of hashtags
(23:27):
has created more space for disenfranchised voices to be heard.
In the books, they talk about the importance of the
platform and the importances of hashtags for the marginalized community.
They write, members of these marginalized groups, in the tradition
of counter publics, use Twitter hashtags to build diverse networks
of descent and shape the cultural and political knowledge fundamental
to contemporary identity based social movements.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah, and we wanted to take some time to talk
about specific examples of some of this hashtag activism. Some
of the more influential and viewed hashtags used have been
for social justice movements. For feminist movements, we have hashtag
me two, hashtag Yes all Women, hashtag the empty Chair,
and hashtag while we Stayed, and more recently hashtag shout
(24:12):
your Abortion, which has created a larger narrative around different
movements within the feminist movement. These movements are often considered
to be, as we said, a part of the feminist
Twitter or feminist TikTok, which typically provides space to feminists
to move forward in the movement or the current issues
at hand. Hashtags like yes All Women garnered a global
(24:33):
level of attention, which at one point the hashtag being
tweeted by more than one million accounts. Of course, with
another hashtag trending at the same time, hashtag not.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
All Men Rights, and hashtags like not All Men and
Men's Rates have been used as a response to the
different feminist hashtags, and they continue to be part of
the conversation in that specific subculture. But there were others
that were considered ally hashtags, like the empty chair, which
was created by journalists Elon James White, which was created
(25:05):
after the Bill Cosby hashtag. The hashtag was created after
the publishing of the Powerful cover photo of eleven women
and an empty chair in reference to Cosby's assault accusation.
The empty chair has been used to quote signify the
eleven other women who have accused Cosby of assault but
weren't photographed for the magazine, but was also representative of
(25:27):
the many women who didn't come forward. The hashtag was
eventually used for anonymous accounts of assault and harassment. Many
women experienced but couldn't come forward with. The movement was
a monumental one for survivors, as Jackson, Bailey and Wells
Wright published over the course of several days, hashtag the
Empty Chair worked primarily to show the scale of sexual violence,
(25:50):
the scale at which survivors are silenced. It did so
through two types of discourse, one affirming belief in survivors
and the value of women's experience regardless of when or
if they come forward, and the second calling attention to
the often invisible scope of the problem.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Right, of course, this is a bigger conversation about Alice Ship,
and we're going to kind of get into it in
a minute and how it may go awry. But another
subset comes from what is typically regarded as black Twitter movements,
like hashtag black Lives Matter or BLM, hashtags say her
Name and hashtag I can't breathe, a trended due to
the continued violence against the black community, often at the
(26:29):
hands of law enforcement, and much like the feminist hashtags,
these were typically started by women of color. Like most
issues when it comes to social justice and social movements,
is women of color, typically black women, who start these
trends and hashtags. It's all about intersectionality and that's what
they do. And as the research shows, Black Americans actually
(26:50):
make up the majority of Twitter users and this was
of course as of twenty twenty. Things have changed. We
need to get those statistics because things are rapidly changing
in the world of Twitter. Know this and many have
made a mass exodus. So how have these hashtags helped
the marginalized communities? As we said before, many of these
powerful hashtags and trends begin with Black women and oftentimes
(27:11):
goes into larger movements outside of the platforms. It allows
for community among the different marginalized groups and solidarity which
is oftentimes unseen during times of distress. An example of
that that I actually didn't know much about until recently
is hashtag fast tailed girls. When there was conversation of
(27:31):
young black women being too loose or too fast and
having a conversation of them being sexualized at an early
age and just being sexualized just for existing, and it
brought a larger commoderie among black women to be able
to speak out against the misogyn noir based on this.
So it was an amazing movement to see and it's
so important for us to look at because we don't
(27:53):
hear about these conversations, and it doesn't take off unless
something like a hashtag really happens.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
There is also a chance of preserving history and seeking
visibility and justice for those who may never receive it
by courts. We've talked about that before, as well as
the author's write in the hashtag Activism book Quote. A
similar commitment to historical memory is seen in hashtags say
her name tweets highlighting historical cases of state violence against
(28:23):
black women, such as the nineteen eighty four killing of
Eleanor Bumpers by the NYPD, alongside more recent ones as
a digital utterance, engaging a variety of political demands around visibility,
state violence, feminism, and racial justice. Hashtags say her name
plays two primary roles on Twitter. First, it eulogizes women
of color killed as a result of misogynoire is stick violence,
(28:44):
insisting that their lives and stories matter. On Twitter, this
came to include CIS and trans, black and LATINX women
and girls killed by police or while in police custody,
as well as those killed as a result of a
larger culture of neglect regarding the safety of black and
brown women. Second, it demands visibility of these stories in
the name of specific interventions into systemic and intersectional forms
(29:05):
of oppression. This visibility is frequently accompanied not only by
the invocation of names and stories, but also by statistics,
political demands, and calls for policy interventions.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Right and oftentimes we can see of the result of
what happens. One of the prime examples would be hashtag
Brianna Taylor. We saw a result of what we went on,
including the trials and the arrests and the firing and
the corruption that happened years later. And it is because
of hashtags like say her name that has really brought
(29:37):
about a change in what we see and what we
witness and the accountability that sometimes is and sometimes isn't there.
And I think that's a bigger part of that conversation,
as in fact, they talked about in this book that
hashtag Trayvon Martin still exists today, still used today in
order that we still remember what has happened and the
tragedy and the injustice that happened because of that incident,
(30:00):
and making sure that we have a conversation of the
bigger implications. And I think it really brought an awareness
to these injustices that hadn't been around in the last
century until the last decade of some of these movements,
So I think it's also a bigger conversation and that,
and of course again you have to credit black women
who are the ones at the forefront of bringing this about.
(30:22):
No matter what we say about the Black Lives Matter organization,
there's a lot of ups and downs, and there's a
lot of conversations about being a bit kind of crumbling,
but the actual movement in itself has held strong. It
has meant a lot for those who have no voice
and those who are oftentimes oppressed, so you can't ignore
the impact of it all. Of course, there are some
(30:44):
good and bad with this, and we want to talk
about that, as we know. As good great as some
of these hashtag activism is, there's also the bad. As
we talked about not all men wasn't great. There's also
talking when we had that conversation with women white ways
and taking on you know, feminism and forgetting that there
is an intersectionality to it, and being called out and
(31:06):
then making excuses. There are a lot of conversations about that,
and then of course we have the not so great
hashtags that we wish didn't exist and oftentimes are detrimental, racist,
very very damaging and violent even that have existed as well,
so you can't have one without the other. However, there
(31:27):
has been implementations used in order to redirect and one
of that would be the hashtag of flooding. And if
you're wondering what hashtag flooding is is the act of
hijacking a hashtag on social media platforms to change its meaning,
which apparently has been around for years, and that's from
the article twenty twenty was the year activist mastered hashtag
(31:48):
flooding from matchable dot com. We talked about the power
of fangirls and fans and one of the things that
we can ignore is that the BTS fans did some things,
including flooding Donald Trump related hashtag in order to rally
with the gay community. They took their own spin on
(32:09):
the hashtag proud boys hashtags. It was beautiful to see Biggs.
It was ridiculous and funny at the same time because
all you would see is pictures of BTS. I think
that's when I really understood how powerful the fan groups
really were. Another one would be hashtag my NYPD. Originally
was something that the police department tried to do to
(32:31):
look better and asking for good stories or good interactions.
Instead got flooded with accounts of assault or harassment or
police brutality. It did not go well, and I think
there was even one tweet that says, I don't think
you thought this through in reply to the NYPD request.
(32:51):
But of course that can also turn for a flip.
You can also have that in different ways, which we've
seen recently. The Elon Musk stands are out there and
the minute they must have it, like on alert, if
anyone talks bad about Elon Musks, they come out in droves.
I was kind of floored by that, because I know,
(33:13):
I don't know many people that treat him as this god,
which apparently for some are. Of course, we're not talking
about bots, so that's a whole different conversation, and that's
the other part to that is that some of this
flooding is coming from bots as well. Another example of
the flooding that was really great White Lives Matter that
happened after in response to Black Lives Matter, got really
(33:38):
reamed over by BTS fans as well, and you love
to see it. You love to see it as well
as the Q and non stuff. But again that also
came with Pizzagate, which had its own booms. So there's
a conversation about whether or not this is great or
concerning and what does it look like in the future,
And for flooding, who knows this according to who kind
(33:59):
of controls that arrative, who kind of controls that social platform,
who has the most monetary gain. Of course, you know,
Facebook was a part of that problem when they refuse
to take down this information because they were making too
much money off of it. So there's kind of this
whole level of conversations. As we kind of wrap it up,
(34:32):
we want to talk about the good, the bad, and
the uncertainty when it comes to social media. With this
activism as well hashtag activism, we know that the activism
does bring out community and organizations things that you may
never know about. One of the first things I saw
during like the Black Lives Matter protests during Ferguson with
Michael Brown being murdered as well as the death in
(34:56):
New York, we saw people coming together and one of
the best ways that happened was through the hashtag Black
Lives Matter, organizing and creating protests all around the country
and seeing that support and coming together. We saw that
with a women's march really coming together as a country
and having the rally. As in fact, we know there's
another women's march coming up late January twenty second, we'll
(35:18):
have to go back and look that's seeking to have
a conversation or at least protest against the Roe v.
Wade overturning. And those are some amazing, amazing things that
we want to keep looking at it. And if we
look towards black women, they really are the ones that
have used these and the most creative, succinct ways and
tactics in releasing these hashtags. Of course, we have to
(35:41):
look at the bad As we talked about, there's a
lot more conversations about possibly being watched by police states
essentially we know around really watches it. There was several
arrest based on people's posts in supporting protesters and they
were arrested just for that, and that is concerning UH.
(36:02):
There has been groups where specific hashtag was made by
police by law enforcement in order to catch people, essentially
in order to get names in order to surveil The
Standing Rock protests had many many of the police officers
trying to find individuals to arrest, to arrest all of
(36:23):
those things. But the good news on that was there
was many supporters who also checked in and did the
hashtags in order to confuse and bombard anybody who would
use those types of methods. But it is concerning, obviously,
obviously the continued harassment. We know that if you take
a stance and if you link to that again, a
lot of Musk supporters right now are on full one
(36:47):
going after anyone and everyone. Again, I don't know the bots,
maybe there are hopefully that they don't come after me.
I'm not important though, but I've seen it. I've even
seen recently in conversations for conversations for black women, to
support black women. We know the trial for Megande Stallion
just happened. He was found guilty, but to watch what
(37:09):
was happening on Twitter, to watch the hashtag MegaNet Stallion
hashtag believe her Believe black women. They were attacked every
single time there would be one to one where some misogynist,
missogyn noir would be coming out full full force, and
it was based on these hashtags. It was really really
gross and ugly. They continued to harass individuals who would support.
(37:29):
They continued to harass her to the point that she
just regrets. She said she regretted doing this. So there's
a lot to talk about with the bad. And then
there's the uncertainty I talked about earlier, the allyship that
has happened with hashtags like the empty chair he for
she all of these things, but unfortunately a lot of
(37:50):
these hashtags don't have a plan with it, they don't
haven't called to action with it. They are just more
of like, I want to tell you my story and
I want to tell you I'm not as bad as them,
which happened a lot, which is very counterintuitive to what
needs to happen. That's the conversation of, like, you're not
understanding what hashtag activism was originally intended to be, and
you're now overtaking the original intent, which was a call
(38:14):
to action for those to come together. So it's kind
of like, uh, I get what you're trying to do,
but good intentions aren't always great. And that's that conversation
that we need to have. Why are you creating this?
Are you doing this in support? Or have you taken
over something that you shouldn't be taken over? Have you
made the story about you or are you taking credit?
Alyssa Milano is kind of a prime example of that.
(38:36):
She took a movement that wasn't a hashtag yet, but
it was a movement that Torona Burke started and I
believe two thousand and seven of me too, and took
it on to Twitter and took credit for it until
she got called out. I think she would say she didn't.
She was just trying to push forward a movement, which
was great, but you have to be able to give credit.
And again, this is kind of the erasure that happens
(38:57):
over and over and over again with these movements. Oscar
so White another one of those kind of trying to
change those narratives, which is really really great, but then
it kind of also falls apart when nothing changes and
it seems to stay the same. So there's a lot
to be said about that. As we're watching Twitter, it
(39:17):
seems to be going I don't know, I know nothing
about Twitter outside of what I read. It has changed, obviously,
the platform has changed greatly, But when it comes down
to it, because Twitter was as a forefront essentially of
the hashtag movements, it seems uncertain about what we're going
to see with these types of hashtag activists of what
does it look like. TikTok has created its own brand
(39:40):
of hashtags of the use of hashtags, so it'll be
interesting to see how it evolves and then how and
whether or not they're going to include the people who
were the big proponents to this, which are women of color,
black women, right.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
And I think something like this is so important to
talk about because you know, even if, as we said
in that episode of bridget you don't use Twitter, you know,
like about these movements we're talking about, You've seen, experienced
the outcomes from them, You've heard of them, and they
have become a part of our vocabulary and vernacular, and
(40:17):
you know they can be these really creative, fun things,
but also just these real tools for change that are
It's always good to keep in mind where that comes from,
the people who you should credit, and just how you're
using them, because you never know. You should always check
(40:37):
your hashtag before you post it, right, associated with something
else that you don't want it to be associated with.
Are taking conversation away from something you shouldn't be taking
conversation away from. Exactly, Yes, yes, yes, well this was
a fun one. This was a fun one and we
do have a lot more of this technology stuff coming along,
(40:58):
so look out for that. Also. Yeah, just let us
know if you've got any thoughts about hashtags, hashtag history,
favorite hashtags that would be wonderful. You can email us
at Stephania mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can
find us on Twitter, Mom Stuff Podcast, or on Instagram
at stuff one Never Told You. Thanks as always to
our super producer.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Christina Hashtag, thank you, and.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Thanks to you for listening. Stuffan Never Told You is
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts or my heart Radio,
you can check out the heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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