Fun & Famous
These hashtags really can't be used anymore
Since I am looking for a bit of visual distraction on Instagram – my first social media account ever; I also don't do Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Snapchat, so I am truly a newbie – I notice some things, including the regularly recurring ostentatious display of so-called humility and identity confusion with the cuties. Amusing, but also bloody annoying. Can it please stop?
#blessed
Look, anyone who has rolled a healthy die, successfully had an eleventh toe surgically removed, or buys their first house after saving for a long time is of course terribly #blessed, but that hashtag rarely accompanies photos of such events – if those photos even make a splash; I haven't seen any pics of removed eleventh toes with the relieved former owners giving a thumbs up next to them, for example. No, people feel #blessed about the most trivial shit: about toast with avocado, a successful #morningrun, or a nice view. Yeah, here in the west we are anyway fucking blessed, but the more everyone counts and shares their billion blessings, the more worn out and worthless those blessings become. A bit exaggerated.
Folded gratitude hands
Another one in the category ‘don't exaggerate so much’: the emoticon with squinted eyes and folded hands in gratitude with every regram or compliment. Since when is it customary to stand there with folded prayer hands because someone says you have nice pants on? Well, it isn't, right? The joke is that this emoticon is mainly used by people you know are not really that grateful and humble in real life. It actually just means: ‘I kiss your ass because I know that might come in handy for me later.’
”Yeah, yeah, you're fishing for likes and followers, it seems, but you don't score points with it, of course”
Hashtag disease
Hahaha, I am a social media dummy, but even I understand the nonsensical stupidity of hashtagitis, as in a #een #hashtag #for #every #word #too #al #heb #ik #vandaag #nothing #done. #never #really. Totally a mess: tapping the hashtag ‘too’ to see completely random pictures of other idiots who are also #hashtag sick. Yeah, yeah, you're fishing for likes and followers, it seems, but you don't score points with it, of course.
I am my child
You think you're going to follow a friend on Instagram, but a dark brown suspicion creeps in when you see her status photo: son Jeffrey or daughter Sofie with a silly pair of glasses. You're not following your friend, but her family through her rose-colored glasses. Cute, all that offspring, but it produces a whole lot of terribly annoying pictures: Jeffrey smeared with syrup on his first pancake #nomnomnom, little Sofie on the swing – just look how brave. And your friend? On Instagram, she is primarily a mother, then a whole lot of nothing, and then… oh no, still a mother again. Sigh.
Written by Kalinka Hählen
