There is no doubt that we live in a different world than we lived in just a few short years ago. If you have been around long enough to remember a time before we all hung out on social media, you realize that we used to talk face-to-face. Today, we tend to speak using as few words as possible and even if we are using a short word, we may abbreviate it just to save some typing. There are also many interesting phenomena that have taken place as a result of the Internet and dealing with life online. Much of it has to do with communication, and one of those is the simple hashtag.
Hashtags are an interesting way to group information so that we can easily research and find others who are talking about the same subject. When it is used properly, it can be quite a tool that helps us to navigate social media. Many people, however, tend to use it inappropriately and they get carried away with their use of hashtags. Of course, it isn’t quite as trendy as it was a year or so ago but people still get stuck using those hashtags over and over again. It’s something that we often do online and we just accept it for what it is but we would never even consider using those hashtags in our daily conversations face-to-face.
What would it be like if somebody used hashtags when they were talking to somebody verbally? You don’t have to wonder, because Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake are willing to show us. In a rather interesting segment on the Tonight Show, they sit on the couch and have a conversation using those hashtags one after the other.
Not only do Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon do an excellent job of working hashtags into their conversation, they also show us the ridiculousness of overusing them on social media. It’s worth a laugh and worth watching, and you can see it in the video below.