Hash

The semiology and phenomenology of hashtaggery intrigues me. From what I understand, it all began very simply: on Twitter, hashtags—those little checkerboard marks that look like this #—were used to mark phrases or names, in order to make it easier to search for them among the zillions and zillions of tweets. For instance, if you wanted to make a comment about Sarah Palin, you could include her name in the tweet, or you could make the comment and follow it with her name marked by hashtag...