I'm Judging You (20 page)

On Judgment Day, I want Christ to start by making a speech about how we didn't know His life and how He totally didn't say all the foolishness we said He did, and how He didn't say gay people are evil because He had bigger fish to fry. Also, the chapter on Adam and Steve was lost on Noah's ark because they didn't get a chance to laminate things before the flood. I want Him to flip the table and whip everyone's ass for libel and slander.

I am judging all of us for allowing religion to essentially ruin us and divide us. Jesus needs to fix it. Buddha needs to bind it. Allah gotta come through and amend it. Vishnu gotta bring some Velcro to get us back together, and Zeus can zip it up. I'll send a telegram to Orisha to overhaul it, too. ALL these deities need to come together and tell us to get our lives right, because humankind needs its edges snatched for what we do in the name of religion. We do not know how to behave.

Alls I know is that you can't represent hate, misogyny, discrimination, and lack of common sense while saying you're acting on behalf of Christ or any other celestial being. Get some decorum about your lifespace. Saints and Aints, let us live life well and good, but please leave Brown Baby Jesus out of your shenanigans. AMEN? Amen.

 

PART

III

Social Media

I was an early adopter of a lot of social networks. I've been on Facebook since July 2004, five months after it first launched. I've been on Twitter since September 2008, back when it still prompted you to tweet with “What are you doing?” I was on AOL Instant Messenger in the nineties, when dial-up was all we had, and if someone called your house you'd get logged off and be mad as hell. You had to deal with that running-ass yellow dude who struggle-pinged his way into Internet connection, often only after twenty minutes and five tries. Social media has been a part of my life for at least half of my life; I am of the bridge generation that remembers life before it was prominent but grew up with it and now cannot imagine life without it
.

Social media has come to define my generation and those younger than me, and it has shaped everything about what we do and how we do it. This has been a gift and a curse, because we've lost some interpersonal communication skills as we've gained tech savvy. It's interesting how we correspond now more than ever because of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, yet we are failing at basic communication worse than ever
.

Your social-media experience is completely dependent on the people you've curated and let into your space. The people you friend, follow, and like determine what your eLife looks like; I don't know about you, but MY Facebook experience is mostly a good-ass time with many brilliant people who make me guffaw everyday. But then some people you friend and follow will make you roll your eyes so hard that you go temporarily cross-eyed. I am judging these social-media antimavens
.

 

14. #Hashtag #I #Hate #Your #Hashtag #Abuse

Hashtags: Sometimes I rue the day they were invented by Al Gore. I really, really do. In case this is 2050 and you're just picking up this book because it is a modern classic, please know that there was a time before we put the pound sign (#) in front of everything. There were some good old days before we thought everything we wrote needed to be a phrase that is squished together with # in front of it. This chapter is dedicated to the memory of those days of yore.

Being the social-media historian (I saw that title on LinkedIn) that I am, let's talk about how hashtags started and what they were originally for. Word on these eStreets is that in the late 1990s (aka medieval times), they were used in some chat rooms. But in August 2007, a man named Chris Messina (a regular dude, not the actor) tweeted about people using # to group stuff. That was all she wrote, and the hashtag became a thing, and Twitter started aggregating hashtagged posts in 2009. Facebook was tardy to the party, only recognizing them in 2013.

Placing a pound sign before a word hyperlinks it and allows it to become trackable, so everyone using that word or search term can find out what everyone else is talking about. In this way, it is really useful. Movements have been started from hashtags on Twitter (
see
: #BlackLivesMatter). People have been dragged by their eyebrows to complete hilarity from some of them (
see
: #PaulasBestDishes). And we're able to have remote water-cooler conversations about our favorite TV shows because of them (
see
: #GoldenGirls).

Hashtags then evolved into random asides, “under the breath” statements or whispered afterthoughts. Example: “Did you see that awful article? #FixItJesus.” It's cute when used correctly. People throw all types of shade in hashtag form, and it can be brilliant. Brilliant, I say!

But it's too bad people ruin everything. This is why I must judge us for our hashtag abuse. Yes, you. I know you've done it. And you're probably like, “Luvvie, I don't curr! I love my hashtags and I will use them!”

To which I say: “I know you do, punkin, but you make me wanna pop out the number 3 on your keyboard so you can never make a pound sign again.” *Smizes* I blame the day hashtags were activated on Facebook and your cousin who didn't really understand them started abusing them terribly.

What does using a hashtag badly look like? I'm glad you didn't ask.

1. Hashtagging every word of a sentence

I have seen one too many people type a whole sentence, placing a pound sign before every word. #Are #you #seriously #doing #this? I get irrationally irate at this. Why are you placing a pound sign before every word?! Why do you want me to come to your house and find your keyboard and slam it against the wall? I just want to Hulk out at this. It makes reading a chore. I do not want every word I'm reading to be highlighted. Plus, the pound sign breaks up the words and breaks up flow. Also, it is pointless. It's not a random aside, and the words being hashtagged aren't even words that anyone would search. That brings me to the next hashtagging sin.

2. Hashtagging basic words

There are people in the topsy-turvy world who hashtag words like #the, #of, #this, #to, and #for. Why? Because they really enjoy using pound signs and they think their words get lonely without a pound sign to keep them company. Why, in the name of all that is good, are you turning prepositions and sentence articles into hashtags? Seriously. STAHP. You're better than this. I believe in you, and you must stop this. Also, if you go back to the original point of a hashtag, which is to segment conversation and allow people to search a particular word to see what folks are saying about it, you'll know why it's really goofy to put a pound sign on prepositions. Who is searching for the word “the”? NO ONE.

3. Hashtagging a complete sentence

Why do people hashtag complete sentences? #IWonderWhyTheyDoItBecauseItsCompletelyUnnecessary, and they are clearly hell-bent on making my blood pressure go sky high. First of all, that is no longer a random aside. Second of all, doing this makes your words so much harder to read, and what I wrote above isn't even as bad as it gets. I capitalized the first letter of each word, but people who hashtag whole sentences often do not. So you're playing Riddle That Line to decipher what they're trying to say. You, hashtagger, have taken the random aside too far. That's just a sentence you should have written out normally.

4. Using thirty-five hashtags in one post

You just posted a picture and then decided to use eleventy hashtags in the caption. I want Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Vine, and LinkedIn to have a special forum about you where they suspend your ability to use hashtags and the only way it can be reinstated is if you promise to get your eLife together and never do that again. We have all seen that person who posts a picture of the sky on Instagram with the caption: #sky #blue #clouds #day #peace #love #hope #yup #picture #followme #ITookThis #ForReal #beautiful #lovely #DontDoThis #IBegOfYou #YouAreBetterThanThis #STOPITNOW.

I hope those people go to the market and their favorite fruit is the only thing NOT on sale. I know why people use so many hashtags in their pictures: some terrible social-media strategist has told them that hashtags make their pictures easier to find. But who on Yahweh's earth is searching for #day to find new people to follow? Please stop with this overuse. It makes you look desperate for followers. I know we all are, and whoever says they're not is lying like good baby hair. But try to at least hide it better by not vomiting hashtags over everything.

5. Hijacking an unrelated hashtag

Since hashtags are searchable, and people use them to find what is relevant to their interests, douchebags will use a hashtag that has nothing to do with their post. This is so their content can piggyback on the hashtag's visibility. What they don't understand is that when people see their post has nothing to do with what they're looking for, they will keep it moving and ignore them. You placing the hashtag #Beyoncé on a cup of milk might make people see your picture, but they will probably report you as spam because clearly you're a troll and you cannot be in their eSpace.

Yes, you can take a picture of your Starbucks cup. No, you probably shouldn't tag it with #NaturalHair, thirst bucket. People are notorious for hijacking the hashtags of nonprofits and causes just so they can be in the stream. Why are you so parched to be seen that you're tricking people into seeing your post? That's sad, and you should probably see someone about that.

6. Creating a word that makes the hashtag not work

It's easy to tell who doesn't really understand hashtags, jumping on the bandwagon because they thought it looked cool when their niece or nephew used it in a status. Your aunties and uncles love using a pound sign at the end of a word or phrase, and I just want to send them a message telling them they don't even go to this school. Exhibit A: ThankingGodForLife#. That ain't how that's supposed to go. This isn't “Bring a Pound Sign to Work Day.” The tag needs to be in the FRONT.

Some people will use a hashtag before
and
after their word. #Blessed#. NOPE. Take it back. Take it back right now!

Some folks love hashtagging any old thing, even words with apostrophes, not understanding this will make them unsearchable. #I'mSoFavored.” You probably are. But you're also doing this wrong. Go get your teenager to teach you, because you're embarrassing them.

7. Being unable to NOT hashtag

The hashtag has permeated everything we do now, to the point that some people have found themselves officially without the ability to NOT place a pound sign in front of their statuses. You cannot recall the last time they wrote something that wasn't hashtagged to death. You think they signed a contract with Hashtag, LLC, barring them from ever posting a status that isn't hyperlinked all the way through. In fact, you are thinking about doing an intervention. You want them to give it up for Lent, because surely this has to count as hashtag gluttony. You do not need to use a hashtag on every single post.

8. Hashtagging titles

The popularity of hashtags has spurred a trend that makes me cringe: Newspapers are using hashtags for headlines: #WillHeWinTheRace? Books are being printed with hashtags on the front: #AMemoir. And #ImJudgingThemAll. I already know I'm young-old, but this is one trend that doesn't need to permeate everything, including traditional titles. I hashtagged the chapter before this, though. HA!

Hashtags have become weapons of mass annoyance, and I want us all to do better so we don't look back on our writing and wonder why no one pulled us to the side.

 

15. Your Facebook Is My Favorite Soap Opera

Henry Thomas Buckle said, “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” Dead white men love getting stuff wrong, man. I love discussing people, and my mind is quite large, judging by my forehead, thankyouverymuch, Henry.

Look: I love guzzling piping hot tea in the form of gossip about people's lives. I thoroughly enjoy minding other people's business, but it's not my fault. It's theirs. People have made it too easy to know everything about their personal business because of social media, especially Facebook. That is the digital Lipton factory, where all gossip tea goes to boil, and I am here for it all the way.

I have never been into soap operas, even when my grandmother (I miss her so much) used to force me to watch
All My Children
with her during my summer breaks. If you're reading this in the far future (or you were born after 1992), we used to have these shows called “soap operas” where everyone was white, hella dramatic, and prone to having long-lost twins, or amnesia, and being really rich. Yes, they were all set in Rhode Island or Nantucket. And each one would go on for thirty years. People used to keep
the same job
for thirty years. I know, crazy.

But who needs soap operas now when we have social-media timelines? Now you can get a similar drama fix by just paying attention to your friends' and family members' Facebook pages. It's
Days of Our Lives: Real-Life Edition
.

I especially love that friend (or several) we all have who keeps everyone updated on their dating life, like they're writing Carrie Bradshaw's column. I'll refer to this person as the Bleeding Heart. They make social media interesting, because they're the person who is in love with love, but love might not love them that much. If there were a movie about them, it would be called
Love Is Just Not That Into You
. Taylor Swift would do the entire soundtrack, and Adele might make a cameo on the intro track and slay right quick.

Anyway, Bleeding Hearts wear their hearts on their sleeves and on their statuses. They are the ones who you might have not seen since you were in middle school together, but you can track their entire dating history, including start and end dates, just by going on their page. You can almost chart their cycles in dating, because at this point everyone sees the pattern but them. They're as predictable as the moon but not as bright.