Brace yourselves for the proliferation of the 'finger hashtag'

06 Mar 2013

The hashtag was born on IRC networks before migrating to Twitter and evolving into something that people verbalised ("hashtag fail"). Now some factions are trying to turn it into a gestural expression and Nimrod Kamer -- a filmmaker and journalist -- is all for it. You can follow him on Twitter at @nnimrodd

Fashion correspondents, Girls viewers and suave-and-dexterous hip people, love to insert hashtags into conversations, punctually, all the time. You could dismiss that as speech impediment but what actually appears to be happening is the world is becoming a topic, and one can't click on a topic unless it has a hash sign stationed in front of it.

As things go, social media memes have become talking points IRL, so some people have gone a step further and developed a new finger gesture that looks like a hashtag and is pretty mind/wrist-boggling. People are actually making the hashtag sign with their hands (using the index and middle fingers from both laid over each other) rather than saying "hashtag".

Imagine a style blogger who likes talking in abbreviations, saying stuff like: "hashtag awk"; "hashtag ridic", "hashtag fab", "hashtag marv" (marvelous); "hashtag obvs"; "hashtag YOLO"; "hashtag suspish"; "hashtag whatevs"; "hashtag atrosh"; "hashtag BFFS (Best Friends Forever Sometimes)"; "hashtag mawk" (majorly awk)... you get the idea. Well they don't bother saying the "hashtag" part out loud, but instead convey it through their new piece of sign language. They do, however, still vocalise the word that follows the hashtag sign. Others are supposed to marvel at how nifty and time-saving they've become.

For instance, you say: "I never met anyone who is both beautiful and shockingly [fingers-crossed] hilars as you" or "I got a bit of a problem with left and right its called directional-dyslexia or

[fingers-crossed] dyspedia" or "dealers caught selling drugs in Eton College [fingers-crossed] spliffupperlip."

I believe this is an incredible trend, one that will go down in the history of hotness. It is special because it requires two hands, forcing people to drop their phones and look at each other's eyes. It brings out the hashness in all of us, shifting our gaze from the screen, and even allowing mute people and detectives looking at prisoners through a glass to take part in this social game.

By the way, for pros, there's something even more unconvensh called the "hastag", which is a hashtag for has-beens like Zooey Deschanel and Kris Humphries. Still no dial-key assigned.


What do you think of the finger hashtag? Something to be embraced? Or should it be killed with fire? Tell us in the comments below.