For my hashtag, I chose to research #discrimination. I found that people mostly use the hashtag legitimately, with several congressman and organizations using it. Most tweets about this involved foreign issues and gay rights.

The tone of my first example serious. It is two people, berating Ashers Baking Co., a Northern Irish bakery that refused to make a cake for a gay couple. I think that this social media allows people to spread word about a discriminatory practice, without confrontation. Through Twitter, word of this business’ anti-gay practices can go public instantly. If this company does have discriminatory practices, they should at least have the courtesy to notify people.

The second example is more joke-ish. A teenager is making a joke about the lack of fishabetes. This use of the hashtag shows how humor these days is. It isn’t just clean, every-man jokes, they are a little bit more tailored.

Looking at how people use this hashtag, I think that the legitimacy of the hashtag is mostly upheld as something serious, while a few use it as jokes, even a few of my friends. Hashtags may seem very serious when about serious topics, but it all depends on the context. This says that in society, not everyone thinks or feels the same about a topic. When looking at a tweet, or using a hashtag, a person could think that “this is a good thing, this is constructive” or “this will make people laugh.” That says something about society as a whole, that not everyone thinks the same about an issue.