Since the creation of the Internet, there have been numerous advancements in society. People can look up any piece of information in a matter of seconds, communicate with family and friends across the globe instantly and even spend a shameful amount of hours looking at pictures of cats.

However, with great technology comes great responsibility, and unfortunately, the Internet has been used irresponsibly to commit some of the worst offenses. From hashtags to tweets, the Internet and social media have become clogged with the atrocities of the vain, the ignorant and the illiterate.

Hashtags

Originally coming to popularity through Twitter, hashtags have come into nearly all forms of social media. According to hashtags.org, a hashtag is a “keyword phrase … that is preceded by a pound (#) sign and written without spaces in between” and serves to “bring conversations on the same topic into a single thread to make it convenient for information consumers to view and compare ideas.”

By using a hashtag, one can locate all other posts with the same hashtag. This is useful for many looking for trends and promotions. In addition to this purpose, hashtags have also come into use to ironically connect jokes on social media. For example, if one were to post about having a bad day due to traffic and thunderstorms, jokesters on the Internet can post “#thanksobama.”

However, hashtags are probably better left for Instagram, if they aren’t being used conservatively. Nothing is more annoying than seeing a Facebook post in the newsfeed with a dozen hashtags, or rather a hashtag with a half-dozen words such as #Ihatewhenpeoplemisusehashtags. If no one is going to search the hashtag, don’t use it, so it is doubtful #Ihatewhenpeoplemisusehashtags will be trending on Twitter anytime soon.

Don’t waste 140 characters allowed in a Tweet with #uselesshashtags, conjunctions #or prepositions such #as these, or misspelled #hastags because no one will be looking for them, and rightfully so.

Instagram

Created to supply amateur photographers with a means of easily editing and sharing photographs, Instagram has become one of the more useless forms of social media. If one can post pictures on Twitter or Facebook, then using another platform that can only have pictures posted on it seems redundant.

The original idea of an application that can edit photos seemed like a great idea. However, the application has become a vapid medium for users to post pictures of their daily lunch and take countless pictures of the same pose — the one with the hand placed on the hip at an unnatural angle, the lips pursed into a duck bill, the latest hairstyle shown off and the usual hashtag of #nofilter in the caption.

For those who are often tagged as #instagramless, #nofilter refers to the use, or lack thereof, of a standard filter Instagram provides to blur, edit or distort a photograph to make it more “artistic.”

Acronyms and abbreviations

Social media has become such a part of everyday life that acronyms and slang have become a part of the reluctantly accepted English language. Whether it is a little brother or sister that actually says “LOL (laugh out loud)” or the fact that “srsly” has been added as an informal form of “seriously” in the Oxford dictionary.

The use of acronyms and abbreviations are the epitome of laziness and apathy. Would it really hurt to type the extra letter in “wut” to make it “what?” Furthermore, many have become victim to using “LOL” almost as frequently as one would use a period.

Editors used to have a problem with common mistakes, like the misuse of the homophones “there,” “their” and “they’re,” but if society continues on this decline, editors will have far worse to fear.

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