Hashtags were invented for everyone else.
They helped us tell social networks what a post was about.
#travel
#photography
#food
#technology
That meant they had to be general. A hashtag only worked if other people understood it too. It had to describe the post in a way that made sense publicly.
Then algorithms got better.
Social networks became increasingly capable of understanding what a post was about without asking us to label it. They could look at the content, the people interacting with it, what we watched, what we clicked, and what we ignored.
The hashtag became less important.
And gradually, we stopped using it.
But I think the hashtag was solving the wrong problem.
At #memory, we're bringing it back for something completely different.
Not as a topic. As an association.
A hashtag for everyone is:
#coffee
A hashtag for you might be:
#BangkokTrip
#thingDadRecommended
#kitchenProblem
#forNextApartment
Those words don't necessarily describe the information itself.
They describe how the information exists in your mind.
Human memory isn't organized like a database. When you try to remember something, you rarely start with its exact title, filename, or the words inside it.
You remember something around it.
Who showed it to you.
Where you were.
Why you cared about it.
What you planned to do with it.
One thought leads to another until eventually you arrive at the thing you were looking for.
That's association.
And because an association is only for you, it doesn't need to be objectively correct. It doesn't need to make sense to anyone else.
It only needs to trigger something in your memory.
That's why we use the hashtag in #memory.
Visually, it tells you that this isn't just another word. It's a cue you've attached to something because that word has a particular meaning to you.