RUN, COMRADES, #YOLO! — CURSORY NOTES ON RADICAL HASHTAG FORMS
“The most important, most radical element of the Occupy movement was its hashtags. While the media swarmed around the telegenic sights of occupied city squares worldwide, the significant social effect was happening online. For the first time there was a single place where both anger with the management of the financial system and vague hopes and aspirations for social change could emerge in conversation with each other. #OWS had created a high profile space which encouraged ordinary people to vocalise their problems and solutions, and see themselves as active participants within a potential process of social change rather than observers and practically disenfranchised voters. Whereas the reigning ideology had been that of capitalist realism (‘THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE’), #OWS fitted a new radical form for a hashtag: that of the town hall or public square, a community-controlled space oriented specifically around the free flow of issues and ideas being thrown up for debate, on a reasonably egalitarian basis”
by Huw Lemmy
