#confession, #1000speak, #octothorpe

Jan17

#1000speak

 

I have a confession to make.

I hate hashtags. I love octothorpes. At least, I love the word associated with the symbol commonly known to most these days as, and I cringe to say it, a hashtag.

I am not entirely certain why I have such disdain for the new terminology. I don’t deal well with change. I realize octothorpe is archaic terminology, some even dispute its correctness, but I embraced it long ago. It has been called many things, pound sign, number sign, hash mark; none of which I have ever objected to, but for some reason, hashtag annoyed me the moment it became a thing.

I vowed to never, ever, not ever use a hashtag. Perhaps it was my way of rebelling against the text-speaking society we have become. It bothers me to see my beloved words reduced and mangled and mashed, I don’t want to spend precious moments deciphering messages like a spy.

I tried it once. I wrongly assumed WTF meant way too far; the conversation did not go as planned.

Back to my confession, I have embraced, semi-sort of and in a round-about way, the hashtag. Not entirely mind you, and it wasn’t without hesitation, but the reason for my change of heart is worthy. Well worthy.

#1000speak

1000 Voices for Compassion. Well worthy indeed.

The blogosphere is filled with amazing, talented, beautiful people and two of these beautiful people had a conversation, one that led to an idea, a glorious idea. They realized our world needed to embrace compassion, and indeed it does. Because of their compassion, a movement has begun.

The idea of 1000 bloggers, 1000 voices from around the globe coming together on the same the day to share a message. Brilliant.

On February 20, 2015, the interwebs will be inundated with words of hope, kindness, acceptance, and love . . . It will be filled with compassion, because of compassion.

It doesn’t have to stop at 1000 voices, we all have a voice. We share a global platform from which we can shout out this message, the world needs to be reminded compassion can change us, it needs to change us.

I invite, challenge, encourage, and implore you to join us on February 20th to share your thoughts, ideas, and from the heart feelings. You don’t have to be a blogger or a writer or a poet, simply share your message of compassion with your Facebook families, your Twitter fans, your Instagram and Tumbler friends.

Don’t forget to use the hashtag.

#1000speak

Crystal R. Cook

14 thoughts on “#confession, #1000speak, #octothorpe”

  1. Pingback: Compassion is a Verb - Live By Surprise

  2. Pingback: Compassion is a Verb | Live By Surprise

  3. I had to come back and read again after checking in on the FB page conversation about hashtags. I laughed out loud at the WTF part – hilarious. Again, a great post. Glad to have connected with you and glad we’re a part of this #1000Speak initiative.
    As for the hashtags…well, I’m still figuring it out. 😀

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  4. I hear you! I swore I’d never do the Facebook thing, but for this, it seemed worth it.
    Sometimes the thing we don’t thing we’ll do isn’t as bothersome as the thing we know we must.

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  7. Oh Crystal, but I DO like you enormously. And of all the many, multifaceted, many-layered things I’m thankful for about #1000Speak, finding you on Facebook is one of them. I’m so pleased.

    Of course, I’m HUGELY pleased you’re part of this, and impressed that you’ve managed to set aside your ire against the hashtag in sacrifice for this movement – it’s much appreciated, thank you.

    And I still love the way you put things. It feels like the inside of my brain here, if that makes any sense.

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    • You are a treasure sweet Lizzi, you do know this, right? And I DO understand because I’ve often felt the same way when reading your words.

      #1000speak was just the thing I needed, my heart has been so weighed down with the woes of this world. I see so much turmoil at home and abroad and it makes me feel quite small and helpless at times.

      I’ve even found myself thinking in the most uncompassionate of ways on occasion, I do not like it one bit. It’s not who I am or who I want to become. I have a feeling many of us are in the same boat.

      This may be my one and only exception to my hashtag aversion, I’m odd like that. Like I said, this particular cause is more than worthy of setting aside my hashtag prejudice 😊

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      • Don’t worry, I shan’t expect you to start operating with hashtagged everything, any time soon (or ever, because ‘octothorpe’ is such a lovely word (incidentally, did you know that the characters on a sight-test chart are not ‘letters’ but octotypes – very carefully and specifically measured to ensure the best possible chance of establishing an accurate visual acuity on a person) and hashtag, unequivocally, is not), BUT I’m so glad you made the exception for this.

        And yes – I am SO VERY WITH YOU! It’s part of why I broke down – there are SO many awful things going on, which I can do NOTHING about! Nothing. Not even a shadow of a smidgen of an inkling of any kind of good in their direction. And that hurts. When I think of the people and the mountains of pain and need, I hurt.

        BUT this…this is a BEGINNING. It’s a start. And all it needs is for people to CARE.

        And then we’ll have our village. And if the village is a little bit Kingdom-shaped, then so be it, and all the better 🙂

        And sometimes people have said that to me. Namely WonderAunty. I believe them in small doses because I know the amount of badness I put out there, too.

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