#IronLady and #nowthatchersdead

The hashtag #IronLady  is currently trending on Twitter for those who wish to share their thoughts about the death of Margaret Thatcher. But another hashtag, #NowThatchersDead has caused a little bit of a problem. Because the hashtag does not have spacing between words and is usually uncapitalized, people on the Twitter-sphere are freaking out. The hashtag can be read two ways: 1. Now That Thatcher’s Dead and 2. Now That Cher’s Dead. Twitter soon began buzzing about ‘Cher’s death.’ However, this is false. Cher is alive and well.

I’m alive!

This whole hashtag thing can get out of control sometimes, like the McDonald’s fiasco in early 2012, when McDonald’s promoted #McDstories for people to share their happy stories about McDonald’s. The entire campaign went horribly horribly wrong. People didn’t share happy stories about getting a toy in their Happy Meal, but about their disgust with the fast food industry.

But the issue of reading a hashtag correctly hasn’t been a problem really, until now. So we’ll just have to see how this Twitter fiasco plays out for now. Maybe people will capitalize words properly in hashtags from now on to make sure this kind of thing never happens again. But that’s highly unlikely.

 

For More On Hashtag Fiascos:

A Lot of People on Twitter Think Cher’s Dead Because of a Hashtag About Margaret Thatcher

Everyone Just Made The Exact Same Joke About Margaret Thatcher