Here lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of stuff from Chance the Rapper, and in his song “Juice” he says:
Hash tag it, get mentions for it
Make you love it, get it trending more
(Warning: lyrics include questionable language, references to drug use, and a dig at the LA Lakers. If this bothers you and/0r if you own a Kobe Bryant jersey, don’t click on it.)
This line caught my attention, because it’s a direct reference to the power of social networking sites and how hash tags have become such a thing that it has invaded the lexicon of young hip-hop artists. (Typing that sentence made me feel old).
Since most of the traffic for this blog has been through Facebook, we haven’t needed to really use hashtags. However, Alice has began posting updates on the blog through her Twitter account, and we’re starting to get more and more traffic from there. This got me to thinking that maybe we should have a Southeastern Archaeology hashtag to help reference anything going on, from important stuff to funny remarks.
Somewhat similar to Twitter is Instagram, which is a social media site for just sharing pictures and short video clips. For example, here’s mine, from which you can deduce from the many pictures of my dog that I live an exciting life. Similar to Twitter, it makes use of the hash-tag. Considering that a lot of folks are gearing up for summer fieldwork, our own hash tag might be a way to simply click a button and see Southeastern Archaeology fieldwork photos from everyone who felt like sharing.
So, what should it be? #seacug? #southeasternarchaeology?
Tell me us what you think in the comment section. Also, if you have Twitter or Instagram and want to share your username with the like-minded masses, drop that in the comment section, too.
seacunderground 
I vote for something southeastern archaeology-wide, not just something for SEAC-UG…. not that we can’t also have a separate SEAC-UG hashtag, but with something more general, we could also flag other stories about the field (stuff in the news, fieldschool ads, etc). That said, when you only have 140 characters to work with, #southeasternarchaeology constitutes prime real estate. Maybe #southeastarch? #SEarchaeology? #SEarchaeo? EVERY CHARACTER COUNTS!
ALSO we could straight up start a SEAC-UG twitter account. If you wanna go that route, I’m happy to manage something (*she says, steepling her fingers, drink with power…)
PS, For now, anyone looking to get Twitter-based updates on this blog can find me at @alicepwright.
I think you should make this twitter thing happen.
I have tried to cross hash (is that a thing?) with #archaeology and #seacunderground but #seacug is more economical in the land of 140 characters. #SEarch could be a good broad use tag.
I was going to suggest SEAC underground get its own Twitter account. I also like #SEArch
Yep, I vote #SEArch too. And btw, hashtags totally work on Facebook too. 🙂
When did this happen? I’m so checked out of the Facebook universe…
#bigdirty
Seriously. I’m all for this.
I vote for #SEArch too, but have to admit that #bigdirty appeals to the true archaeologist in me.
We are working on getting the SEAC Student Affairs Committee a Twitter account… and I recently joined Twitter as well (@shoobaca). My vote for the world’s coolest hashtag is definitely #SEArch
UPDATE: Feeling like a total idiot here, but #SEarch also is #search…. which not surprisingly has it’s own situation going on. Doh! So, until someone thinks of something pithier, I’ll use #southeastarch … and probably #bigdirty too.
Think about all of the combined years of education in this thread. I can’t believe we all missed that.
What about #dirtysoutharch
Again, I like Derek’s #bigdirty
I’ve updated the next post accordingly, but in practice, I will experiment with all of these and see what sticks and get reused by others on twitter. My head tells me that #southeastarch is “professional,” my gut/heart tell me that #bigdirty is right. (Cameron points out that I really have no room to cry “professionalism!” after including “#catsforever” in a blog post. Point taken.)
FYI, I’m sure you noticed this, but it took me a while to pick on it… #SEarch is the same thing as #search (I don’t think the twitter-verse distinguishes capitalization differences) which is used for distinctly non-southeastern content. We could definitely just stick with SEarch or SEArch and by shear force of will make it our own, or we could modify it slightly as in #SEarchy or such. Thoughts (or am I over thinking this one?)