The HashTag That Lasted All Week: #ImSoBaltimore

Is it over yet?

For the past two days, I’ve watched my city shine with pride as people participating in a game online through their Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts. My online friends shared memories of growing up in Baltimore by posting photos and statuses about moments they remember while living in Baltimore under the #hashtag #ImSoBaltimore.

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I recall there being other hashtags, like #ImSoDC and #ImSoHarlem. But because majority of my time lines are recipients of Baltimore City, I rarely saw those posts. So like a throwback Thursday turned into an entire week of nostalgia, I was swimming in Baltimore pride all week.

Just the other day, we complained about how we hated where we were from. Two weeks ago, we screamed of how no one will ever make it out of this city with the lack of support from other people who live here. But what I see, with the addition of support from people who attended Artscape, we’ve gain quite a supportive presence by showing our pride in where we come while simply posting statuses about things done in and only in our city.

I spent most of my Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday liking other people’s posts, thinking to myself: I remember doing that or saying I wish that place never went out of business. We aren’t just the home of the Wire. We’re more. We just needed to let others know for a sec.

I miss Baltimore the way everyone remembered it. We talked about it like we don’t do these memorable activities anymore. It opened up my eyes into looking for new memories to capture while I continue to live here. Although, I already have started picking up the habit of doing things that can only be experienced here, I hope that others developed that sense to do the same. We can create more of these Baltimore memories.

Check out some of the things people said while participating in this week’s popular #hashtag. (All these status updates were taken from my Facebook time line. These were not submitted to me. I simply stumbled across them.)

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We had a few downers who complained about this online burst of  Baltimore pride, of course. It never fail to have someone representing that “crab-in-a-barrel” mentality. I’m glad someone chose to speak up about it, though.

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IKR! Just log out because it’s not over yet. Baltimore for life! We’re SO BALTIMORE!

What are some of your memories about Baltimore? Share some in the comments below.

Did you participate in the #TwitterPurge? Read WTF #TwitterPurge on Doc’s Castle Media.

WTF?!?! #TwitterPurge (Rant)

So on July 19, 2014, I was surfing my Twitter timeline, as always, and I couldn’t help but notice an excessive amount of naked women on it! There’s always people reposting pictures exposing women on my timeline. (I don’t know what’s wrong with these horny people.) But last night was just ridic.

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Who decided to start the hashtag #twitterpurge? It’s just really inappropriate and embarrassing to watch people take part in such nonsense. If you’ve missed it, #TwitterPurge is when people post nude photos of people they may or may not know, exposing them entirely to the public. That’s pretty much it. There were even memes that emerged from people’s participation in last night’s popular hashtag fiasco.

I was embarrassed more for the people who chose to uncover what should have been sacred for many of those people who were exposed. I’m sure the people who were in those photographs trusted the person responsible for posting their naked selfies at some point of their lives. There has to be over a thousand folks “beafing” with each other after last night. That could have been easily avoided. Now I suspect there’s more tension in the atmosphere that doesn’t need to be there.

What the hell does this #twitterpurge have to do with the film that was released this past Friday in theaters? There’s no relation at all. I wonder what producers are thinking after witnessing a popular hashtag take complete control over the idea of what the purge is because I know it has nothing to do with people sending photos of other folks. Are the producers scrambling to save their box office sales because of a group of teens unknowingly sabotaging their general idea, or will there be an increase in box office sales today? Will producers have to hear the mouths of thousands of angry parents? Sheesh, I would hate to work on their PR team now.  

Purge Anarchy

The purge is said to have started by a group of teens in Santa Clarita Valley in Los Angeles under a page named “SCV Purge.” The page encouraged teens to send nude photos to the account. After the account attracted 3,000 followers, it must have started a chain reaction because there was another Twitter account created that also accepted nudes. This #twitterpurge can be compared to the thousands of Instagram and Facebook pages made to do the exact same thing, tarnish the reputation of it’s teenage victims. All I do is shake my head at it’s disgrace.

This is the first time I’m choosing to address this “social media pornography” but I see it happens often. Sooner or later, we’ll be desensitized from it and learn to accept these pop-up pages. It’s like the children of our future show no remorse for others. Their ruining other people’s lives for laughs and giggles and I’m sitting in awe. I wonder how society will try to intervene in trying to take control of an issue like this.

What do you think? In what ways do you believe society will grab a handle of this type of indecent exposure? Leave your comments below.

For those people who are convinced that The Purge Anarchy is about naked people, here’s the trailer to fix those assumptions. We can’t have you judging whether to see a movie based of your experiences on Twitter.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzFCDqKE4yA]