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#Hashtagging Real Life

Ever since my good friend Zeynep Tufekci brought me a revolutionary t-shirt from Egypt, I’ve been fascinated by the popularization of hashtags outside of Twitter. And by outside, I don’t mean on blogs, Facebook, and Flickr, where they’re increasingly appearing, but offline. T-shirts, posters, graffiti, and protest signs all make use of hashtag symbolism; rather than long slogans (or in most cases, in addition to), we’ve cut down our symbols into bite-sized pieces, for better or worse. Even the Obama campaign has a hashtag-themed fundraising t-shirt. Here are just a few samplings (photos are from around the blogosphere):

A solidarity march for Morocco's #feb20 or #fev20 movement in Boston
A photo of a protest sign (presumably) taken in Egypt
An Occupy Wall Street protester (from the Boston Globe)
A Libya t-shirt utilizes Feb 17, popularized by the hashtag
This tattoo apparently belongs to @ClinicEscort
Photo of #jan25 T-shirts by 0oshi on Flickr
Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff has popularized hashtag imagery in his art
Sami Ben Gharbia wears a SidiBouzid t-shirt on Al Jazeera
From a Paris protest in January, by kaïs miled on Flickr
Anti-SCAF street art in Cairo, photographed by Hossam Hamalawy

If you have any other excellent examples (particularly from Syria), do send them my way.

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