#hashtagme

Human beings have always needed to be seen and recognized to prove their existence and value. Nowadays, because of the technological advancement, this desire like many others can be fulfilled in new and sometimes excessive ways. People share photos and videos of their private lives with the public and tries to be in the spotlight more than ever. Many copy celebrities’ look and advertisement clichés and by taking advantages of the Internet virtuality, edit and modify their reality to make a popular fake image, a mask that can hide the truth.

In addition, in the conservative and totalitarian societies such as Iran, many people especially younger generations do not have the right to express themselves as they are or want to be seen due to its contrast with the established and forced beliefs and traditions. Therefore, they move to the virtual world and use digital profiles to express themselves; furthermore, to oppose the preventive forces some demonstrate excessive, untruthful images, sometimes even unconsciously.

Misusage of hashtag as a new technological tool for connecting and search is a good example to illustrate the above claims. In many cases social media users post lots of unrelated and popular hashtags with their images or comments to increase the number of views, to the extent that undermines the original purposes of hashtaging.

This video is our response to that observation. We have chosen video as it is produced and shared wildly across the social media, also because video is a time-based and progressive medium similar to the social media profiles.