It’s hard to believe it, but another year of 140 characters or less has passed. We followed! We tweeted! We re-tweeted! And we, in turn, were followed and re-tweeted by friends and creepy strangers alike. The twitterverse seemed to join us all into one big, happy info-sharing family. Well, almost.

I’m not a Twitter-hater. In fact, I love Twitter. Really! My phone buzzes constantly with mobile updates whenever @randomperson posts a new tweet, and sometimes (and usually quite unsuccessfully), I even try to post biting witticisms of my own. Nonetheless, it really pisses me off when people go crazy with the hashtags and make up unwieldy, indecipherable phrases just because they can’t play by the rules. Seriously, people: “I think, therefore I am” is 22 characters; how many more do you need?

Twitter’s character limit can seem absurd at times. I get that. But if you want to write eye-gougingly long pieces that no one is going to read, just give in to your destiny and get a tumblr. Put an end to the abuse of the noble hashtag! We should aim to keep the hashtag’s purpose pure and only append it to real things, like words and stuff. #Running #out #of #space #does #not #justify #this #vulgarity. It makes you look stupid and pretentious, but more importantly, it’s a pain trying to decode what on earth you are trying to say.

Consider this is a warning: tread carefully – or face the wrath of me and my seven followers.