10 Most Clichéd Hashtags You’re Still Overusing

Face it, swaggers — #swag came and went. If you are still referring to yourself as having #swag, 2011 called and wants its hashtag back.

#nofilter now has nearly 100,000,000 uses on Instagram with no end in sight. It’s the humblebrag of humblebrags, and hopefully we can all leave it alone now that it’s synonymous with Instagram. Here’s your rule: You only get to use #nofilter if it is a) truly not filtered and b) the best photo you’ve ever taken.

We’re in for a very, very long winter with #weather, so get out your virtual snow shovels for a mountain of hashtags. Out of politeness, don’t bury us all, tweeps.

We all love nature Instagrams — they’re beautiful, and many of us live in cities and don’t get to see it firsthand very often. However, we don’t love #nature pics. If it’s a photo of a tree, #nature is redundant. We know.

This one is a little like the word “literally,” but in reverse. People say completely unbelievable things “literally” happened, when in fact they did not. (You’re likely not “literally” dying of hunger.) When people use #truestory, they say completely believable things, #truestory. Unless you’re tweeting before a jury, no one needs to know you took a shower this morning, #truestory.

#selfie reinforces a rule of overused hashtags. If it’s expressing something obvious, you shouldn’t use it, and you certainly shouldn’t be abusing it. Case in point: selfie.

We’ll admit that #sorrynotsorry makes a great hashtag. It expresses something true and does it with concise humor. The downside is that it’s easy to abuse, especially if you feel #sorrynotsorry often — which many of us do.

When most people use “just saying” IRL, they usually don’t even realize it, because it’s so central to English slang. But use it carefully online — if you’re saying something, we probably already know you’re just saying it.

The spoiler alert was once a useful disclaimer, but now it’s become a nearly empty phrase in most cases, seeing as most people will just spoil the ending of last night’s Game of Thrones anyway. As a hashtag, it should be used only when it’s useful.

If you’re about to say something offensive on the Internet, someone will probably take offense to it. If you’re about to drop a #nooffense, you should probably drop the tweet altogether.