In the build up to Christmas, some of us were getting a little tired of Christmas and Trump tags. Many of us were starting to wonder if it was possible to come up with a tag that wasn’t about either.

We decided to run with #ThisIsNotAChristmasOrTrumpTag which referenced both but was about anything but.

[The Story So Far: Every Wednesday at 1pm South African [6am EDT] an inspired and growing number of brilliant, creative and absolutely fun people from all around the world take part in what is called a Hashtag game. @AFrikkinHashtag [say it out loud] is South Africa’s #1 Hashtag game and is always a lot of fun. The F.L.O.P. [or Fish List Of Prizeworthyness] is the collection of some of the best tweets from each week’s game and is what all seriously comedic Hashtaggers aspire to…]

With @BellDavidC securely in the co-hosting seat, we quickly got to work:

David Bell avi

So we sent out an invitation…

Hashtag game ad

Where literally the premise was that you could tweet about ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING except for Christmas or Trump [and yet somehow some people still struggled]

Hashtag game

We did offer those Bonus Points for ‘Confusing the heck out of the TwittererSphere’ which to some extent i think we achieved.

i started with some easy examples to, you know, get people in the mood:

Some of my favourite male celebs who make life that little bit greater…

#ThisIsNotAChristmasOrTrumpTag

Male Celebs Hashtag

Some of my favourite female celebs who make life that little bit greater…

#ThisIsNotAChristmasOrTrumpTag

Female celebs hashtag

And an invitation for people to share their favourite one liner comedians:

Who is your favourite one liner of all time? Jack Handey? Steven Wright? Mitch Hedberg? Milton Jones?

#ThisIsNotAChristmasOrTrumpTag

Brad Fish Quote

Ha ha, i kinda resemble that remark…

A helpful guide to know the difference between an alligator and a crocodile.

#ThisIsNotAChristmasOrTrumpTag

crocs

David was the most excellent of co-hosts and here are just two of his offerings:

A couple of our growing list of favourite bots decided to come and play:

And then there was you…

We weren’t sure how this most random of Hashtags would be taken, but it turned out there were a LOT of people who were tired of Christmas and Trump tags and who jumped at the chance to get a little more everything else.

As per usual there were thousands and we could not even pick all the good ones, but some that caught our attention were these which make it on to this week’s top tweets list, which we call…

THE FISH LIST OF PRIZEWORTHYNESS [F.L.O.P.]

Did the people want this tag? Kitty answered that for us:

Not sure if Jacob was being ironic, sarcastic or really meant this:

But there definitely were a few too many people who took this too seriously and actually got angry with us for some reason. [Yes, we cried ourselves to sleep that night]

Noel seemed to be having some trouble:

CK was a little worried about the fuss this might cause

While Jacob seemed confused, or maybe released?

But Sirrruh definitely seemed stoked:

https://twitter.com/Sirrruh/status/811551777007030273

Dave TBG was all in:

M got the whole room joining in:

And Audrey seemed quite emotional:

Math Man helped it get awkward real quick… but technically within the parameters [the mole looked great btw]

Ian seemed to struggle but pulled this one out the bag:

Grendel got into the spirit quickly:

While Ryan felt paralysed:

Tom just used us to drop his favourite unconnected tweet:

We were hesitant to answer Butch’a question:

John was seeing red:

Mach Dawg had a poser:

While it appeared that Dave was on to us:

Begging the question, what’s a meta for?

Veldlot brought some sneaky Rudolph misdirectionals:

Graham seemed relieved to have a space to express his need of relief:

Mad Saint snuck in a spoiler, although 22 years is probably okay…

Then this one which felt a little closer to home [only 18 years, careful Saint!]

Noughbawdy was completely thrown by our tag and we apologise for any harm done:

Daniel used the opportunity to educate us about something we all take for granted:

Dawn shared her Queen of the Tacos revelation:

John wins some Misdirection points for this classic:

We learnt some helpful facts along the way:

Some thought we deserved an award

While Rob was considering taking legal action against us:

MikeChick was a little close to the edge on this one:

Uncle CJ had us at boop [although this tweet now feels incredibly sad for some reason]:

Shayan was right in there:

Prose pretty much nailed this tag in the most accurate way possible:

https://twitter.com/proseontherange/status/811545047661355009

Although Magus was also right there:

Scott knew something we didn’t:

Megan seemed a little bit lost at sea:

While Buzzy nailed it:

Kevin was trying to be subtly subversive:

While IDK seemed to be okay with it:

https://twitter.com/JennVoix/status/811564212317200385

And we appreciated her choice of socks:

https://twitter.com/JennVoix/status/811566160122642432

While Kelli scored big Noel Fielding points:

Zoom Zoom peered behind the curtain:

Brian was not completely convinced… #MustBeTheMeds

But it seems like we nailed Endie’s sweet spot [which was quite point-filled i might suggest]:

Max and Han gave us their appreciation:

Padawannabee tried her very best to skirt around the tightest of edges:

So many great reactions and random [but related] tweets and misdirection and fun – we really wanted this week to feel like a bit of a break of some of the monotony that had plagued the Twitterer for a few weeks and you totally brought it…

Two Tweets stand out though from the rest and so this week we have a F.L.O.P. TWO

Bonus Random [but related] points to Jason who managed to make a tweet not about Trump completely about Trump and the fact that the tweet about him was completely not about him:

Special Nerd Points to our Rob for sneaking all the letters of the words ‘Trump’ and ‘Christmas’ into his tweet that had nothing to do with either…

Thanks everyone for a lot of fun – we will return to the seriousness of AFH [and already have] in 2017 and we are super excited about our game on the 25th Jan which is going to coincide with @Bell_LetsTalk and their focus on mental health issues so DO NOT MISS THAT ONE – hoping to see the whole Hashtagging Community joining together to blow up the internet [in a good way] for that one…

Til then [and three hours time when our next game drops], let’s keep it FAMILY, let’s continue to thrust the WIT into the Twitterer [and not major on the TWIT] and live good wholesome lives, being kind to those on the other side of the screen.

Huge thanks to David Bell, shoutout to the ever faithful UnNamed Ones and to Jeff and Robyn who tirelessly manage the @HashtagRoundup app and if you’re not on that to play these games, you really should be.

Much love
Brett Fish A and No_bob