When something called Twitter hit us a few years ago, we were just plain people. Many of us did not bother about the “what are you doing now” thing, and were of the opinion it would be idiotic to keep letting our “friends” know what we were doing.

It was left to the early birds to chart the course for the micro-blogging service. As Twitter grew at a mind-boggling pace, many of us gladly decided to ride the wave and decided we would no longer be plain people, but Tweeple (please note the capital T ... we were special).

Twitter made the transformation from being an instrument to let others know what we were doing, what we were thinking. As thinking is more complicated than doing, Twitter too became complicated. It also became a platform for sharing information.

This complicated things further, and the result - there came hashtags and Twitter trends to help us make sense of the cacophony. Watching the trending list had become one of the ways to keep track of what's going on around us - globally.

The problem with trends is that many of us are clueless why some topic or person is trending. More notorious are hashtags. Tweeps create hashtags to tag a topic, and it is difficult to figure out why some nonsensical hashtags trend.

Last Thursday and Friday, one of the trends was the hashtag - #IWantToPunchPeopleWho. Tweeps gave vent to their feelings. There were those who wanted to punch people “who spit in lifts”, and another wanted to punch whoever said “Happy Good Friday”. One woman wanted to punch those who didn't appreciate her new dress. A similar nonsensical hashtag trending globally was #FreakyThingsiWouldDoToYou.

Hashtags have another problem. It is easy to manipulate. Like everywhere, sex sells, and whoever created #NationalCleavageDay had the satisfaction of seeing it trend globally, without anyone having a clue about which ‘nation' celebrated it. But guys were least bothered about nations or barriers and remained glued to the flood of posts with pictures.

For something to trend on Twitter, it does not necessarily have to be a well-known event or person. Malawi President Mutharika was trending on Friday, because he died. There were those who had heard about him for the first time from the trending list.

In India, one group that manages to kick up dust is the pro-Hindutva group on Twitter. Any tweep with ‘anti-Hindu' feelings is trolled with vengeance. (Wikipedia defines a “troll” as “someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.” )

All major sports and political events easily trend. In larger-than-life games such as cricket, even individual matches and teams trend. Mumbai Indians kept trending because of its huge victory in the first match and Sachin Tendulkar's injury.

Anything related to India-Pakistan relations makes it to the trend list. Hafeez Sayeed kept trending from the moment the US announced the huge reward. Again, Kasab makes it to the list whenever there is a judgment on death penalty.

Twitter is also dangerous in one way. What you tweet instantly pops up on the “followers'” screens. If you are a celebrity and if you tweet something stupid, it's sure to hit the list.

A popular TV show host who manages to put her foot in her mouth often trended on Friday. It was because of her tweet: “Good Friday greetings to all! Hope we're getting Easter eggs today.” She had confused Good Friday with Easter eggs. She started trending after her tweet was retweeted by thousands of people with snide comments.

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