Prideful. Purist. Fashionable. Bandwagonesque. No matter the nature of the underlying motivation, all kinds of people are tweeting their photos with the hashtag #nofilter.

A photo is shot with a smartphone. It’s shared to Twitter with Instagram. In that process, a filter or effect may be applied. It’s given a description. The description may include one or more hashtags.

Two primary purposes of a Twitter hashtag are to provide context and to increase findability. Hashtags provide definition, tend to be related to subject matter or geography, are often humorous, increase community and conversation, and can be clicked to produce an entire stream of tweets with the same tag. Though they have no function beyond context on Facebook, hashtags are also seen there, especially on photos shared through Instagram.

The purpose of #nofilter in particular is to say “I didn’t use an Instagram filter or effect; this photo is less processed and more pure than many other Instagram pics.”

At one level, the folly of this tag is immediately apparent and reflects several of the cliches for which both Twitter and Instagram are known and mocked. As in: you shot and shared a nearly in focus smartphone pic of your lunch that somehow makes a delicious meal look unappetizing … congratulations on refusing to filter it! Way to hold the high ground.

Here’s a sampling of photos shared to Twitter through Instagram with the #nofilter hashtag this morning:

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