#fuckyouwashington

Jeff Jarvis, who you may hear regularly on This Week in Google, has a hashtag on Twitter expressing his disgust with the Washington political games and how they have hurt average Americans.  And you too can participate.  Express your gratitude to Washington and include the hashtag #fuckyouwashington.  (or for those among us who don’t say naughty words but are mad as hell anyway, try hashtag #FYW.  Same thing, just shorter.)  Instructions for how to do it by those people who are new to twitter: 1.) create a twitter account.  2.) create a message expressing your frustration and include the hashtag #FYW or #fuckyouwashington.  A hashtag is a keyword preceded by the pound (#) sign.  That’s it.  Your message will be associated with that hashtag.

Here’s how #fuckyouwashington started:

So, I was angry. Watching TV news over dinner — turning my attention from scandals in the UK to those here and frankly welcoming the distraction from the tragedies in Norway — I listened to the latest from Washington about negotiations over the debt ceiling. It pissed me off. I’d had enough. After dinner, I tweeted: “Hey, Washington assholes, it’s our country, our economy, our money. Stop fucking with it.” It was the pinot talking (sounding more like a zinfandel).

That’s all I was going to say. I had no grand design on a revolution. I just wanted to get that off my chest. That’s what Twitter is for: offloading chests. Some people responded and retweeted, which pushed me to keep going, suggesting a chant: “FUCK YOU WASHINGTON.” Then the mellifluously monikered tweeter @boogerpussy suggested: “.@jeffjarvis Hashtag it: #FUCKYOUWASHINGTON.” Damn, I was ashamed I hadn’t done that. So I did

And here’s a sample of the contributions he’s getting:

@partygnome said: “#fuckyouwashington for valuing corporations more than people.”

@spenski, on a major role, cried: “#fuckyouwashington for never challenging us to become more noble, but prodding us to become selfish and hateful…. #fuckyouwashington for not allowing me to marry the one I love…. #fuckyouwashington for driving me to tweet blue.”

@jellencollins: “#fuckyouwashington for making ‘debt’ a four letter word and ‘fuck’ an appropriate response.”

@tamadou: “#fuckyouwashington for giving yourselves special benefits and telling the American people they have to suck it up or they’re selfish.”

@psychnurseinwi: “#fuckyouwashington for having the compromising skills of a 3 year old.”

Go add your opinion.

It looks like Twitter has been moderating the trending topics and even though #fuckyouwashington isn’t on the list, the hashtag is pretty frisky.  Jeff appears to be strategizing to make the topic more visible.  The name may have to change.  Keep an eye out for it.  I suspect that this could get to be more viral than Rebecca Black’s Friday with the right nuturing.

Update: This is from HuffPo.  In the post about Jeff’s hashtag, we get this summary of the voter’s POV from blogger Michael Duff:

Everybody knows you guys are running the clock out, waiting for the next election. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t go on TV to scare the shit out of us every day and then expect us to wait patiently for 2012.

You can’t use words like “urgent” and “crisis” and then waste our time with Kabuki theater.

Either the situation is urgent and needs to be solved now, or it’s all just an act that can wait for 2012. This isn’t 1954, gentlemen. The voters are on to you now. We know you’re playing a game and we know you’re using us as chess pieces.

That’s why #fuckyouwashington is trending on Twitter. We’re tired of being pawns.

Every politician in Washington needs to pay attention to this outrage, and remember who they’re working for.

Update 2:  Found in a #fuckyouwashington link to a James Fallows post to a NYTimes Graphic (whew!) that shows exactly where, when and by whom the deficit spending actually happened: