Two Political Hashtags Collided Over What It Means To Be Liberal Or Conservative

Though Twitter might be better known for squabbling among celebrities, political hashtags and infighting find a happy home there too. Many conservative and liberal communities thrive on Twitter, and incendiary statements rarely slide under the radar without criticism. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been repeatedly roasted by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren (and vice versa). To a lesser extent, presumptive Republican nominee Hillary Clinton has gotten in on the game.

And Texas Governor Greg Abbott came under fire earlier this year when he attacked President Obama’s LGBT bathroom directive: “JFK wanted to send a man to the moon. Obama wants to send a man to the women’s restroom. We must get our country back on track.” It’s only natural that ordinary citizens would fall into feuds too, which happened on Monday.

Conservative and liberal Twitter users took to a couple of trending tags — #ConservativeBecause and #LiberalBecause — and began a social media battle. Everything started with the former hashtag, so we’ll begin there too. One of the predominant examples came from Elise Yost, who published the above photo to explain why she’s a Republican under the former hashtag.

https://twitter.com/EliseYost/status/752300509730570241

Everything started out pretty civil, right? This tag was created by conservative women’s group Future Female Leaders (tagline: “I like my politics red, my wine white, and my skies blue”) to invite their conservative followers to share their stories. The second hashtag reacted to the first one and started out seriously as well.

https://twitter.com/trevornewman15/status/752374160395866112
https://twitter.com/RobGregg__/status/752351088800632832

And yet another prominent entry (and a somber one) rose to the top.

https://twitter.com/JaredWyand/status/752394437825789952

But eventually, humor took over the situation, which is often the case on social media where people enjoy reducing others’ ideological beliefs to pithy one-liners. The jokes went out towards one tag.

https://twitter.com/jzcamp/status/752507724680814592

And they landed on the other hashtag too. Brutal.

https://twitter.com/jamesplarson/status/752603486630580224

Yep, Democrats and Republicans can get along and even be friends, but rarely do they cooperate together on social media. Twitter brings the good and the bad, and sometimes, one just has to laugh.