Kaiser might be surprised at the overuse and confusing nature of terminology in the modern note taking space now. Somehow the terminology still suffers from lack of consistent and fixed terminology.

It really kills me to see these types of jargon and acronyms popping up in the technology space around note taking. What do these really mean? Why should the average user care? It all feels like the sort of careless marketing and buzzwords like "second brain" or "MOC" (maps of content).

I've not seen it defined as such, but the novelty of the hashtag isn't quite as novel as one may expect. Hashtags were meant to help people search and find conversations a concept that is generally the direct negative of the preceding generations' version of leet speak (or l337 speak), which was commonly used online as a means of specifically preventing simple search as specific words were replaced with coded equivalents. As a coder and technologist who grew up in the age of leet, Messina would have certainly been exposed to this culture and way of thinking.