The Birth of a Hashtag, a Nickname and a Movement

So it all began rather innocently as many great things in history do. ;D

It was the early morning hours of Thursday, October 7th, 2010, and I was getting ready to settle in for a marathon overnighter listening to David Tennant on The Christian O'Connell Breakfast Show on Absolute Radio (UK). I casually began to ask my tweeps on Twitter who was present (I wanted to know who I was going to spend the morning with) and people began to tweet me replies. Slowly, we grew to a dozen (myself included) and at that point I decided to stop counting people. A dozen David Tennant fangirls sounded like a good round number. =)
@seduff_asked for suggestions as to what we should call ourselves in trying to get ourselves a shout-out and I made two suggestions. I honestly can't recall the first one but the second one was #absolutedtfangirls. It had a double meaning which I really liked - devout David Tennant fangirls and David Tennant fangirls staying up/getting up early to listen to Absolute Radio. I didn't think seduff or anyone else would really like it that much. Soon several people agreed and the hashtag for our David Tennant Twitter party (the 'party' term coming from @tardis_tara) officially became #absolutedtfangirls.
I reluctantly decided to listen to @seduff_ and sent an e-mail into the station. I didn't want to take the time to write up something intelligent (LOL) only to have it overlooked like every other time I've written in to ANY show/site but what the hell! I even went so far as to make my e-mail fangirlie & cheeky and provided them with my actual city location because it wasn't like anyone would ever read that information on air. Boy, was I wrong!
Around the same time, the Heart Fm show which would include an interview with David, had begun and although I was supposed to be recording it I ended up going back and forth between both radio shows. BIG mistake!
As I was listening to Heart Fm, I decided to save my e-mail for posterity since it was a site-based submission and once I had sent it there was no way of retrieving it. I posted it through twit longer and at about the same time I did that I began to see tweets pop up on my timeline that read "He mentioned us!" "He read my e-mail!" and then I came across a 'Congratulations!' tweet sent my way. Congratulations? I was truly confused and thought maybe someone was congratulating me for having had the nerve to send in the e-mail I'd just sent.
By this time, I had switched back over to Absolute Radio just in time to hear the end of @tardis_tara ON THE SHOW! She was telling her story about meeting David in New Mexico while she was an extra in the upcoming remake of Fright Night and described her brand spankin' new Doctor Who tattoo only to have an awkward silence linger from Christian's end. I was laughing so hard that I tweeted I was pmsl at Christian. <---- Remember this tweet; it will up again later. =D
During Tara's on air appearance, more congratulations came my way and by now it was clear I had missed something big on Absolute Radio! I felt really dumb but had to ask if my e-mail had been read on air and in came the "Yes, they did! Right before Tara!" tweets. I was crushed. It had been my one shot at on air radio fame (LOL) and I had actually MISSED it! I felt like a loser! The loser feelings didn't last long though as I quickly began to recall exactly what I had typed in the e-mail! =O I was now completely embarrassed!
"The #AbsoluteDTfangirls around the globe have joined up for a twitter party to await the coming of the Time God on Christian's kick ass breakfast show!
Sunday can't come soon enough and we look forward to Decoy Bride as well as the epic Fright Night where, basically, Peter Vincent is the hero! OHH YESS!
Love, McFangirl =D
P.S. When the hell is Tennant gonna do a shirtless photoshoot?! We're begging you, David!"
I was feeling really awkward & disappointed that I had missed out on my own 2 seconds of fame and would have to wait hours to listen to it when @seduff_ tweeted a link to a partial audio recording of Christian reading several of our party's e-mails including mine and tardis_tara's interview. I tried not to listen for as long as I could and finally gave in. I was horrified & thrilled all at the same time and learned that I had forced Christian to get his sidekick, Richie, to google 'Decoy Bride' because they didn't even know what it was. That was too funny!
As I was finishing up the audio clip, I was shocked to see Christian's Twitter av sitting in my @ replies feed. It was indeed a tweet from Christian, alright and it read:

I was surprised but will admit it felt really great to know Christian had taken the time to click 'reply' on one of my goodness-knows-how-many dorky tweets that morning to send a tweet-out (??? is that what Twitter shout-outs are called? LOL!) to all of us AND me! ...But MCFANDANGO girl? WTF? That was both hilarious and troubling all at the same time.
As you can see, the tweet got several retweets and then everyone started calling me mcfandango girl. *palm face* While it was amazing a radio celebrity had made up a nickname for me it got really old really quickly and within five minutes, I tweeted that whomever chose to call me that again would get bitten. Several people decided to disregard the 'warning' but no, I didn't actually get a chance to bite anyone. Darn. ;P
The seemingly never-ending waiting went on and then FINALLY David showed up. The interview was awesome and near the end Christian asked David to give the #absolutedtfangirls a shout-out prompted by a tweet (and several retweets) from @tiddytennant which he did, sort of... in his David kinda way. He didn't get the name quite right and no thanks to Christian, erroneously sent it out only to those of us in the U. S., bless his little heart!
The entire experience was awesome and I'll never forget it. I think it really brought a lot of us closer together in our Tennant fandom. =) I'm looking forward to the Tennant/O'Connell "Dream Team" getting back together sometime before the end of the year to bring us all together once again for another 'David Tennant Twitter Party'.
Thanks to the tweets, retweets and the on air 'advertising' the #absolutedtfangirls hashtag got out there and now all Tennant fangirls refer to themselves as such making Twitter lists, using the term on their blogs & websites, and aiding in spreading it even further. I'm very proud & happy that the hashtag got out there and that so many fans the world over have embraced it. It really means a lot to me but I have seduff to thank for asking the initial question that prompted my hashtag answer.
While girls may forever call themselves #absolutedtfangirls this post is dedicated to our DT dozen who will always, in my mind, be THE original #absolutedtfangirls (in random order):
@hypocritter, @vincents_biatch, @MOTDS6690, @JenLeigh82, @TenSuitConverse, @GojyoChan, @beth_evers, @GallifreyNative, @TARDIS_Tara, @seduff_, @BeatlesWhoMuser, and me, @mcfangirl.
Addendum:
Now for the tweet about me pmsl at Christian: About 3 days after the radio show aired, I pulled up Christian's tweet to snag and save for all of time (heheh) when, for the first time, it occurred to me to click on the 'in reply to mcfangirl' link on the bottom of the tweet and to my surprise and one finaly time - embarrassment - Christian hadn't just grabbed one of the tweets I'd sent him and clicked reply, he had actually gone to my profile page and then clicked the link to reply to this tweet:

AWKward! LOL!
I leave you with one last pretty cool story:
On Saturday, October 9th, 2010, David was on Graham Norton's radio show and Graham read an e-mail from a fangirl who wrote that the #absolutedtfangirls said, "Hello!". Graham asked David, "Do you know them?" to which David replied, "Not personally but I've heard it [the term] before.".
Clearly, he remembered us!
I can now die happily as the #absolutedtfangirl! ;D
**An extra special thank you to @seduff_ for her amazing work on the logo featured at the top. You can see more of her work here.**

Doctor Who: The Complete Specials (The Next Doctor / Planet of the Dead / The Waters of Mars / The End of Time Parts 1 and 2)