well I was gonna give up at first but now I think I actually get it. When you mention that this ambient affiliation is an entirely new cultural process I guess you're absolutely right. At first I was thinking it'd be like writing a journal or book that strategically fits wider/multiple categorizations, in order to grasp the widest possible audience searching through those different shelves in a library. But this is totally different in that it's much more specific and the tags are key to the actual expression of the tweets.

On a more irrelevant note, to be honest I'm so awed by behavioral analysis like this, but there's a part of me that sorta winces at the thought of deconstructing behavior; if anything's gonna make you self conscious then god damn that'll do it. In the end things like ambient affiliation sort of grew naturally didn't they? Just a product of human communication, interaction, and development. It seems like we're uncovering a big conspiracy in human nature trying to break everything down like that :D