think back on your favorite Twitter moments of the past decade I got these greased potatoes tomatoes today's baggage black Twitter where do politics means black culture and activism come together online you guessed it black Twitter black Twitter is Twitter it's a congregation a community heck I'd argue that black Twitter is the most poppin space on the internet but what kind of legacy has it created now where can I find someone who's an expert in all things daddy professor merited the Klux pretty much a black Twitter ologist when people try to juxtapose black Twitter versus let's
say mainstream Twitter or just Twitter the assumption that they're making is that white users and the people who created Twitter are the default and so whatever white users are doing that is mainstream or regular Twitter and we know that that just isn't so black Twitter makes Twitter what it is it is what drives the pippi conversations I'd say that black Twitter has shaped culture on Twitter the same way that black culture has shaped American culture for years the things that happen on black Twitter and the people who take note of them are just like so-called
culture vultures in other subsets of culture right people tend to marginalize black folks and think what we're doing is gauche or perhaps out of step with the mainstream and then all of a sudden imitation becomes a form of flattery that they use so they pick up the language they pick up the an you end oh and we've seen the same thing happen with jazz rock and roll hip hop black Twitter creates the cool starting with language y'all remember the term on fleek eyebrows on fleek today's challenges like the end my feelings challenge which was started
in 2018 by a dude from Queens named shaggy the challenge went so far that an FBI fugitive dances way across the tarmac after being captured y'all and live-tweeting black twitter loves a good live tweeting session scandal totally made live tweeting a thing and now every pop in show or movie has a hashtag I don't think there's anything that can top it is the day that Yahoo News tweeted that Donald Trump wanted a bigger Navy only they got the N and the B he's mixed up and so black Twitter took off and created the so called
in word maybe you know we took something that is a slur that is still very contested in terms of its use and we had a field day with the jokes Clark says that regardless of the shenanigans black twitter is also a space for civic engagement what I do think black Twitter has the ability to do is to foster in people the same sort of sense of responsibility that our black ancestors had when they created freedom's journal the first newspaper published by two free black men in the United States when Ida B Wells created the red
record and documented lynchings across the country that same spirit is being witnessed via black Twitter when someone says I see something that is wrong and I believe I can do something about it by using a tool of the media some of those long doings that Clark refers to are police violence towards people of color over the decade black Twitter has notably disseminated footage and information about violence against black and brown bodies like in the cases of Eric Garner's death by chokehold and Chandra blades encounter with police which led to her mysterious death in jail but
Clark says that this activism on Twitter doesn't just document police violence and that it also includes calling for accountability within our own community we see you hashtag mute our Kelly voices on black Twitter have been a catalyst for change viral hashtags like April rains oscarssowhite Tirana burps me to kishan Thompson's black girl magic and who could ever forget black lives matter which grew into a global social justice movement against police brutality and was created by three black women hashtags like these shifted the cultural landscape made the media pay attention to the ways black people are
treated in this country and changed how we discussed in justices against our people both leur and activist feminista Jones is what one would refer to as a Twitter og she knows about injustice is faced by women all too well and in 2014 created a hashtag ul cases to take a stand against street harassment tell us the story behind you okay sis I was actually out with my son and we were walking and there was a young woman and she couldn't be more than 22 23 and she was pushing a stroller and a man approached her
trying to sell his music and she was polite and was like I you know no thank you but he kept following her you could see she's uncomfortable but she's trying not to make a scene and he grabs her arm and I just was like are you okay sis because I was like I'm tired of us just not saying anything I went home and it told the story on Twitter and I just got to this point I put out a call to action I was like can we just do something this summer can if you see
someone being harassed can you just asked if they're okay on another note you've been doxxed you've had death threats made against you I am curious as to you know you think that you are particularly targeted because you are a black woman and an activist on Twitter I think I'm more targeted and happen to argot it because I'm an open feminist when you declare that black women needs to be free and liberated you're gonna draw hate from white people and non black people and you're gonna draw hate from men and so you've got to deal with
both of those things and some of the worst attacks unfortunately have come from black men who hate feminism and they hate this idea that black women believe that they need feminism base as a front to their power and then at the same time you dealing with racism and you can get into a space where you're constantly feeling like you're defending yourself and and it's part of being a activist it's part of affirming that an oppressed group deserves to be free George M Johnson is another prominent voice on Twitter Johnson is a writer activist and author
speaking up for the experiences of black and queer people on the platform there's a black queer person on Twitter what has your experience and it's not the easiest especially like when you're someone as vocal as myself but I'm also very transparent and so sometimes transparency is used to attack I mean so it's like if I talk about the fact that HIV positive right if I talk about some of the things I've been through when I'm in a moment where people disagreed they oftentimes will use that to you know attack me that's dirty yeah well in
enemy but it's one of those things that I hate to say it comes with the territory but it comes with the territory of Twitter but I do also think a lot of times it's hard for people because you know people who are heterosexual or people who are white who may know me in a different capacity when I'm calling out something from that particular community they may get offended my job isn't to like pacify people my job is to make us better but I can't make us better by always worrying about someone else's feelings and so
that then becomes hard on black Twitter there is definitely a culture of accountability sometimes folks just have to get dragged there's also this culture of clown chasing [Music] everybody wants that one viral tweet in hopes of becoming an internet celebrity a lot of people fail to realize like going viral doesn't equal a paycheck like I still work every day I still write op-eds I'm still freelance a lot of people who became a voice on Twitter it wasn't because they were chasing something to become a voice they did the work and when they did the work
the byproduct of doing good work or work in general was that people began following them but they didn't go into it with the intention of I'm gonna make people follow me for doing these particular things and so I think that's kind of like the balance that people have to figure out while some are still working on that balance others say the future of black Twitter is still uncertain I think that people are starting to feel like Twitter is not responsive enough to the serious issues that black people have shared that they have about Twitter I
do wonder or if it's even going to exist in the next 10 years but I'm not concerned because the community exists wherever it was we were on MySpace we were on black planet Facebook we're everywhere we're going to be everywhere because we are a black community and we are a global community so we'll find each other whether Twitter exists or not when you can change the way companies market and brand their products that's power when you can swing votes that's power there's so many things that like black twitter has been able to do as a
collective that reflect the power that we have just as a people our Twitter fingers have literally changed the world and we know that the 2010s wouldn't have been the same without them tweet that how does it look on the screen like they look bad in real life and we do was there any news I know
