of 2009, during the twilight months of a decade that saw the first Black man elected to the US presidency, Ashley Weatherspoon was chasing virality on a young app called. As the personal assistant for the singer Adrienne Bailon, a former member of the pop groups 3LW and the Cheetah Girls, Weatherspoon often worked on social media strategy. For weeks, she and Bailon had been testing out hashtags on both their feeds to see what would connect with fans.
More than a decade later, Black Twitter has become the most dynamic subset not only of Twitter but of the wider social internet. Capable of creating, shaping, and remixing popular culture at light speed, it remains the incubator of nearly every meme , hashtag , and social justice cause worth knowing about. It is both news and analysis, call and response, judge and jury—a comedy showcase, therapy session, and family cookout all in one.
Though Twitter launched exactly 15 years ago today, with the goal of changing how—and how quickly—people communicate online, the ingenious use of the platform by Black users can be traced, in a way, much further back in time. In 1970, when the computer revolution was in its infancy, Amiri Baraka, the founder of the Black Arts Movement, published an essay called “Technology & Ethos.” “How do you communicate with the great masses of Black people?” he asked.
For Black users today, Twitter is Baraka’s prophetic machine: voice and community, power and empowerment. To use his words, it has become a space “to imagine—to think—to construct—to energize!!!” What follows is the first official chronicling of how it all came fantastically together. Like all histories, it is incomplete. But it is a beginning. An outline.
Facebook didn’t quite capture the essence of real-time communication. Users were looking for the next thing.Pre-2007, we had never had a conversation about almost anything. As a community, we didn’t all talk about what it was like when we sang the national anthem. Or what it was like when OJ was driving in that white Bronco. We just watched it on TV.Black people have tried to create social networks and failed.
nonlinearnotes You and your magazine is a joke.
nonlinearnotes 1/10
Who gives a crap about a something that causes division we need to get rid of all divisive celebrations like these. Human beings are human beings of many no one needs to celebrate a race. The human has been the most destructive species on this planet by far.
Thanks for boiling Black Twitter down to car rims.
Brown Twitter is rolling its eyes.
Old white male twitter and asian twitter is superior to latino, LGBTQ, and black twitter. Much more distinguished.
nonlinearnotes Whaaaaa?