The fear is reasonable. That’s a fear that I have also bring. The uncertainty of whether to tell the story now, and whether it was right to publish what many considered a family secret, kept creeping into my mind. But I knew this story deserved to be told.
When I started Black Twitter Chronicles in April 2021 — charting its rise, its power, and what I feel is its unquestionable cultural impact — admittedly I struggled to define an unusual community. Accepts easy definition. In fact, Black Twitter is more than just a community. It is a growing and ever-evolving force that affects almost every aspect of modern life.
Black Twitter is the birthplace of all your favorite memes, hashtags, and trends. It’s more than that: Black Twitter doesn’t simply create culture; it shapes society. From Barack Obama’s history-making presidency to hashtags like #OscarsSoWhite, #BlackGirlMagic and #BlackLivesMatter, black Twitter is both extraordinary and everyday. That is, like me written in 2021everything: news and analysis, call and response, judges and judges—a comedy show, therapy sessions, and family cooking, all in one.
Even if other platforms like TikTok tried to capture what made Twitter — in my estimation, the most important social platform of the 2010s — black Twitter continues to be the most dynamic subset not only of Twitter, now now X, but also of the wider social network (as last week demonstrated, there’s no better place than black Twitter like Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef take place).
Furthermore, much of Black life is seen by the public misrepresentation and misappropriation. Its turns into an illusion or worshiped, or worse – left to die. Available technologies have enhanced our connections just as they have accelerated our eradication. Our stories are often stolen from us, if not erased entirely. Out of our hands, our history is flattened and repurposed dangerous falsehood by lawmakers peddling false information for personal gain. The story of Black Twitter is an account I don’t want to lose to the whitewashing of history.
I also know that the reality of social media is impermanent. Once-important digital gathering spots from the 1990s and 2000s—NetNoir, Black Voices, MelaNet, Black Planet, and others—have come and gone largely without proper context. So it’s important that I give Black Twitter my flowers while it still exists, which now seems even more urgent under Elon Musk’s ownership. Everything we have built and continue to build on this platform could be gone tomorrow.
After WIRED published a people’s history of Black Twitter, I began making a documentary based on oral history reporting. The resulting three-part series, out today, expands on the original story and also captures the very real fears surrounding what might lie in the future of Black Twitter.
So why this story and why now? It’s really simple. I don’t want Black Twitter to become another footnote.
