Beyond Black Twitter
A shortened version of this piece titled “What Black Twitter Means For Black People Online Today” appeared on Bustle
I was having a conversation with a white friend one day when she brought up the fact that she couldn’t find Black Twitter.
This baffled me. Not because my friend couldn’t find it, but because finding it to her meant searching “Black Twitter” in the search bar.
Black Twitter members, including myself, know this isn’t exactly how it works.
Now, when you think about black college parties, Black Twitter is kind of the same. How do you find a black party? Be friends with black people. How do you find Black Twitter? The same.
I wanted to know more about this party called Black Twitter so I sought out to answer a few questions.
For one, what is Black Twitter?
And two, who’s on it?
And three, what’s with the Black Twitter hashtags (fondly known as blacktags)?
What is Black Twitter?
I surveyed 88 people including friends, family, strangers from Twitter (and other depths of the internet), and conducted follow-up interviews with 5 willing participants to answer some questions.
I started with my friend’s question. How do you find it?
Well, there is no “finding” Black Twitter as much as there is being a part of it or not. A tight knit community of various networks, Black Twitter is not going to appear on your timeline without involvement within those networks. In simple terms — you have to be following black people.
And if you do find it, understanding it takes a considerable amount of insider knowledge as well as an awareness of black culture, black issues, and at least some knowledge of African American Vernacular English (AAVE).
Coded language, often in the form of AAVE and other slang, signals users in the Black Twitter community and triggers “insider status” to those in the community.
Without knowledge of black references and slang, much of Black Twitter becomes lost in translation. High context users understand these signals while these signals may go over low-context user’s heads entirely.
“I am an active sideline observer. I don’t actively participate because being African sometimes I don’t understand the pop culture references/how I speak, ergo, type doesn’t match black twitter style.” — Anonymous Survey Respondent
My definition of Black Twitter is based on a collection of many others and survey responses: Black Twitter can generally be defined as an online community of black people dedicated to creating black culture, discussing black issues, and creating a safe place for black people to share their identities, validate their experiences, and cheer one another on.
The Black Twitter community is large. In fact, “40 percent of black Internet users ages 18 to 29 said they were on Twitter, compared with 28 percent of their white peers.”
But, like any community, one must choose to be a part of it. Being black alone doesn’t signify your participation in the space nor does being white/non-black deny your access to the space.
Black Twitter doesn’t exist as a monolith, making it especially difficult to define.
“For every #BlackLivesMatter, #ICantBreathe, and #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, there is a #ButThatsNoneOfMyBusiness, #LeBroning and #TweetLikeJadenSmith” — Barret Holmes Pitner, The Daily Beast
People on Black Twitter are talking about the same things, but they’re talking about them differently as Black Twitter has always existed to serve a necessary counter-narrative. Black Twitter has its own culture, its own community, its own history, and its own language that deserves its own narrative beyond the existing mainstream narratives.
Some argue that Black Twitter offers an alternative discourse to fill the digital divide driven by the “lack of black-oriented content” in media more broadly. This counter-narrative is blatant even when it comes to ideas of what Black Twitter is.
My survey data shows that black users are more likely than their white/non-black counterparts to describe Black Twitter as both a community and culture, i.e. something that doesn’t need Twitter to survive. Though the community exists on Twitter, the culture exists on its own and has even inspired the hashtag #ForTheCulture.
“…I’m black and I use Twitter #fortheculture” — Anonymous Survey Respondent
Black users are more likely to define Black Twitter as users bonding over a shared experience and as a place to share and create culture. In fact, my surveys reveal that only black survey respondents describe Black Twitter as a culture whereas non-black users did not.
#Cultural Moments on Black Twitter
Often times the white mainstream understanding of black culture is that it’s its own thing (think BET), when the truth of the matter is that American culture is heavily influenced by black (and gay) culture.
Americans live and breathe black culture everyday without understanding that American culture is pieces of black culture that became mainstream. Twerking, boxer braids, and rock and roll did not come from Miley Cyrus, the Kardashians, and Elvis. Black spaces, like Black Twitter, is where culture is created but this still goes unrecognized. The lack of recognition of where culture is created showed true in survey responses in which only black people defined Black Twitter as related to culture.
Spending even five minutes on Black Twitter reveals how pervasive black culture is among American culture. We can look at the Black Panther phenomena: the movie has now grossed over 1.3 Billion dollars and it is not without the help of Black Twitter. In fact, Black Panther is the most tweeted about movie on Twitter with over 35 million tweets.
What started as black nerd culture transformed itself to black culture before it steadily made its way into mainstream American culture.
The next viral sensation won’t come from nowhere. It comes from small sub-communities online where once it takes foothold — it spreads. Black Twitter spreads because the power of Black Twitter is rooted in the collective action of a well-connected community. People on Black Twitter use the platform because it is a place where their voices can be heard and validated through entertainment, social justice, and beyond.
Black Twitter Sub-Cultures
Within the larger context of Black Twitter exists smaller spaces for more particular identities. While mostly known for social justice work and activism, within Black Twitter there are also sub-communities of black nerds, black techies, black Potterheads, black people that like to watch How To Get Away With Murder together and many more.
However, despite its diversity, it should still be noted that Black Twitter only represents one facet of the black experience that is not important or relevant to everyone.
It can be easy to forget that Black Twitter is just Twitter and those participating in Black Twitter are using it the same way as everybody else. My survey results show that black people and non-black people generally use Twitter for the same purposes: entertainment, gathering news, and to be social.
What sets the Black Twitter community apart is that it has its own set of rules, jokes, identities, topics, and a language that is distinct from mainstream Twitter and other Twitter communities (i.e. Gay Twitter).
Black users on Twitter who identify as members of Black Twitter are a tighter knit community and are “more socially active” on the social networking platform than the average Twitter user. They tweet more, retweet more, reply more, and follow other users at a faster rate.
A lot of this participation is where hashtags come into play. Blacktags are one of the most important parts to Black Twitter — it’s the entry point to the chaos where one person tweets or “signals” and other users reply.
“Signifyin” on Black Twitter is pertinent to its use. Blackness on Twitter must be performed to be perceived and performance on Black Twitter is an affirmative display of identity. Since black users are more socially active on Twitter, these signals pick up fast and topics and hashtags curated by Black Twitter dominate the trending topics regularly.
Unlike other social media sites like Snapchat, Facebook, or Instagram, Twitter collects groups of communities and throws them in a room together so that everyone is shouting over one another.
Connections form within the chaos and suddenly everyone at the party knows each other.
Connections on Black Twitter are very reflective of black life beyond Twitter. Black people create networks and support systems of black people wherever they go and that collective drives Black Twitter’s power.
#BlackHumor And Other Hashtags
A huge part of Black Twitter is the jokes and the memes. For those in the know, these jokes, often in the form of hashtags, are what make Black Twitter, Black Twitter.
In my survey, black respondents were twice as likely to describe using Black Twitter as a form of “play”: a virtual third space to hang out, share jokes, and roast one another. Play and humor are a fundamental part of Black Twitter. However, understanding black humor on Twitter takes a nuanced understanding of both black culture and black problems.
Black humor on Twitter “often focuses on the realities of being black in America, which reveals racial disparities and mistreatments.” There is a long history of blacks using humor to cope with racism. For white/non-black users, black humor may not be understood as a coping mechanism and is often misunderstood by white/non-black Twitter users as social justice or activism.
This misunderstanding was evident in my survey in which 59% of white/non-black respondents described Black Twitter in terms of activism compared to just 7% of black respondents.
White and non-black respondents were far more likely than their black counterparts to describe Black Twitter as a place for social justice and activism, and generally understood Black Twitter as being a community that calls out racism and raises awareness of black issues generally.
In a survey of 88, 52.9% of respondents identified as African-American/Black, 34.1% identified as Caucasian/White, 4.7% identified as Hispanic/Latino, 4.7% as Asian/Pacific Islander, 2.4% as Bi-Racial and 1.2% as Other.
The discrepancy in these interpretations of Black Twitter isn’t surprising. Understandings of black life, perpetuated by systems of white supremacy, often draw on broad stereotypes of crime, poverty, legacies of slavery, and civil rights.
For the mainstream, black life rarely takes form outside of civil rights, and that perpetuates itself into what white/non-black users’ definitions of what Black Twitter is.
Truthfully, groups of black people talk about the same things online as they do offline: music, art, sports, books, and at times, racism. It is silly to think a group of black people anywhere are talking about racism all the time which stands to highlight the fact that no one (but black people) have any idea what black people are talking about.
We can take note from Sicha, who may have first referenced Black Twitter in his Medium Article “What Were Black People Talking about on Twitter Last Night?” Sicha points out that black people have their own communities, their own friends and their own lives to which no one is paying attention to.
Sicha’s article was written nearly 10 years ago when Twitter was first taking off, but the sentiment still rings true. Mainstream media is rarely interested in black issues or black culture until it becomes mainstream. This can be seen by the hashtags that have bombarded the trending topics on Twitter and within pop culture in general.
#MoreThanJustAHashtag: Black Twitter Movements
Social justice movements like Black Lives Matter are not a new fight but rather a fight that non-POCs either just learned about or just started to care about. We wouldn’t need hashtags and movements and marketing teams to highlight black issues if we collectively cared about black people to begin with.
Caring about black people comes from being in black spaces and understanding these issues before hashtags force everyone into caring (or at least paying attention).
Black Twitter hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter, #OscarsSoWhite, and #BlackGirlMagic, arguably the three most popular and most mainstream hashtags that have come out of Black Twitter, have become commonplace. These hashtags find their way into people’s general knowledge whereas other hashtags on Black Twitter require active participation and knowledge of what Black Twitter is.
78% of those surveyed (88) were familiar with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, even though 39% of those who answered (85) had no idea what Black Twitter was.
Of those with no prior knowledge of Black Twitter, 64% couldn’t name a hashtag outside of #BlackLivesMatter, #OscarsSoWhite, and #BlackGirlMagic.
It is no secret that social justice is an important part of Black Twitter but there is a whole world beyond social justice on Black Twitter; and that’s the part that America, especially white America needs to be paying attention to in order to come to any relevant understanding of black lives and the core roles black people play in society while still gaining little acknowledgment.
Black Pride and Black Twitter
At its core, it should be said that Black Twitter is a collective celebration of blackness. Black Twitter, if anything, is a radical display of unapologetic blackness in no conditional terms or requirements. There is no one type of blackness on Black Twitter (or in real life) though there is an underlying shared experience of what it is to be black, specifically black in America. Those who identify as members of Black Twitter are also those who identify as being black, even if they don’t use Twitter at all.
“ I consider myself a member of black twitter because I am black of course, and I follow mostly black people. I participate because it is an amazing source of entertainment.” — Anonymous Black Survey Respondent
Twitter is just the internet and at the end of the day anyone can use it but survey responses showed that racial identity influences interactions online just as much as they influence interactions offline.
When I asked people if they used Black Twitter “no I’m white,” “no I’m not black,” “yes, I’m black” or some variation were popular answers. Some black people even stated they were inherently a part of Black Twitter just because they were black.
As a contrast, 15% of black survey correspondents wouldn’t consider themselves a part of Black Twitter. 6% because they didn’t know what it was and 7% because they don’t tweet or use social media. Black respondents overall didn’t mention racial identity as a reason to not be a member, however white/non-black users did use identity as a reason not to be a member.
“Even if I were on Twitter, followed people of color, and retweeted “Black Twitter” tweets, I would still not be a member of Black Twitter. It’s social media, which means anyone can observe, participate, or become involved, but as a white person, it’s just not my space. It does not belong to me.” — Anonymous White Survey Respondent
My survey responses and follow-up interviews didn’t reveal much about why white/non-black respondents claimed their identity as a reason they didn’t use Black Twitter but it should probably be noted at this point that there are tons of white/non-black people on Black Twitter.
You don’t have to be black to participate in hashtags like #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes or #TweetLikeJadenSmith and you definitely don’t have to be black to enjoy the humor in #BlackHogwarts or to support black people using #BlackLivesMatter and #BlackGirlMagic.
Blackness comes into play in hashtags such as #GrowingUpBlack or #ThanksGivingWithBlackFamilies but enjoying the general subreddit of Black Twitter doesn’t require blackness itself. What it does require is a profound understanding of black culture, black issues, and an understanding of when it’s your place to participate and when it’s not.
Black Twitter is no different than offline spaces of black people like black churches or black barber shops. There are non-black people there, perhaps less frequently, but still there nonetheless. They didn’t just stumble their way there accidentally — they have the networks to “find” the party, and have become comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Responses from my survey showed that those who do not identify as black are often uncomfortable with the idea of participating on Black Twitter though the community isn’t nearly as exclusive as many perceive it to be. If you can find the party, you might as well join in.
“Feel free to lurk, and even participate, but do not expect to be spoon-fed explanations of critical race theory or intersectionality. The prevailing sensibility is that if you can find Black Twitter, you can Google the concepts you don’t understand.” — Soraya Nadia McDonald, the Washington Post
Being a non-black person on Black Twitter means you’re not always going to understand what’s going on, it’s not always going to be your place to voice your opinion, and when you do voice an opinion, displays of ally-ship are not going to be rewarded. Black Twitter isn’t about creating space for white comfort, it is about breaking down unconscious and conscious displays of white supremacy; Black Twitter will stand against those who interfere on Black Twitter without understanding key points surrounding black life.
“I follow and retweet members of Black Twitter, but I don’t think I should say I’m a member since I am not black. I appreciate that the trends and messages of Black Twitter are produced by the collective mind of African Americans, so to me I have no place in influencing it. I consider myself an ally of Black Twitter.” — Anonymous White Survey Respondent
Black Twitter and Beyond
Black Twitter has offered a window into what black life beyond Twitter may actually look like. It is a place where Black people curate their own content, their own narrative, and carve out their own space. More than that, Black Twitter helps move what the next big cultural trend will be as American culture is heavily influenced by black culture.
Black Twitter is not just a place where culture is shared but a place where culture is produced.
If there’s anything to learn from Black Twitter, it’s what we can discover from looking beyond it. Black Twitter isn’t a unified perspective, it is the collective voice of individuals tweeting what is important and meaningful to them. Just as there is no one definition or one experience of blackness — there is no one Black Twitter.
Black Twitter reflects the diversity of black experiences in a way that is special and inviting.
It crafts spaces for individual interests while also connecting the collective through shared experiences. Black Twitter is a complex intersectionality of blackness and it’s imperative to understand the community as one made up of unique individuals that is not representative of the larger black community.
White and non-black perceptions, fascinations, and misunderstandings of what Black Twitter is show an underlying problem and lack of consciousness concerning race relations in America that stems from a general discomfort and stigma concerning black spaces and what black people do in these spaces.
It should not be surprising or fascinating that black people have their own lives, friends, communities, and culture and it should not be noticed just because it’s trending on Twitter.
Black Twitter isn’t a new concept. Black people have created spaces for themselves everywhere and the internet has made these spaces visible to the people not already in these spaces. In some ways, the power of Black Twitter is the visibility it can bring to those who otherwise don’t find themselves in black spaces.
The problem is that black lives need to be visible offline and true visibility doesn’t come from looking from the outside, it comes from being on the inside. This is going to take some being uncomfortable in black spaces because the choice to not be in black spaces is just that, a choice. Black people have never had the option of remaining in black-only spaces which is why spaces like Black Twitter where black people can join and relate are so important.
We all want to believe the default is that people won’t be racist. The truth is, people’s natural tendencies are to stay within groups that look mostly like them and it takes a conscious effort to break that tendency. That conscious effort might be attending a black church or going to a black barber or hanging out on Black Twitter.
It’s these conscious efforts that solidify the understanding that at the end of the day black people are just people, Black Twitter is just Twitter and black parties are just parties. Black Twitter is a fun party to eavesdrop on, but it’s a more fun party to join. So if you can find it, join it.
How do you join the Black Twitter party? Be friends with black people. How do you join the Black Twitter party happening offline? The same.
