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Near end of 2009, within the western months of the decade when the first black man was elected US president, Ashley Weatherspoon was chasing a threat on a youth program called Twitter. As an assistant to singer Adrienne Bailon, a former member of the pop groups 3LW and the Cheetah Girls, Weatherspoon often uses social media techniques. For weeks, he and Bailon have been testing hashtags on all of their diets to see what can connect with fans. The little win came in a variety of ways on #UKnowUrBoyfriendsCheatingWhen. Later, while driving around Manhattan, he started playing with #UKnowUrFromNewYorkWhen. “We started to move forward,” Weatherspoon told me after talking on the phone in June. As the two women were laughing and laughing, a very good idea came up in Weatherspoon’s head. “Then I said, ‘Oh, you know you’re black right now …'”
It was the first Sunday in September, the time being 4:25 pm, when Weatherspoon took to Twitter he wrote, “#Uknowurblackwhen u cancel plans when the rain starts.” The hashtag spreads like wildfire. Two hours later, 1.2% of all Twitter emails were related to the Weatherspoon hashtag, with black users criticizing everything from traffic jams to long tea. It was the virus attack that followed – as well as proof of the heavy fabric woven together on the platform. Here, in all its glory, there was Black Twitter.
For more than a decade, Black Twitter has become a very powerful component not only on Twitter but also on the internet. Able to create, create, and re-incorporate fast-paced culture, it is just an incubator for almost everything (Crying Jordan, This you?), Hashtag (#IfTheyGunnedMeDown, #OscarsSoWhite, #YouOKSis), and social justice cause (Me Too, Black Lives Matter) essential to know. It’s all about the story as well as the analysis, the singing and the response, the judge and the judge – the comedy show, the support section, and the cooking for the families all in one. Black Twitter is a versatile, instant preservation as well as a mirror for all future generations. As Weatherspoon put it: “Our experience is global. Our experience is enormous. Our experiences are valuable. ”
Although Twitter was launched 15 years ago today, with the goal of changing the way — and more quickly — people connect online, the smart use of the platform for black users can be followed, in a way, in the past. In 1970, when the computer revolution was in its infancy, Amiri Baraka, founder of the Black Arts Movement, wrote an article entitled “Technology & Ethos.” “How do you talk to a black crowd?” He asked. “What is our spirit? What kind of machine will it make? What have they accomplished? ”
For Black users today, Twitter is Baraka’s prophetic machine: voice and team, power and motivation. Using his words, he has become a place of “imagine, think, build, inspire !!!” What follows is the first recording of how they all enjoyed it together. Like all history, it is not enough. But it is a beginning. Autlains. Think of this as a dark black color — how it moves and grows online, how it makes, how it interacts – spoken through the eyes of those who have been there.
Part I: Coming Together, 2008-2012
When the first websites such as BlackVoices, Melanet, and NetNoir came out in the mid-2000s, there were few online sites that met the needs of black people. BlackPlanet and MySpace have failed to fill this, and Facebook hasn’t really taken a temporary connection. Users were looking for the next item.
Kozza Babumba, cultural leader at Genius: Pre-2007, we had not yet discussed almost anything. As a group, we all did not discuss what it is like to sing the national anthem. Or how it is when OJ drives in that white Bronco. We just watched TV.
