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Black Twitter

Twitter's flying bird logo, but in black instead of Twitter's shade of blue
Twitter's flying bird logo, but in black instead of Twitter's shade of blue

Twitter's flying bird logo, but in black instead of Twitter's shade of blue.

One of the things I will miss about Twitter is its loose communities. I consider myself part of WNBA Twitter and women's basketball Twitter. I hang around the edges of NBA Twitter. But I'm also Black Twitter-adjacent — that is, I'm part of the culture, and get most of the jokes, but I don't actively participate in making them.

Now that Edgelord Musty is running the show, Black Twitter will likely get gentrified off of the site. At the very least, an increasing number of black people who tweet will stop posting as they get slammed with abusive language and Twitter loses its role as a cool(-ish) website to hang out on.

People smarter than me are already thinking and talking about what Black Twitter is, what it means, and what might happen to it. Two of my regular podcast listens dropped Black Twitter-themed episodes on December 1, 2022. I want to highlight them here.

Marketplace Tech: Black Twitter has been a cultural engine. Where will that community go if the site breaks?

Download MP3 or Read the transcript

Kimberly Adams of Marketplace interviews Shamika Klassen, an information science Ph.D. candidate at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Klassen co-authored a paper about Black Twitter titled More than a Modern Day Green Book: Exploring the Online Community of Black Twitter. Klassen's paper cites the work of other smarty-art Negroes including two who are also delightful Twitter follows: Dr. Andre Brock, and Dr. Meredith D. Clark.

Into America: #RIPBlackTwitter

Speaking of Dr. Clark, she was a guest on Trymaine Lee's Into America podcast this week. Clark is a professor at Northeastern University and a former journalist who studies media and Black Twitter specifically. Read the transcript.