What this moment recalls is a pre-Ferguson version of Black Twitter, before the digital body was called upon to mobilize beginning in 2012. The repeated killings of Black youth—Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, and others—instilled an impassioned responsibility in users to activate their platforms in a new way. If free-flowing comedy, borderless conversation, everyday observations, and an anything-goes attitude defined Black Twitter’s first era, then its second, largely centered around the Black Lives Matter movement, was all about growing up and holding America accountable for how it continued to fail its Black citizens.
“We can talk about the ways that the algorithm has degraded and changed for engagement, but from a Black Twitter user’s perspective, I’m not getting a lot of the quality conversations I used to. But I am still getting indications of Black life,” says Andre Brock, an academic at Georgia Tech and author of Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures. What Black Twitter has been “good at” is still going on. Brock brings up the recent stream of celebratory tweets for first-time Academy Award nominees Colman Domingo, Danielle Brooks, and Sterling Brown. But, Brock says, there has also been a pivot in the tone of exchange across Black Twitter and the style of conversations that are being prioritized.
“What I am seeing, on a smaller scale, like pre-Ferguson Black Twitter, is how it has become more of a group chat. You’re hearing more, ‘Fam I don’t know if I’m gonna make it today,’ or ‘Is anybody else tired or is it just me?’ It’s more about mundane Black life,” he says. “Ferguson and then Trump got us in the mode that Twitter should always be a space where political activation can happen, but even as that was going on, folk were still doing the things we’re seeing today.”
Recently, an appearance by comedian Katt Williams on the sports and culture podcast Club Shay Shay caused an outpouring of reaction across Black Twitter. Williams, known for his no-holds-barred brand of humor, aired out industry secrets in a three-hour interview, generating a surplus of new memes overnight. “He is a sentient Black folk tale,” exclaimed @Slangdini in response. Discourse around TikTok couple Ms. Netta and Charles, or the leaked audio recording of former Marvel star Jonathan Majors saying he needed his girlfriend to “be more like a Coretta Scott King,” have also caused seismic uproar on the timeline, recalling, albeit fleetingly, a golden era for Black Twitter.
There are certain events that would have been big on Twitter of Old or Twitter of New, “and those have continued to bring folk back to the platform for a little while, because there is no other place where it is going to happen like that,” Brock says. “It’s not a return to where we were in 2012, it’s just that those conversations have now been resurfaced as the things that kept us here. We were always focused on collectivity and care, even as those other parts of the world were going on.”
In spite of what X has evolved into, many Black users have refused to abandon the platform, continuing to form bonds and show up for one another. “Black people have always managed to find each other online,” Freelon says. Brock agrees. “Even when they are tired of looking at us, we are still gonna be here being Black as fuck, cracking jokes and talking about the things we care about—and nobody’s gonna notice because it’s just us.”
