online communities in history—a daunting task way beyond what most internet culture explainers ever approach. Its scope was so impressive that the feature was split into two parts.
But there was only so much that Parham could include. After all, Black Twitter is something that defies simple definition: It’s “a comedy showcase, therapy session, and family cookout all in one,” as Parham wrote in his piece. Black Twitter is the simplest way to refer to the space carved out by Black social media users, who have used the tools of the internet—memes, hashtags, trending topics—to develop a language, sense of community, and social influence., comes in.
I'm a huge Black Twitter fan and participant, so when sent me the article, I just read it and fell in love with it. I fell in love with why Jason was doing it, and I understood why it was necessary… If I was going to get into something that felt unscripted, it felt like a playground that I could have had a foot in and understood, as opposed to something that I don't really know about or some kind of obscure thing. It felt something very close to home.
How do we even acknowledge this, right? So between and using GIFs and memes to punctuate comedy, we really wanted it to feel like having multiple things coming up at the same time, scrolling, getting out of stuff. We wanted the doc to visually feel the way Black Twitter feels, the way you engage on it.