Hulu’s docuseries “Black Twitter: A People’s History” chronicles the rise of a subculture that transformed the social media platform. Black users were already disproportionately present in digital spaces in the early 2000s, but Twitter helped those users find each other, especially after the hashtag became a thing in 2007 during Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign.
Director Prentice Penny partnered with Jason Parham, senior writer at Wired, to document the history of Black people shaping and dominating that social media space. The story is twofold. First, there’s Black people’s power to dominate mainstream culture from the margins, and then there’s the more profound story about the shaping of community online.
The docuseries feels more like a “homegoing” celebration for Black Twitter, a continuation of sorts of the #TwitterFuneral hashtag, as it marks the past vibrancy of the platform and mourns the collective loss that occurred after Elon Musk bought it.
At the same time, the docuseries feels more like a “homegoing” celebration for Black Twitter, a continuation of sorts of the #TwitterFuneral hashtag, as it marks the past vibrancy of the platform and mourns the collective loss that occurred after Elon Musk bought it and largely wrecked it in 2022. While the subsequent decline in users and advertisers has been felt across the platform, the loss feels greater for Black Twitter.
In the documentary, God-is Rivera, a tech expert who was the global director of culture and community at Twitter, recalls wondering if she ought to leave the country if Black Twitter were no longer a place where she could feel at home and connect with other Black people. She eventually decided “I ain’t going nowhere.”
In many ways, a 2009 tweet from Ashley Weatherspoon “#uknowurblackwhen … you cancel plans when its raining” gave birth to Black Twitter. Her hashtag brought Black users together from across the platform as they listed what made Blackness recognizable with quips about the clothes we wear, how we style our homes and just how late we show up to the cookout.
More than funny observations, though, these were collective reference points that made it clear that there’s a shared Black experience that stretches across region, status and class. It doesn’t matter that only a small portion of Black people have ever been on Twitter, as many of the ones who were present were doing a representational work that proved we’re all connected in some way.
“A People’s History” celebrates how Black people did with Twitter what Black people always do when confronted with the blandness of the mainstream: We transform it. “Sure it was created by someone else; it’s embedded with the values of that creator,” media scholar Meredith Clark says on screen, “but because my mind is expansive, I am going to disrupt, remix, and cut this up, and deliver it the way that I want it to go.”
To Clark’s point, Black users took advantage of a platform that didn’t quite know what it was or what its purpose was. Was it for idle play or information? Checking in and making random comments or reporting the news in 140 characters or less? As Black Twitter users found each other, they did all those things and more. Those users made their corner of the platform the Black folks’ table in the school cafeteria. The same food is being served. And everybody’s in the same room. But there’s a different vibe. A different way of conveying the news and a way of telling jokes that’s accessible only to the in-crowd.
Sometimes the results were chaotic, and sometimes they were toxic, but most of the time the result was an awesome display of Black cultural power and influence. The series tracks this influence as everyday Black people found not just each other but also political figures and celebrities who were in the mix alongside them.
Culture critic Van Lathan notes this cultural influence might not be the same as political influence and economic power, but that doesn’t mean they are unrelated. Some famous hashtags took on a life of their own. Consider CaShawn Thompson’s #BlackGirlsAreMagic (which was the precursor to the viral #BlackGirlMagic) and April Reign’s #OscarsSoWhite. Those hashtags did more than speak to the choir, they made demands and loudly called out bias.
As racist activity or language from run-of-the mill Karens and police officers and celebrities got called out by hashtags like #paulasbestdishes (after celebrity Southern chef Paula Deen admitted that she’d previously used the N-word) and were lampooned with memes and video clips, it was clear that as Luvvie Ajayi Jones says on screen, that Twitter had become “a megaphone for people who are on the margins.” Twitter can be as trashy, homophobic and colorist as the rest of society, but Black Twitter as a phenomenon was a powerful reminder of just how determined and creative Black people get when we make some random place feel like home. The people who made up Black Twitter didn’t have a special access code and obviously not a separate platform. But they figured out how to carve out a space on the platform by following the right people and using hashtags the right way. And they influenced how non-Black users operated across Twitter and beyond by popularizing memes like crying Michael Jordan and GIFs like LeBron James abruptly ending a news conference and walking out, and hilarious Thanksgiving clapbacks that spread across the platform. Such influence is a source of creative and collective pride, but it’s also a reminder that Black people make trends and products popular only for white people to find a way to profit the most, if not outright ruin it. Twitter has been no exception. After the world’s richest man took over in 2022, hate speech spiked and advertisers and users fled, even as employees were unceremoniously dumped by the tech giant. They influenced how non-Black users operated across Twitter and beyond by popularizing memes like crying Michael Jordan and GIFs like LeBron James abruptly ending a news conference and walking out. Black Twitter is still a thing but, like the rest of Twitter, it is somewhat hollowed out. Highly active users remain present but post less frequently. Reflecting on this shift in Episode 3 actor Amanda Seals says that “people struggle with the reality that things come to an end … but as Black people always do, we don’t die.” While former Twitter exec Rivera wonders if some other social media platform like Spill can be a place where “Black Twitter” reconvenes, comedian Kamau Bell points out that “certainly there should be Black media platforms, but I think also we like being in the mainstream conversation and going, ‘Can I talk to you over here for a second in the Black section?’” Black people know what it means to be pushed to the margins, but we also know what it means to “choose the margin,” then look around and make it a social space so radical and creative that the center will never be the same.
Robyn Autry
Robyn Autry is a sociology professor and director of the Center for the Study of Public Life at Wesleyan University. She is the author of “Desegregating the Past: The Public Life of Memory in the U.S. and South Africa.” 
