In the same way that we acknowledge, respect, and listen to civil rights organizers like Ella Baker, Diane Nash, and Julian Bond of the SNCC, it’s crucial we hear from digital organizers who started or contributed to influential hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter, #OscarsSoWhite, #BlackGirlMagic, and even the less politically-leaning hashtags that fostered joy and community, like #UKnowUrBlackWhen or #N*****Navy.
Before watching Hulu’s Black Twitter: A People’s History, you must do two pre-reading acts: One, read “A People’s History of Black Twitter,” written by Jason Parham for WIRED in 2021, and two, read the essay “Technology & Ethos” written by writer, poet, and political activist Amiri Baraka.
Baraka’s words are a guiding thread for both Parham’s article and the docuseries, leading us to a crucial message: technologies are not neutral but imbued with cultural significance and ethical dimensions. This understanding is key to fully grasping the show’s exploration of Black Twitter’s impact, especially as it touches on some of Black Twitter’s lowest points, such as the rise of Kevin Samuels and the black manosphere or misogynoir and repeated harassment of queer users.
While, yes, it touches on the sh*ts and giggles of Black Twitter — think Rihanna telling Ciara, “Good luck booking that stage you speak of” — the central theme of the three-part series is that Black people have reimagined Twitter’s technology to reflect our diversity, humor, trends, and ethics. In his 2021 piece, Parham writes, “For Black users today, Twitter is Baraka’s prophetic machine: voice and community, power and empowerment.”
When I reckon with Baraka’s words, it leads me back to why this docuseries is important. We must use technology to our own power. Being afraid of what white people or other outside cultures may manipulate or copy from our cultural traditions cannot stop us from documenting them. We must never forget that we are the key drivers of technology and cultural events. By documenting Black Twitter in this way, with experts weighing in on this doc, we are arming ourselves with the knowledge that Black people can have and will continue to organize digitally for our political freedom, technological rights, and joy.
Documentaries are not exhaustive records of a single moment, a piece of the pop culture zeitgeist, or a revolution, by any means. Better yet, they are one of many lenses through which we can examine history. Black Twitter: A People’s History is undoubtedly from the lens of the older and original guard of Black Twitter; it’s not necessarily a people’s docuseries, as the name suggests.
I’m curious if and who would be behind the production that surveys everyday users, those without social capital, elite media jobs, or “blue checks.”
This series is unlikely to unveil new anecdotes to those who have danced in Black Twitter’s digital threads for a decade or more. Yet, younger members of Gen Z and Gen Alpha who aren’t old enough to know where #BlackGirlMagic came from or remember how the platform was being used by its Black users during the Trayvon Martin trial may find the series’ approach to Black Internet lore alluring.