As Weatherspoon puts it: “Our experience is universal. Black Twitter is a multiverse, simultaneously an archive and an all-seeing lens into the future. It is both news and analysis, call and response, judge and jury-a comedy showcase, therapy session, and family cookout all in one. Capable of creating, shaping, and remixing popular culture at light speed, it remains the incubator of nearly every meme (Crying Jordan, This you?), hashtag (#IfTheyGunnedMeDown, #OscarsSoWhite, #YouOKSis), and social justice cause (Me Too, Black Lives Matter) worth knowing about. More than a decade later, Black Twitter has become the most dynamic subset not only of Twitter but of the wider social internet. Here, in all its melanated glory, was Black Twitter. It was the viral hit she was after-and confirmation of a rich fabric being threaded together across the platform. Within two hours, 1.2 percent of all Twitter correspondence revolved around Weatherspoon’s hashtag, as Black users riffed on everything from car rims to tall tees. It was the first Sunday in September, at exactly 4:25 pm, when Weatherspoon logged on to Twitter and wrote, “#uknowurblackwhen u cancel plans when its raining.” The hashtag spread like wildfire. This article appears in the September 2021 issue.
