Offline with Jon Favreau - What Do We Lose if We Lose Black Twitter?

Episode Date: March 5, 2023

Jason Parham, senior writer at WIRED, walks Jon through the evolution and legacy of Black Twitter. Parham’s three-part series, “A People’s History of Black Twitter,” follows the online community from its early days of late night takes, through an era of platform dominance, and into an uncertain future. He joins Offline to discuss how Black Twitter has shaped the last ten years of discourse and activism, how the internet complicates cultural appropriation, and what will happen if Twitter fades away. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

I'm curious how you think about the appropriation of black culture on the internet, which was mentioned by a lot of the people you interviewed since black Twitter, again, has been the source of a lot of that appropriation. Do you see this as a symptom of appropriation of black culture in America at large? Or do you think there's something unique about black Twitter that has made appropriation easier or more common? Oh, man, we need that. We would need a whole other podcast just for this. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey everyone. My guest today is Jason Parham, senior writer at Wired. We've spent a ton of time on this show talking about Twitter, the good, but mostly the bad and the ugly. I talk about Twitter a lot because I'm addicted, but also because I think it has an outsized impact on our media, politics, and culture. And there's arguably no part of Twitter that's had a bigger impact than Black Twitter, about which Jason has written the definitive account. It's a series in Wired called A People's History of Black Twitter,

and it's now becoming a TV docuseries. This is important because, as Jason writes, Black Twitter is both news and analysis, call and response, judge and jury, a comedy showcase, therapy session, and family cookout all in one, a multiverse, simultaneously an archive and all-seeing lens into the future.

He's right. What would the last decade have been without the crying Jordan meme? Without Oscars So White, Me Too, or Black Lives Matter? Black Twitter has been both a cultural touchstone and a driving force for social and political change. And at a time when Elon Musk is seemingly doing everything he can to screw things up on the platform, it's worth asking, what would we lose if we lose Black Twitter? It turns out Jason has been pondering the same question and recently wrote a follow-up piece to his oral history about what might come next. The two of us sat down to talk about Black Twitter's most impactful moments,

but to also ask the tough questions about the appropriation of Black culture online and what happens if Twitter just fades away. It was part celebration and part eulogy. And the rare conversation about Twitter that's reminded me of how valuable and special the platform can be. As always, if you have comments, questions, or episode ideas, please email us at offline at crooked.com. And please take a moment to share the show with a friend. Here's Jason Parham. Jason Parham, welcome to Offline. Thanks for having me, John.

So a few years ago, you wrote the definitive oral history of Black Twitter for Wired magazine. So definitive that a docuseries is now in the works. So that's pretty cool. Congratulations on that. Super excited. So I'll be super white here and admit that even though I am a longtime Twitter addict, I hadn't actually heard the phrase Black Twitter until about four or five years ago. How would you describe Black Twitter to someone who's unfamiliar with it? Yeah, so it's kind of like in a lot of other ways that other loose communities function on Twitter. I would say it's a collective of Black communities coming together around topics, around ideas, around things that are happening in the news, whether it be advice on relationship, whether it be something going on in the news with Trump or Putin, whether it's something else happening

in entertainment, if there's a new Black Panther movie coming out, people coming together and talking about it, joking about it, giving their own thoughts and ideas about it, arguing over things. It's really this collection of communities coming together in one space and kind of just having it out. And how did the phrase Black Twitter come to be? This is really an interesting thing. When I was reporting this a few years ago, you know, in the early sort of reporting of it, a lot of folks were saying how they weren't really saying it or calling it Black Twitter. It was something the media called it. I think an article appeared in Slate or The All, I want to say around 2008, 2009,

when they noticed a lot of Black folks coming together on the app around certain hashtags, and it was sort of known as Black Twitter, even though for Black folks, we were just calling it Twitter. But eventually, I think over time, it just became known as Black Twitter. And the folks who are on Black Twitter all the time sort of embrace that name after a while. Yeah, I mean, I think it has a sort of unifying aspect to it. And they eventually gathered around it once they realized the power in it. What made you want to chronicle this history? And why specifically did you want to do an oral history?

I wanted to chronicle this history because, you know, we live in a really dangerous time right now. You see what's going on with DeSantis down in Florida. You have things like critical race theory being, you know, made fun of on Fox News. We have our histories and our stories being erased online and in school books and textbooks. So it was really important for me to document a time and place, a thing that we built and say, hey, we were here. This was important to us. This is our history. I studied African American studies in grad school. And one of the things that you learn is the way that African-American history is so fiercely under attack all the time. And so for me as a reporter, I'm a reporter first,

but I also see myself as sort of a documentarian and sort of a historian on the front lines of history and the stories that I write about. So it was important for me to chronicle this space online that was developing. And the best way to go about that, as much as I would have loved to do a sort of first person feature that I've sort of known to do at Wired, it was important that this story be told through the plurality of voices that are on the space. So I went about, I wanted to go and talk to as many people as I could, people that were there in the early days of Twitter, people that now have become celebrities because of Twitter, people that created hashtags because of Twitter.

And so I kind of went about reaching out to folks and kind of hit the ground running from there. I think it's such a great idea because obviously everything on the internet is there forever, but there's also an ephemeral quality, especially of social media. And so much of our collective history is now on social media. And, you know, I think I want to get into this later, but now that there's the prospect of losing Twitter, it seems really important to sort of document some of the big moments that happened

there. And so I'm really glad you did that with Black Twitter. You know, we spend a lot of time on the show criticizing social media and Twitter, especially for all the reasons you might imagine. My first reaction after reading your series was that Black Twitter is the ideal of what social media was supposed to be, both because of the activism it's inspired, which I'll get to in a bit, and because of the sense of community and connection it's provided. Why do you think Black users connected so well with this particular platform? I think it really happened at a time when we were looking for places to connect online.

If you really think about sort of the formative moments of Black Twitter, this is sort of the honeymoon era of the Obama years. He's just elected president. We have Facebook, but it's not quite as popular as it was in its earliest days. We have a lot of kids coming out of college looking for jobs. This is 2008, 2009. This is sort of around the recession, just looking for a place to connect, I think, early on. And I think there was something very easy and organic about Twitter. It was almost like texting in a giant group chat, if you will, kind of. And it's sort of like you're just meeting people online. There was this sort of magic of the new internet almost, right? If you really think back to, and I was, I grew up in the 90s. So I was really drawn to chat rooms back in the day. And this idea of just meeting, meeting people online. And so I think the early days of Twitter, especially with black users that kind of recaptured that in a sense. Yeah, I think there's also the, the real time nature of Twitter, right? That you can like even Facebook, you know, people are commenting on

something, you know, when it happens, but because of the post, it's a little slower. And Twitter really is the news happens, you can instantly talk about something. Yeah, I mean, I think that's important to now it's like, people always have something to say about what somebody said or did. So I think there was this the idea that I can be an active participant in this internet that we're building was kind of really magical to folks. You talked to media studies professor Andre Brock for the series, who said that Twitter lets the black community do the thing that it does best, which is signifying. Can you talk more about signifying and why Twitter is ideal for signifying? I mean, at the core of it, it's kind of like we love to get jokes off. We love to have

conversations and gossip and talk. And just for us, riffing is a kind of currency, right? And so this idea, the way that Twitter is even built, right, is the idea of like retweeting and then the man you will retweet back in the day. It's like we're building on top of each other's jokes. We're building on top of each other's conversations. And so I think it was really appealing in that aspect because it kind of reminds me sort of the communities I was brought up in. It kind of reminds me of being in the kitchen with my mom or my aunts, right? And kind of just talking and gossiping or being around sort of the cookout with friends and family and saying, hey, this is going on. Let's, you know, shoot the shit about this. So I really like fed into that in a way that I think felt very familiar to a lot of black users and has been really powerful.

You also interviewed Koza Babumba, who shared that he'd heard Jack Dorsey say that Twitter exists because of black Twitter. Do you agree? And why do you think Dorsey said that? I mean, I do think a large part of Twitter's appeal is because of what Black users bring to the platform. In a lot of ways, I do see it as a cultural engine of not just the social internet, but the wider internet at large. I'm not exactly sure why Dorsey said that. Do I think he believed it at the moment? Possibly, but he might have been getting pressure from who knows who at the time. But I do think a lot of what our cultural expressions, the way we communicate, this idea of wanting to sort of have fun and joke through sometimes the grief that's sort of persistent and constant online with whether it be sort of have fun and joke through sometimes the grief that's sort of persistent

and constant online with whether it be sort of the Black Lives Matter movement, this idea of how we're coping and escaping and entertaining ourselves is really formative to how we think about social media. I feel like so much of what you're talking about and documented is the idea of people connecting a community with shared experiences shared interests connecting and sort of having your own language jokes reactions and i wonder at some point twitter goes from becoming like a place where you can go and hang out with people you know and comment with people you know to, I mean, it was always a public forum, but then it becomes a very public forum. And suddenly everyone's on it. And that sense of like sort of a shared community, does it get bigger? Does it get lost?

Like, how do you think Black Twitter sort of navigated the shift to Twitter becoming this very large public platform? Yeah, I think you have that shift that's happening around the same time as, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement was taking off around 2013 and 2014. You have this shift in not only Black Twitter transitioning into what I consider its second phase, where it's growing up and becoming more of a social justice platform, but you also have sort of the wider internet now being on Twitter and being more critical of Blackness and Black identity and Black cultural expression in a public space. And a lot of people aren't used to a lot of the ways that we convene, a lot of ways that we sort of joke around each other, the way that we act around each other. And so I think it was interesting for

a lot of non-Black users to see that. It definitely put us under a more critical eye. But again, I think being Black in America, we're always under surveillance. So it's kind of this idea that we're always in public view somewhere, I think. But I think it was more shocking to everybody else than it was to us, for sure. It's interesting. It reminds me of when I was working for Barack Obama as his speechwriter back in the 2008 campaign. And the Reverend Wright incident happened. And we were working on that speech. And he wrote a good deal of that speech and i remember

getting back his edits and one of the things he wrote was that um you know it's often said that church is still the most segregated hour of the week and that what happens in a black church the conversation the criticism the laughing the joy, very, like most white people do not experience it, do not know it goes on, does not see it happen. And therefore, when it sort of spills out into the larger public view, there's, you know, more people are criticizing it because they don't see it and they don't understand the full context. It does, it feels like there's a little bit of that with how Black Twitter shifted from a smaller community to sort of more of a global phenomenon.

And it's tough too. I really don't even know how to situate. That's something I still kind of deal with internally and thinking about what's the best use for Black Twitter in that I think it's great that we're able to be comfortable online, that we're able to be ourselves, that we're able to find community and friends and opportunities and use Black Twitter as a resource tool for learning and education. But at the same time, there's something like kind of feels like we're airing our secrets a little bit, if I'm being honest. Yeah. Like we're airing some of our dirty laundry that isn't for everybody to see. And sometimes, you know, a few of the folks I spoke with for the oral history, they were saying, we kind of wish Black Twitter people, users on Black Twitter did a better job of gatekeeping, that we didn't let

our secrets out and our customs out so easily. So I think there's both, I mean, there's both sides to it. And sometimes I'm not exactly sure where I stand. Yeah. I mean, one of the positive aspects for sure is, you know, you make the persuasive case that black Twitter hasn't just helped define Twitter, but so much of Internet culture and popular culture over the last decade. Why do you think it's become such an influential force? I mean, maybe I'm biased, but I mean, I think blackness is sort of innately innovative, right? It's kind of had no choice but to be when you think about black identity and sort of an American context. It's always had to sort of find different ways to improvise and survive. And so I think that's part of it. I think the regular answer is that it's just becoming a sort of a social force because of the Black Lives Matter movement. If you think of Twitter in a sort of second stage, you have the first stage where it was people coming together. It feels like college. This is, you know, we're meeting new people online. This is this cool sort of micro second stage of Black Twitter around 2014, 2013. And it's starting to grow up a little

bit. And I think the movement for Black Lives definitely brought a lot of attention, media attention, critical attention, sort of global attention to the issues that were important to us in the ways that we aren't just grieving or fighting for justice, but also the ways that we push the culture forward. You also document how so many popular culture moments, memes, things like that originated from Black Twitter. I'm curious how you think about the appropriation of Black culture on the internet, which was mentioned by a lot of the people you interviewed since Black Twitter, again, has been the source of a lot of that appropriation.

Do you see this as a symptom of appropriation of black culture in America at large? Or do you think there's something unique about black Twitter that has made appropriation easier or more common? Oh, man, we need that. We would need a whole other podcast just for this. I mean, it's definitely the former. It's a symptom of the sort of larger cultural ills we have as a society that still doesn't really know how to handle race,

that still doesn't really know how to handle issues and ideas and experiences that are sort of non-white. I think a lot of the times people have a problem with sort of reconciling the racism that they face online with the racism that they get offline. And so I think Black Twitter is a sort of window into the ways that Black folks hurt online, that Black folks come up against criticism. One of my first big features for Wired, I studied or I investigated appropriation on TikTok and the way that Blackness was being sort of perversion happening around the way people were posting TikToks and sort of embodying the sort of cultural expressions and affectations of housewives, of sort of archetypes like the hot Cheeto girl. They were making sort of a mockery of slavery. And so I think it's something we see all the time. And that's something that's just naturally innate to sort of the way America operates. But I don't think it's special to Twitter more so than it is TikTok or Facebook or Instagram.

I think it shows up on platforms differently because platforms operate differently and they're used in different ways. But I think it's just a larger symptom of, you know, a society that still doesn't really know how to engage race. Do you think the fact that the internet provides a digital record of who created something has changed conversations around appropriation, or at least the public's understanding of it? Or, I mean, sometimes I wonder if it happens more frequently online because it's tougher for someone who's just tuning in to trace the origins of, you know, a phrase or a meme that they may see, and they might not know that it actually originated on black Twitter. I mean,

that's partly again, going back to one of your original questions, why I sort of went about doing this oral history with this idea of ownership. We wanted to put ownership back in our hands and saying, Hey, this is our thing. We created this because again,

you're seeing this often on tiktok where people again are taking videos or taking ideas or taking dance moves or challenges or ideas and saying that they're the originators of them when in fact they're not or they're benefiting from them in a skewed way that black folks are not benefiting from right you mentioned the uh the sort of the second phase of black twitter when it's sort of like a maturing phase. Can you talk about the first time that the folks you talked to saw Black Twitter as a galvanizing force for social and political change? 2012, early 2013, when news of Trayvon Martin hit Twitter. And one of the people I spoke with, you know, a young Black mother in New York, she's leaving work driving to go pick up her daughter from daycare, rushing down the highway. And she's listening to the radio and she's saying, you know, who's this Black young mother on the radio saying they shot my boy down in Florida?

What's going on? We need attention around this. Nobody's talking about this. And so she Googles the boy's name. And the first few hits that she gets is from Twitter, specifically from Black users talking about Trayvon Martin on Twitter. And it kind of bubbles from there, this idea that the space can be used as a place for empowerment, for accountability, for shining light to justice in a way that we hadn't had that power before. This idea of doing away with certain media gatekeepers so we ourselves can take that power back in our own voice and saying, hey, there's this kid that's gotten shot. We need to bring some attention around this. And so you start to see this more

and more in this period that unfolds in front of it with Mike Brown in 2014, Eric Garner in 2014. Then you have again, Sandra Bland and sort of the cases and Black Twitter again. I think this is really central to the idea of Black Twitter in the mainstream. This is when it really, I think, entered sort of a pop consciousness in a way that everybody was talking about it, right? It was this thing you couldn't ignore because of the movement that both were so, I think, so closely tied together. Do you think there's anything about the design of Twitter that has helped fuel Black activism that, I think, so closely tied together. Do you think there's anything about the design

of Twitter that has helped fuel Black activism that, you know, so it didn't take off on any other platforms as much as it did on Twitter? Yeah, I think hashtags were super vital to bringing folks together around common ideas and common threads, right? The idea of, you know, hands up, don't shoot, or if they gun me down or say her name. These when we think of the movement today, you know, you think of those hashtags and how formative and how important and, you know, revolutionary they were in the early days of organizing online. Black Twitter has fueled social and political movements. You mentioned sort of a media gatekeepers. To what extent do you think it's also changed the way the media covers both some of these movements and issues of race in general? Yeah, it totally democratizes media, right? And access to media.

This is, I think, one of its most powerful tools for all the shit that Twitter gets. People call it a hellscape. People call it the apocalypse. But I think it really is powerful for communities that traditionally have been left out of conversations that we deem important. And so you saw the real on the ground power of this in Ferguson. You saw the real on ground power of this in Baltimore with Freddie Gray. And you continue to see it around these sort of political movements and saying, hey, this is important to us. So we're going to speak to it. And we're going to, it's the whole idea of like, for us bias,

this whole FUBU aesthetic of the media. It's like, this is our voice. These are our problems. And we can speak truth to justice to them better than you can. And I feel like Black Twitter has had an impact not only on issues of police violence, criminal justice reform, you know, race in general, but that in doing so, it sort of transformed the way the media approaches news and issues in general. Now you have media outlets that regularly write stories about controversies that just happen on Twitter, quote Twitter users in their stories, right? So much of the way the media covers news, politics, culture now comes from, I mean,

it's often said that Twitter becomes like the media's assignment editor. And I sort of wonder if you think that Black Twitter started that. I don't know if it started it, but it's definitely, it's sort of instead of the news source you are now, the news, which is a really interesting thing. I don't know if it started it, but it's definitely been critical to the way news is digested, the way news is shared, the way we sort of think of how we're covering news.

I think Black Twitter has been important for the sole fact that it's made editors and executives say, we can't ignore this problem. We have to talk about it. And now a Freddie Gray is being talked about nationally. Now a Sandra Bland is being talked about nationally, right, in a way that maybe they would have been ignored before. Twitter's obviously a very different place these days. I felt like it started to go downhill well before Elon got his hands on it.

You wrote this history back in 2021. Denver Sean said something to you that stuck with me. He said, everybody is just super sensitive. A lot of us came up with Twitter. We've gotten so comfortable that before it was really intimate, like you could tell a joke. What do you think changed about Twitter to make it feel less intimate and informal for people? As fundamental, as essential, as critical and impactful as the second stage of Twitter was during the sort of social justice push around the Black Lives Matter movement, it also created a different air of sort of like functioning for the platform, I would say. It made things feel more serious and we had to really use

our platforms in a responsible way. And I think because of that, it became a bit more PC. It wasn't sort of like the early days where you had like Twitter after dark and people were just sort of like having fun after 11 p.m. or people were just, you know, getting jokes off during the day between classes. I think now this change is also kind of in line with sort of the larger shift of the internet you see in a lot of social platforms where a lot of it feels very performative. People are just chasing clout or want to go viral. So I think you have people now on the platform for a lot of different reasons than they were on there in the beginning. I found that so interesting because I think the public

perception of Black Twitter almost for a lot of folks starts in 2012 or 2014 with Ferguson and Michael Brown. And so the public perception is that is this serious force for activism and social justice. humor is to black Twitter, just like it is to any community, right? That you get together with people that you know, and there's humor and there's joy. And I do wonder how much sort of we've all lost that a little bit as Twitter has become more performative, as people have like sort of walk on eggshells now, you're worried about saying something that's going to get you in trouble. I wonder what we've sort of lost there. Yeah, it's tough. It's so strange how this juggling of sort of humor and grief that Black Twitter does so well, right? I'll never forget when I was reporting this.

I spoke with Wesley Laurie, who's sort of a correspondent. He writes about social justice. And he was one of the first reporters down on the ground. He was at The Post at the time on the ground in Ferguson in 2014. And he was saying how one of the funniest things that's ever come out of Black Twitter was actually in those early days of mobilizing in Ferguson, where you had at a Darren Wilson rally, you had this Black guy on the phone looking like he was about to call and snitch on somebody. And it's become one of the most popular memes that people use to joke and sort of pass around between group chats. So I think you see this idea of like, from something very serious, we also can find sort of a lightness or a happiness in there.

We can use it in our own way that it's not only a form of survival, but a form of sort of coming together in a way. Which is very much in line, I feel like, with the Black experience in America and history in America, and also just like how human beings react to very serious, sometimes tragic events, right? Like when you're with people you know, you want to try to find some humor, whether it's gallows humor, whether it's some kind of a connection to people in the midst of really horrible, tragic times. I mean, I don't have to tell you, I mean, the world is shit right now some kind of a connection to people in the midst of really horrible, tragic times.

I mean, I don't have to tell you, though. I mean, the world is shit right now, kind of in a lot of ways. And I think it's this is one way that we sort of can come together and just have fun and find joy in each other's company when there's so much danger and so many dangerous things happening outside in the real world. Yeah. So then Elon Musk comes along and is doing his best to just run the platform into the ground with a mix of bad policy decisions and just general chaos. To me, the place feels like a party that most people have left, though I am not leaving

until I'm like kicked out. I'll be there till the end, unfortunately, or fortunately. How do you think the experience has changed on Black Twitter? Or has it? It's really interesting. I really don't think it has. I mean, there are a few high profile names that have left, a few media people. But I know a lot of the people I talk to in a lot of the circles that I navigate in, a lot of people are saying, hey, we're just going to ride this out until it's over.

But this is sort of the nature of the social internet, right? It's like everything we have now is because we've lost so many social platforms before. And so I think now we're just in the middle of this transition phase where we've been on this space for so long and it feels like a family member, but we might lose that family member. Right. But I think it's just sort of like we're in that period where will they, won't they, will they, won't they. But I mean, I'm like you, like I'll be on there to the end for better or for worse. It's really interesting that, you know, we wouldn't have Facebook, we wouldn't have Tumblr, we wouldn't have Instagram without so many things that have come before. Friendster,

things like that, things like Black Planet, things like AOL Messenger. And so I think as much as I think it would hurt for me personally to lose Twitter, I think it will eventually happen at some point. Yeah, I mean, I talk a lot about how it might be a good thing to lose Twitter because I am addicted to it. And there's obviously lots of things about Twitter that I don't like. But I've noticed over the last month or so. And look, it didn't like go away overnight like some people thought it would. But it does feel, the experience feels a little bit degraded. It feels like some people have left.

It feels like it's not the place to turn to. You know, you've seen too many of Elon's tweets, all that bullshit. So it does feel a little worse. And I've found myself kind of sad about that, not just because I'm addicted to Twitter, but I'm like, ah, this is sort of the place you go when news happens and everyone's talking and people are making jokes and it's funny and it's exciting and all that kind of stuff. And it just, it feels a little deader these days. And that's sort of sad. It's the one place on the internet that brings the rest of the internet into it.

Like no other social platform does this. You can see what's happening on Instagram. You can see what trends are trending on TikTok. You can see what people are sharing on Tumblr, what videos are sharing on Snapchat. All of it funnels into twitter at some point on your feed it's somewhere and i think it's really unique in that way that sets it apart you know this is something i deal with too where it's like where would i get my news all my news in one place if twitter was gone tomorrow like where would i like wake up and what like what would i look at i think about that all the time i don't know like i mentioned i'm going to the new york times home page that doesn't seem like a good alternative.

I'd go to the there, the post, the political. I don't know what I'd do. But it wouldn't be as fun. Like you get news with like commentary and like it's not the same. No, I hear you. I mean, you mentioned that we could be in like a transition period. Do you think a similar community could emerge on another platform that currently exists? Because I've, you know, I'm very down on Mastodon.

I think it's very confusing. Post some of these like Twitter potential alternatives. I don't see any taking off, but I don't know what you think. I think it's still kind of too early to tell. I think a lot of the audio platforms have been vying to sort of recreate Twitter in a new way. I've heard some really favorable things about this platform called Somewhere Good, this platform called Spill. But I still think we're, you know, we're still in a very early transition period of like what's going to happen under Elon's rule. I mean, it's, you know, it's tomorrow could

be a totally different thing. And then next week could be a totally different thing again. That's true. So it's tough because I think Twitter came up at a time and really got a hold of the culture at a time that call for this kind of socializing, the type of socializing we'll need for this next phase of the internet. I'm not exactly sure what that looks like yet. You wrote a piece, a follow-up piece to your oral history titled, There is No Replacement for Black Twitter, I think back in November. What do you think we lose if we lose Black Twitter?

I mean, not to be dramatic, but we lose everything. No, I mean, again, we lose this sort of vital organ for news gathering and news sharing. In a way, we lose community. It really does bring the Internet together in a weird way that Instagram is unable to do, that Facebook is unable to do for all that it tries to. I think we lose so much of the things that make the social internet a really special place. This idea that you can just come as you are and be yourself and have some fun. You can either creep on the timeline or you can communicate or you can opt in and decide that you want to share some tweets as well. We would really lose a lot of community that I think has been really helpful to the advancement of not just the social internet, but just communities online. Yeah. Towards the end of the series, you have this great quote from

Brandon Jenkins. If we're dropping a pin in different moments in the world of Black culture, Black Twitter is really fucking high up there. I'm not going to get crazy and say it's Juneteenth, but it's really big. Do you agree? Jinx is amazing. I'm so glad he said that. I do agree. I do think, if you really, really think about it, right, the internet is still in a lot of ways in its infancy.

And so I think it was important for me to have this portrait of Black Twitter and saying, hey, this is just as important of all these other sort of historical things that have happened in our culture. Because it's really been a snapshot of the way we come together online, the way we convene, the way we joke, the way we grieve. And it's shown it in real time in a way that I think a lot of other platforms have tried to do, but haven't been able to pull off. So for me, it's been vitally important in ways that I can't even imagine.

Yeah. Last question. What is your best hope for the docuseries and what's keeping you up at night? Gosh, I mean, if Twitter's still around when it comes out, that I hope people enjoy it and can find sort of some resonance in it. And they really understand the sort of vitalness of a space like Black Twitter. It's been so fundamental in not just the way that we organize, but the way that we find friendship and we find careers and we use it as a resource tool for all sorts of things. And so I hope people can just find resonance in that. And what keeps me up at night? Everything else. That's good to say. Yeah, you're helping create a docu-series. I'm sure everything is keeping you up at night. Well, I can't wait to see it and good luck on helping create it.

Jason Parham, thank you so much for joining Offline. This was great. Thanks for having me. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. It's produced by Austin Fisher. Emma Illick-Frank is our associate producer. Andrew Chadwick is our sound editor.

Kyle Seglin, Charlotte Landis, and Vassilis Fotopoulos sound engineered the show. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Michael Martinez, Ari Schwartz, Amelia Montooth, and Sandy Gerard for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Narmel Konian, who film and share our episodes as videos every week. Thank you.