I find that people constantly undertheorize joy and the everyday because *gestures broadly* life is often shitty in multiple dimensions.

A thread 1/n

Twitter has an influence far beyond its metrics, for multiple constituencies. My focus is Black Twitter, so I’ll talk about that briefly.

In short, people take the joy of Black Twitter for granted and assume that it can be easily replicated elsewhere 2/n

Friend, i have been on damn near every social network (and a lot of bulletin board communities) since the late 1900s and this here…this shit right here? This shit right here, n-word?? This shit is qualitatively different from any Black online sociality then or since 3/n

I won’t go thru the whole history, but I’ll hit the high points. BlackPlanet (BP) was an early indicator of Black creativity and mundanity, but its design meant that only 30-40 people at a time could discuss things 4/n

OkayPlayer (OKP) and Lipstick Alley (+ Tumblr and LiveJournal) were also constrained by their mode of communication - there wasn’t capacity for near-real time conversation or invention (although tumblr came close for sheer creativity) 4/n

If Instagram was all that, y’all wouldn’t be here on Twitter

5/n

Twitter offers the capacity to speak to/be spoken to by Black collectives AND Black individuals at the same time WHILE also participating in other public spheres. None of those other spaces were public or OPEN in that way. 6/n

This capacity for openness unfortunately affords toxicity, racism, misogyny, and abuse - especially for WOC/queer/differently abled folk. BUT 7/N

These same spaces also afford women the space to link, grow, and nurture one another.

My canonical example is Feminista Jones #YouOKSis + Ms. CaShawn’s #BlackGirlMagic where Black women’s agency and alterity are made manifest in digital spaces. That’s super important 8/n

Long story short: twitter has NEVER been a space designed for Black folk - there rarely has been any public or private SPACE in the US so why should this space be different?

9/n

We MADE Twitter a space for our care and self-repair (even as we brought our raggedy cousins nem along for the ride). I’m not leaving because some South African cracka borrowed money to run it.

They gon hafta EVICT my ass. What y’all gon do?

FIN