Noah Depelteau

February 5, 2024

DART 449

Santo Romano

Thank you, Black X

I was aware of Black Twitter’s role as a site for political activation all throughout the 2010’s.

While not having actively engaged with it (I wasn’t even on the platform; all I would see was

that which filtered down to Instagram), I understood its importance to organizing activism,

teaching antiracism, and exposing acts of racism, systematic or otherwise. “Thank You, Black

Twitter”, however, outlined the various discrete purposes the community serves, and tied those

purposes to highly visible examples – for instance, I had always seen #SayHerName, but never

understood how important that hashtag was to “contesting the erasure” of women and trans

people in the Black community (Hill 2018). I was left wondering, however, if Black Twitter was

still effectively playing these roles now that the company has gone through so much change.

What happens to Black Twitter when Twitter becomes X?

I found an article from Wired entitled “Black Twitter Remains Unbothered in Elon Musk's X”,

which, at face value, seemed to answer my question. It follows that Black Twitter would ‘remain

unbothered’ – black people have long had to make space for community and communication,

even and especially when it was not given. Elon Musk’s takeover is no different. Interestingly,

however, changes in regulations, laying-off of moderators, and a general shift towards a laissez-

faire attitude at Twitter have brought back a more causal, mundane side of Black Twitter, as this

article describes. Ferguson mobilized the community intensely, and that left less space on the
platform for more everyday expressions of black life. Importantly, however, this hasn’t made

Black Twitter sedate: “There are certain events that would have been big on Twitter of Old or

Twitter of New” (Parham, 2024).

I’m grateful to see that despite everything that’s happened with X/Twitter, Black Twitter

has carried forward its instilled post-Ferguson purpose but has also found a renewed interest in

casual connection.
Bibliography

Hill, Marc Lamont. “‘Thank You, Black Twitter’: State Violence, Digital Counterpublics, and

Pedagogies of Resistance.” Urban Education 53, no. 2 (January 3, 2018): 286–302.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085917747124.

Parham, Jason. “Black Twitter Remains Unbothered in Elon Musk’s X.” Wired, January 29,

2024. https://www.wired.com/story/black-twitter-post-elon-musk-x/.