Speaker 0:
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? Tell
Speaker 1:
me not to meet your Mac, but we lose everything. I'm John Favreau. Welcome to offline.
Speaker 0:
My guest today is Jason Parham, senior writer at Wired. 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 docu series. 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. Here's Jason Park. Jason Parr, and welcome to offline.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for having me, John.
Speaker 0:
So a few years ago, you wrote the definitive oral history of Black Twitter for Wired Magazine. So definitive that a a docu series 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?
Speaker 1:
Yeah. So it's 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, you know, 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 collections of communities coming together in one space and kinda just having it out. This is really and really 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 seeing it or calling it black Twitter. It was something the media called it. I think an an article appeared in slate or the all. I wanna say around two thousand eight, two thousand nine, 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 who were just calling it Twitter. But, eventually, I think over time, this became known as Black Twitter.
Speaker 0:
And the folks who use who are on Black Twitter all the time, sort of embrace that name after a while.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. I mean, I I think it it it has this sort of unifying aspect to it and they eventually gathered around it once they realized the power in it.
Speaker 0:
What what made you wanna chronicle this history? And and why specifically did you wanna do an oral history?
Speaker 1:
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, make fun of on Fox News. We have our histories and our stories being erased online. And then schoolbooks and textbooks. So it's 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. You know, I studied African American studies in grad school, and one of the things that she learns is the way that African American history is so fiercely under attack all the time. And so for me as a reporter, you know, I see and 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 the space online that was developing And the best way to go about that, as much as I would love to do a sort of first person feature that I've sort of known to do it wired. It was important that this story be told through the plurality of voices that are on the space. So I was like who can I talk to for this and just one about reaching out to thirty, forty, fifty people and it sort of turned into what it is? 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 kinda one about reaching out to folks and kinda hit the ground running from there.
Speaker 0:
I think it's such a great idea because, you know, we we talked about this in the show a lot. There's like this Obviously, everything on the Internet is is there forever, but there's also an ephemeral quality, especially if social media. And so much of our collective history is now on social media. And you know, I think I wanna 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 with black Twitter. You know, we spent 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 idea 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?
Speaker 1:
I think it really happened at a time when we were looking for places to connect online. Right? So this is if you're really thinking 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 it's 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 two thousand thousand and nine. 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 -- Yeah. -- and 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 in the nineties, so I was really drawn to chat rooms back in the day, miss ideas, and I'm just meeting meeting people online. So I think the early days of Twitter, especially with the black users that kinda captured that innocence.
Speaker 0:
Yeah. I think there's also the the real time nature of Twitter. Right? That you can like, even Facebook 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.
Speaker 1:
I mean, I think that's important too now. It's like people always have something to say about what somebody said or did. So I think there was this that idea that I can be an active participant in this Internet that we're building was kind of really mashed goal of those.
Speaker 0:
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 and why Twitter is ideal for signifying?
Speaker 1:
This idea that mean, the core of it is kind of like we love to get jokes off. We love to come 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 an aspect because it kind of reminds least sort of the communities I was brought up and kinda reminds me of being in the kitchen with my mom and my aunts. Right? And kinda just talking and gossip being or being around sort of the cookout with friends and family and saying, hey, this is going on. Let's, you know, shoot this shit about this. So 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.
Speaker 0:
You also interviewed Kaza, a Bumba, to who shared that he'd heard Jack Dorsey say that Twitter exists. Because of black Twitter. Do you agree? And and why do you think Dorsey said that?
Speaker 1:
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 culture engine of not just the social Internet, but the wider Internet at large. I mean, I don't know. 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. Mhmm. But I do think a lot of what our, you know, cultural expressions the way we communicate this idea of, you know, 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 the Black Lives Matter movement, this idea of how we're coping in scaping and entertaining ourselves is really formative to how we think about social media. I
Speaker 0:
feel like so much of what you're talking about and documented is the idea of people connecting a community with shared experiences, shared interest 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.
Speaker 1:
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 twenty thirteen and twenty fourteen. You have this shift in not only black Twitter transitioning into what I consider second phase where it's growing up and becoming more of a social justice platform. Mhmm. 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 the people aren't used to a lot of the ways that we convene in 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 it's kind of this idea that we're always in public view somewhere, I think. But it was I think it was more shocking to everybody else than it was to us for sure. It's
Speaker 0:
interesting. It reminds me of when I was working for Barack Obama as his speech writer, back in the two thousand eight 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 is that it's in one of the things he wrote was that 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 is very very like most white people do not experience that do not know what 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 it feels like there's a little bit of that with with how black Twitter shifted from a smaller community to sort of a more of a global phenomenon.
Speaker 1:
And it's tough too. I really don't even know how to situate. That's something I still kinda 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 tutors as a resource for learning and education. But at the same time, there's something that's like it kinda feels like we're airing our secrets a little bit,
Speaker 0:
if
Speaker 1:
I'm being honest. Yeah. Like we're airing some of our dirty laundry that isn't for everybody to see. And sometimes I, you know, a few of the folks I spoke with for the oral history they were saying, we kinda 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 there's both I mean, there's both sides to it. And sometimes I'm not exactly sure where I stand.
Speaker 0:
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?
Speaker 1:
I mean, maybe I'm biased, but I mean, I 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. And so I always have 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 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 with people online. This is this cool sort of micromethaging platform, then you get to the sort of the second stage of Black Twitter around twenty fourteen, twenty thirteen. 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 and the ways that we aren't just grieving or fighting for justice, but also the ways that we push culture forward.
Speaker 0:
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Speaker 1:
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 eels we have as a society. That still doesn't really know how to handle race. That still doesn't really know how to handle, you know, issues and ideas and experiences that are sort of non white I I think a lot of the times people have a 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 heard online that Black folks basically, you know, come up against criticism. One of my first big features for Wyatt I studied I investigated appropriation on TikTok and the way that blackness, you know, we were the blackness was being sort of mutated and, I mean, there was this sort of perversion happening around the way people were posting TikToks and sort of inviting, sort cultural expressions and expectations of housewives of sort of archetypes like the Hot Cheeto Girl. They were making sort of 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, society that still doesn't really know how to engage race. Do
Speaker 0:
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's it happens more frequently online because it's tougher for someone who's just tuning in to trace the origins of of something that they, you know, phrase or mean that they may see, and they might not know that it actually originated on Black Panther. I
Speaker 1:
mean, that's partly, again, going back to one of your original questions, why I sort of went about doing this oral history, 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 they're 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.
Speaker 0:
Right? You mentioned the the sort of the second phase of Black Twitter when it's sort of like a maturing phase. Can you can you talk about the first time that the folks you talked to saw Black Twitter as galvanizing force for social and political change? Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Sure. So this was two thousand twelve early two thousand thirteen when, you know, news of Treyvon Martin hit Twitter. And, you know, one of the people I spoke with God, it's Revere, you know, it's a young black mother in New York, She's leaving work driving to go pick up her daughter from day care rushing down the highway, and she's listening to the radio and she's you know, who's this black young mother on the radio thing? They 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 Siobhan 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 showing, you know, you know, shining light to justice in a way that we hadn't had that power before. This idea of doing away certain media gatekeepers, so weak, ourselves can take that power back on 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, you know, unfolds in front of it with my Brown in twenty fourteen, Eric Gardner in twenty fourteen. 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 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 sold, I think, so closely tied together.
Speaker 0:
Do you think there's anything about the design of Twitter that has helped fuel black ad 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
Speaker 1:
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, 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 organizing online.
Speaker 0:
Black Twitter is 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.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. It totally democratizes media. Right? It 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, you know, apocalypse, you know. 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 gonna speak to it, and we're gonna 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
Speaker 0:
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 it's all in doing so, it's 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? Like so much of the way the media covers news politics culture now comes from I mean, it's it's often said that, you know, Twitter becomes, like, the new the the media's assignment editor. And I sort of wonder if you think that the black Twitter started that?
Speaker 1:
I haven't started it, but it's definitely it's been sort of instead of the new source you are now, the news, which is a really interesting thing. Yeah. I don't know if it started it, but it's definitely been critical to the way news is digest to 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, Freddie Gray is being talked about nationally. Now, Sandra Bland is being talked about nationally, right, in a in a way that maybe they wouldn't have been ignored before.
Speaker 0:
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Speaker 1:
Is this again, is this is is fundamental as essential as critical and impactful as the second stage of Twitter was during the sort of social justice push around the backlash matter movement. It also created a different era 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 became it it wasn't sort like, the early days where you had, like, Twitter after dark and people were just sort of, like, having fun after eleven PM 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 cloud or wanna go viral. So I think you have people now on the platform a lot of different reasons than they were on there in the beginning.
Speaker 0:
I found that so interesting because I think the public perception of Black Twitter almost for a lot of folks starts in twenty twelve or twenty fourteen with Ferguson and Michael Brown. And so the pope perception is that is this serious force for activism and social justice, but reading the seer reading your series it struck me as how important humor is to to black Twitter just like it is to any community. Right? That like you you get together with people that you know and there's 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 egg shells now. You're you're worried about saying is gonna get you in trouble. I wonder what we've sort of lost there.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. It's tough. It's so strange how this this juggling of sort of humor and grief that black Twitter does so well. Right? One of the some day, I'll never forget. I was when I was reporting this, I spoke with Wesley Larry who's still the correspondent Now let me read 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 twenty fourteen. 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 social of 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, like, the most popular means that people used to joke and sort of pass around between group chat. So I think you see this idea of, like, from something very serious, we also can and 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 LA,
Speaker 0:
which is very much in line I feel like with with the black experience in America and 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 wanna 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
Speaker 1:
mean, the 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.
Speaker 0:
Yeah. So then Elon Musk comes along and is is doing his best to just run the platform into the ground with a mix of bad policy decisions and just just general chaos. To me, the the place feels like a a party that most people have left. Though I I am not leaving until I'm, like, kicked out. I'll be there till the end. Unfortunately, fortunately, or fortunately. How how do you think the experience has changed on Black Twitter? Or has it?
Speaker 1:
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 talked to and a lot of the circles that I navigate in. A lot of people are saying, hey, we're just gonna ride this out until it's over. But this is sort of the nature of the social Internet. Right? It's like -- Yeah. -- 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 till the end for better or for worse. It's really interesting that, you know, we we wouldn't have Facebook, we wouldn't have Tumblr, we wouldn't have Instagram without so many things that have come before, friends, stir, things like that, things like Black Planet, things like AOL messenger. And so I think as as much as I think it would hurt for me personally too, lose Twitter, I think it will eventually happen at some point.
Speaker 0:
Yeah. I mean, look, I 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 I've noticed over the last month or so. And look, it didn't, like, go away overnight like some people thought it would or has it, you know, 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're seeing too many VELON's tweets all that bullshit. So it does feel it does feel a little worse, and I've found myself kinda sad about that, not just because I'm addicted to Twitter, but I'm like, 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 stuff, and it just it feels a little debtor these days, and that's that's sort of sad.
Speaker 1:
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 the what people are sharing on Tumblr, what people videos are sharing on Snapchat. All of it funnels into Twitter at some point on your feet. 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. It's like where would I get my news? All my news in one place of Twitter was going tomorrow? Like, where would I have, like, wake up and what, like, what would I look at? I think
Speaker 0:
about that all the time. I don't know. Like I mentioned, I'm going to the New York Times homepage. That doesn't seem like a good a good alternative. Let's I thought I'd go to the mayor, the post, the political. I don't know what I do. But it
Speaker 1:
wouldn't be as fun. Like
Speaker 0:
It wouldn't be as fun as,
Speaker 1:
like, commentary and, like, Yeah. It's it's not the same yet.
Speaker 0:
No. I hear you. I mean, you 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 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
Speaker 1:
think it's still kinda 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 some really favorable things about this platform called somewhere good, this platform called spill. Mhmm. But I still think we're, you know, we're still in the very early transition period of, like, what's gonna 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 right. 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 that looks like yet.
Speaker 0:
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?
Speaker 1:
I mean, not to beat your Mac, but we lose everything. No. I mean, again, we lose this sort of vital organ for new sort for our so news gathering and news sharing. We lose 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 of, you know, all 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, you know, creep on the timeline or you can communicate or you can, you know, opt in and decide that you want to share some tweets as well. So I think 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.
Speaker 0:
Yeah. Towards the end of the series, you have this great quote from Brandon Jenkins. If we're drop 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 gonna get crazy and say it's G's team, but it's really big. Do you agree?
Speaker 1:
Jinx is amazing. I'm so glad he said that. I do 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 it's really been a snapshot of the way we come together online, the way we convene, the way we joke, the way we crave, And it's shown it in real time in a way that I think a lot of their 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.
Speaker 0:
Yeah. Last question, what is your best hope for the docu series and and what's keeping you up at night.
Speaker 1:
My best hope gosh. I mean, that if Twitter's still around when it comes out, then I hope people enjoy it and can find sort of some resonance in it. And they really understand the sort of vidleness 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, you know, find careers and we use it as a resource tool for all sorts of things. And so hope people can just find resonance in that. And what keeps me up at night? Everything else.
Speaker 0:
That's what I was saying. Yeah. You helped me create a docu series. I'm sure everything. Can you have it? Well, I I can't wait to to see it and and and good luck on on helping create it. Jason Parham, thank you so much for for joining offline. This great.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for having
Speaker 0:
me.