In 2010, Dr. Marcus Collins was making a name for himself in the Houston music scene with Mathew Knowles’ Music World Entertainment label. During this time, Dr. Collins collaborated with the gospel group Trinity 5:7 and played a key role in networking and marketing for musicians. In particular, when a young PJ Morton was scheduled to perform in Houston, Dr. Collins’ strategic use of Twitter helped forge new relationships and strengthen marketing efforts. This short anecdote really speaks to the impact of Twitter in the Black community.
Bringing people together is just one of the many influences of social media. Beneath the surface, Black users have built an unshakeable community on X (formerly Twitter). To capture the power of Black Twitter, director Prentiss Penny produced Black Twitter: A People’s History, a three-part documentary series now streaming on Hulu. The series was inspired by Jason Parham’s 2021 Wired article, A People’s History of Black Twitter, and details the origins and evolution of Black Twitter. “For years, Black Twitter had an undeniable gravitational pull on the internet,” Collins explains. “The community represented a collective zeitgeist about cultural happenings and social discourse. If you wanted something ‘authentic,’ you went to Black Twitter to find out what people were really thinking.”
Collins, who joined Twitter in 2009, said that in its early days, she was more of a voyeuristic type, but that quickly changed with the emergence of the Black community in the space. “You can see that around 2011, I followed the right person who was my gateway into Black Twitter. I don’t remember who it was, I think it was Van Lathan, but that tweet was really good at capturing the zeitgeist from my perspective that journalists hadn’t been able to capture. Journalists report the facts; [Black] Twitter was letting out secrets. It was fun because whatever was on my mind would appear in my news feed. It gave me an accurate picture of what was going on in my subconscious.”
The documentary features some of our most visible influencers and journalists, including Lathan, Brandon Jinks, Naima Cochran, and Amanda Seales, speaking out about the unintended genius of virtual communities and their impact, and popular movements like #OscarsSoWhite, #NegroSolstice #ThanksgivingClapbacks, and #BlackLivesMatter. But Black Twitter is not an isolated phenomenon; it is deeply rooted and a direct extension of our culture. Think of Black Twitter as seeds that grow into a tree of Black culture, constantly influencing and shaping each other in a cycle.
Though Collins has come a long way from working in the music industry, he found a second lease of life in academia, working as a professor of marketing at the University of Detroit and writing a book called For The Culture, which provides a terminology for what we call “culture” today. “Throughout my career, I’ve always heard, ‘Let’s put our ideas in culture. What’s going on in culture? We’re doing it for culture.’ And I realized I was using the same words, so I stopped and thought about it,” Collins reflects. “There was no really good definition of culture, and if you ask five people to define it, you’ll get five different answers. I think that’s a paradox. We all know the importance and influence of culture. I would argue that there is no external force, no human behavior, that is more influential than culture. But if we can’t define it concretely, if we don’t have a good vocabulary to describe it, how can we make the most of its power? How can we fully operationalize its influence? So I thought we needed a better Rosetta Stone to describe it and use it in our work and in our daily lives.”
Collins details how Black Twitter functions as a cultural melting pot, a place where meanings are negotiated and new trends emerge. “It’s where cultural producers negotiated and constructed meanings, collectively deciding what was trending and what wasn’t. The results of this social enterprise reverberate throughout the internet and end up being reproduced at dinner tables, in bars, and in group text threads,” Collins says. Collins also points out that what Black people have done on Twitter and in meme culture has created deep subtext and meaning in what we say. This is evident in the enduring popularity of memes featuring icons like Nene Leakes and references to HBO’s The Wire, which demonstrate the versatility of our expressive power.
“It’s an expression, an expression, and this is what makes memes powerful, because memes are containers of cultural meaning and cultural information. This comes from what Richard Dawkins said about genes. He said genes are containers of biological inflammation in the body. And genes replicate in our bodies to make a kind of coordinated effort. The same is true for memes. He called them mêmes, which means ‘the same’ in French. And memes are containers of communication, full of cultural meaning. So if I show you a meme, you already know what I’m saying, without me saying the words. It’s like a metatext. “If I send you this, please know that I don’t want any conflict,” and it [a photo of] “J. Cole”
The documentary series highlights how Black Twitter’s influence extends beyond its own community, shaping broader cultural practices. “Even if you weren’t part of Black Twitter, you were likely influenced by it, as Black Twitter productions were later adopted into broader cultural practices and became our language and mannerisms,” Collins adds, saying that aspects of our identity, such as our clothing choices, mannerisms, and language, become concrete expressions of our deeply held beliefs and cultural affiliations. He points out that marginalized and underrepresented communities like Black Twitter often drive innovations out of necessity: “Black Twitter cultural producers energized the internet with language, memes, behaviors, and hot takes that moved from subculture to popular culture.”
At its core, Black Twitter is an amalgam of disparate elements that have collectively shaped its own identity. Born from shared experiences and ideas, this online community has celebrated triumphs and mourned tragedies, many of which have played out in real time on social media platforms. In the face of adversity, humor has always been a linchpin of our resilience, serving as a coping mechanism and a reflection of our cultural psyche. “This is what we do. And when you think about some of the most profound cultural producers in Black culture, a lot of them have been comedians,” Collins explains. “At least in my lifetime, it’s all come from comedy, whether it’s Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy or Martin Lawrence. I think comedians have been so important to us making sense of the world around us. Twitter became a place to make jokes.”
Through every cultural moment, movement, and holiday, Black Twitter has remained united. Whether sharing laughs, offering support, or organizing for change, Black Twitter embodies a vibrant, living community. When it started, many people didn’t know what to do on Twitter, but as Black people entered the space and made it their own, non-Black people couldn’t find Black Twitter in the App Store. Yet its presence and influence are undeniable. The platform may have evolved (now as X), but the essence of Black Twitter remains the same.
This sentiment sums up the organic and fluid nature of culture. Decisions and trends emerge among us collectively, and often unconsciously. Even without explicit expression, our cultural codes provide implicit understandings, driving Twitter’s rise as the influential cultural force that it is today. Collins says, “That’s how culture works. There’s no note or director telling us what to do. We collectively, unconsciously, socially tune in and decide what to do. Sometimes it’s implicit, in where we were taught, and sometimes it’s explicit, in how we speak.”
Stream Black Twitter: A People’s History now on Hulu.
