Covering revolutionary hashtags from #MeetMeInTemecula to #BlackLivesMatter, a new docuseries on the rise and impact of Black Twitter is set to begin streaming on Hulu May 9.
Based on the series of WIRED articles by Jason Parham, Black Twitter: A People’s History traces how the social media platform was shaped by Black folks and how they used it to spark legitimate change.
The documentary, directed by Prentice Penny (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Insecure), features insights from a variety of communication experts, Black Twitter employees, and originators of hashtags that instigated actual movements—including #OscarsSoWhite and #UKnowUrBlackWhen. Talking heads include J Wortham, W. Kamau Bell, Roxane Gay, Ira Madison III, April Reign, Rembert Browne, and more.
Penny’s project looks at how the platform given to Black voices shifted global attention, particularly igniting online outrage over the murders of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. On Twitter, no one could look away or ignore their voices. But as Black people were heard, this led to increasing backlash from the alt-right and white supremacists.
Black Twitter ties the increasing power among Black voices to the counteractive rise of Donald Trump—befit with reaction memes from 2016. This connection becomes all the more prescient as November’s election approaches and we’re seeing Trump’s potential return to the presidency.
While the documentary acknowledges Black Twitter’s impact on serious issues, it also dissects the humor and culture that have shaped the internet as we know it today. From Squat Bae to Crying Jordan, these memes altered the way everyone communicates online via the use of visual language like GIFs and reaction memes.
At the documentary’s premiere at the South By Southwest Film & Television Festival yesterday, Penny noted the intentional balance between humor and gravity.
“The same way that Black Twitter uses GIFs and memes to punctuate things, we felt the need to do that too, right?” he said at a Q&A following a screening of the series’ first two episodes. “We need to make things feel fast and quick, the way you process information, right? So for us, it was like, ‘How do you take the feeling of our Twitter and put that in a documentary?'”
Penny also noted the importance of documenting the existence of Black Twitter amid growing movements to halt discussions on race. At least nine states have passed legislation to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools since 2021, denying students the tools to understand the country’s history of race. Additionally, Texas banned Diversity and Inclusion initiatives in universities starting in 2024.
“We’re making this documentary as you’re sitting in a country of certain states trying to ban books or burn books, or rewrite narratives about what slavery was or wasn’t,” Penny said. “So, Jason [Parham] had this very prophetic vision of, ‘Let us document this now because it could all go away.’ And we’re literally watching it all go away.”
“And the irony of that, to me, is that so much of Black culture is told through oral tradition, right? So we don’t have a lot of physical records of us being here, and then the fact that Black Twitter could go away when we actually have a digital record of it, but it could just become oral history is bizarre to me.”
As Twitter has changed in recent years due to its purchase by Elon Musk, many have been left wondering where the future of the platform, now called X, lies. Penny hints at the film’s exploration of how X has altered Black Twitter—but we’ll have to watch the third part to find out.
