R.I.P., Twitter

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Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.

Elon Musk says X, the app formerly known as Twitter, might fail. I’m not surprised. Musk has run the company as badly as anyone has ever run any institution. But I am saddened.

Years ago, the app that was then called Twitter was a major part of American life. Tweets regularly ended up on the news. It was one of Trump’s main ways of communicating when he was president. It was a way for me to publicly fight with Trump before he was president. It was a way for people to damage their careers like that woman who wrote, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” A massive backlash arose while she was on a flight with no internet service. The Twitter masses laughed because they knew that when the plane landed she would realize her life had changed. That same sentence on another app would have offended people, but it would not have gotten the massive and immediate reaction that it got on Twitter. It was an app that connected us into one national conversation that was filled with anger.

Five to 10 years ago, I loved Twitter. It was a great rush being able to talk with so many people about so many things at once. And Black Twitter, which I’ve written about before, was legendary. I remember coming home one night and finding nothing I wanted to watch on TV. I opened Twitter and saw lots of people talking about the Soul Train Awards. So I turned it on and it was like I was watching it while my living room was filled with Black people, and we were having a party together. Whenever I watched the Oscars or the NBA Finals or anything where lots of Black people were watching, I always had Twitter open because Black Twitter enhanced the whole experience. I could really feel the community talking as one.

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I remember that night when BET did a tribute to Michael Jackson after he passed. Everyone was out in the Twitter streets. That night, I saw one of the coldest tweets I ever saw. Someone wrote, “I wish BET died and Michael Jackson was doing a tribute to them.” I died laughing. That same night, people started asking who was the next “King of Pop”? I remember Questlove, dream hampton and I were in our own Twitter conversation saying that answer was Beyoncé. That night, it was controversial to say that, but 20 years later, it’s still the right answer. But to see a communal conversation about whether or not Beyoncé had stepped onto M.J.’s throne was really interesting. Also, every couple of years, I’d jump on Twitter and say, “If you eat in a restaurant you must tip 20%, period.” That would inevitably create three days of arguing — many Black people are not down with tipping properly.

I loved Black Twitter and the way it brought us together into a space where it was easy for large numbers of Black people to trade ideas and jokes and opinions. I do recall that there was a class division on there. Black Folks With Blue Checks were somehow in a different class than Black Folks Without Blue Checks and sometimes Withouts let us know that they didn’t trust us Withs. The Withouts sometimes looked down on us Withs as if we weren’t really Black. It was another community divide like middle-class negroes vs. hood peeps. Or light-skinneded people vs. everyone else. Things could get rough in Black Twitter. It wasn’t always rainbows and barbeque. But I loved it.

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Alas, all that is now gone. Musk’s many changes have chased me away. I used to tweet 30 to 40 times a day, easy. No more. It feels like a club that no longer wants my business.

There’s a vibe over on Black TikTok. I get a lot of the old Black Twitter feelings over there but beyond that, there isn’t a space that’s like Black Twitter yet. Spill wants to be that, and they could get there, but right now, it’s very small. Instagram is cool but I find IG is like parallel play. That’s what we say when little kids are playing beside each other but not with each other. On IG we’re presenting our lives, but we’re not really engaging with each other the way we did on Twitter. I miss having a space where a giant swath of Black America can talk back and forth with each other.

I miss Twitter, a rock star among the social media apps, which changed the way we communicated in this country. The Ferguson Uprising and Black Lives Matter would not have happened the way they did without tweets from DeRay Mckesson and Brittany Packnett and others. It’s sad that Twitter has died largely because Musk is empowered by his success at making money while also trapped under the spell of the modern political right, which sees straight white men as the truly victimized class that needs to be saved. A wealthy man who can do whatever he wants and doesn’t listen to anyone else and believes white people are the real oppressed class that needs to be saved. Where have we heard that before? Those sorts of people — think Trump, the Kochs, Musk — are slowly killing American democracy the same way Musk killed Twitter.

Touré is a host and Creative Director at theGrio. He is the host of the docuseries podcast “Being Black: The ’80s” and the animated show Star Stories with Toure which you can find at TheGrio.com/starstories. He is also the host of the podcast “Toure Show” and the podcast docuseries “Who Was Prince?” He is the author of eight books including the Prince biography Nothing Compares 2 U and the ebook The Ivy League Counterfeiter.

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