Black Twitter is officially being immortalized in the form of a docuseries. Tentatively titled, Black Twitter and inspired by Jason Parham’s detailed oral history, A People’s History of Black Twitter, comes the story of “the rise, the movements, the voices and the memes that made Black Twitter an influential and dominant force in nearly every aspect of American political and cultural life,” Deadline reports.
Helmed by Insecure‘s showrunner and executive producer Prentice Penny, the three-part documentary will premiere on Hulu and marks Penny’s first project under his overall deal with Onyx Collective. Onyx is behind projects like Gabourey Sidibe’s 1266 pilot and the Oscar and Grammy-winning film, Summer of Soul.
“For those who know me you know how much love, respect, fear, and admiration I have for #BlackTwitter so I can’t be more excited and scared to a doc about the culture – just remember im doing this in love,” Penny, 49, tweeted.
In Parham’s iconic breakdown of Black Twitter, he explained, “It was the [Sept. 6, 2009] at exactly 4:25 pm, when [Ashley] Weatherspoon logged on to Twitter and wrote, ‘#uknowurblackwhen u cancel plans when its raining.’ The hashtag spread like wildfire. Within two hours, 1.2 percent of all Twitter correspondence revolved around Weatherspoon’s hashtag, as Black users riffed on everything from car rims to tall tees. It was the viral hit she was after—and confirmation of a rich fabric being threaded together across the platform. Here, in all its melanated glory, was Black Twitter.”
He continued, “More than a decade later, Black Twitter has become the most dynamic subset not only of Twitter but of the wider social internet. Capable of creating, shaping, and remixing popular culture at light speed, it remains the incubator of nearly every meme (Crying Jordan, This you?), hashtag (#IfTheyGunnedMeDown, #OscarsSoWhite, #YouOKSis), and social justice cause (Me Too, Black Lives Matter) worth knowing about. It is both news and analysis, call and response, judge and jury—a comedy showcase, therapy session, and family cookout all in one. Black Twitter is a multiverse, simultaneously an archive and an all-seeing lens into the future. As Weatherspoon puts it: ‘Our experience is universal. Our experience is big. Our experience is relevant.'”