Where is Black Twitter? In the back of Twitter like the back of the bus

I first signed up for Twitter in 2006. I used it rarely as a means of contacting other bloggers. I left it alone for a while because all I shared was what I read in newspapers and my blog post. I didn’t like it at the time because in order to do such, I had to copy and paste, and that was time consuming. At first I followed other bloggers, but as the social outlet evolved, I began to follow less people and more news sources, publications and outlets. I really got involved when the tweet meme became prevalent and more common, allowing me to share what I read, as I did initially without actually going on twitter just by clicking on a little green button.

Twitter is a valuable tool and fits into the premonitions proffered by Gil Scott Heron when he orated that “You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip, /Skip out for beer during commercials, /because the revolution will not be televised.” For if there is to be another revolution, we have already seen the impact social media like twitter can play. In Egypt for example findings from the newly released second edition of the Arab Social Media Report by the Dubai School of Government provided empirical data that Twitter as well as facebook “abetted if not enabled the historic region-wide uprisings of early 2011.” Not to forget that use of social networking sites assisted in helping activist organize and bring attention to efforts that eventually led to the destruction of decades of autocratic rule in Egypt and Tunisia and publicity to public malcontent pertaining to the regimes in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain.

However, in other places, especially in my own back yard, twitter and social media is more of a toy that for a large corpus of users, especially my folk (African Americans) tend to misuse and/or ignore the maximum utility of Twitter; instead settling for mundane and vile uses that in most respects promulgate traditional stereotypical images of African Americans.

A study conducted by researchers at Northwestern University surveyed 505 college freshman in 2009 and 2010 revealed that 37.2 percent of black students used Twitter compared to 20.1 percent of their white counterparts did. Other research suggests that African Americans reportedly make up 25 percent of Twitter users and are responsible for a sizable proportion of its trending topics. By definition, trending topics are defined by Twitter as “new or newsworthy topics that are occupying the most people's attention on Twitter at any one time." This is accomplished by adding a hashtag (#) to a tweet to create the general them. Unfortunately, most of the trends one sees on Twitter are not news worthy at all. Some that I have seen include #itaintrape, #inaghettohouse , #HowYouAThug , #fatpeoplepasswords,#UNotFromTheHoodIf and as we speak, #What2ChainzWouldSay. If you cannot find these, you are probably in the wrong part of twitter, you have to go to a place that many refer to as “black twitter.”

I have wondered about this place. I could not find it anywhere in cyber space as if it had been sucked up by a black hole and turned into a white dwarf. But then I realized if it was anywhere, it would be in the back of twitter like the back of the bus, since most of the behavior is reminiscent of how Negroes behaved prior to the civil rights movement. One common proponent of the world of #blacktwitter is a visible preference for hogwash and prattle mainly manifested in the tendency to evince higher rates of interest in celebrity and entertainment news or overt violence directed toward others as a result of overzealous or sudorific twitter post and interaction.

For example, in black twitter (and this is a true story), it is not uncommon for people to have what they call #twitterbeefs. For lack of a better way to say it, a twitter beef is really mad cow disease in the form of 140 characters or less. Although I have names, I will not provide them but I can say it involved one woman placing a picture of another woman on twitter of her attempting to perform Fellatio on some nameless male. After words were exchanged across the distal temporality of cyberspace, this past week the other woman saw the young girl. She left the pickup game of basketball and beat the other child helpless – all while her associates watched and videoed the encounter and you guessed it – posted it on twitter. According to #blacktwitter the young woman is with child.

Now I did not ask to be in black twitter, but with the incessant retweets ( RT) that cloud the field, when one checks you are bound to see something that you did not sign up for. Most of what I follow now is news papers still, from central Asia, Central Europe, and African mostly, in concert with almost every political think tank around the globe. You may think I am over reacting and I know that many will have a problem with what I write because some folks do not want to hear the truth because it makes them examine their own delusions. Even if it involves #blacktwitter, a place where beef is as deadly as eating contaminated cow meat. A place similar to the twilight zone where folks will seemingly sale their souls for 140 characters post just to get a retweet and followers. Never is there any interest in community and collective empowerment or sharing information and/or knowledge for the betterment of all. No this is not what happens in #blacktwitter, just the opposite, what Dr. Martian Luther King, Jr. would describe as “a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

As the Insane Reports: Break Yourself.....Fool

Yesterday, I was informed that some internet churl was “going in on me” on his/her internet radio show for an essay I penned noting the habits (contingencies of reinforcement) of African Americans, in particular individuals under the age of thirty regarding their usage of social media – specifically Twitter. In this person eyes, I was a “dumbass” and an “idiot.” So as a result, I will put down the copy of Fear and trembling I am reading and respond to his vitriol as quick as I can so I can be finished before Watson star’s on jeopardy.

Too bad this animalcule (to use a term coined by Voltaire in his story Micro magas) lacked the home training and erectior ingenii (nobility of mind) to invite me on his show to engage in discussion to advance rumination on the subject. But such was not the case, bringing me to conclude that what I noted in my essay unnerved him for it may have been akin to him reading about himself. Otherwise discussion would have proceeded as was the case historically with many diversified voices of past African American scholars when they reasonably disagreed with one another.

Obviously this person is no scholar as evinced in both his defensive posture and vehement vilification of me personally. The fact of the matter is that twitter is an extension of many of our daily activities. Truth is black folk watch Television more than the read and many of us do not even read a newspaper daily. Likewise we spend equally as much time as we do watching television as we do on twitter. I do not see what is wrong about bringing this up. If these observations are not consistent, otherwise we would not place education and intellectualism below fame, status, entertainment, wealth and/or celebrity. We are already a dumber-down populous or else we would recall that reading in itself is a revolutionary act. We take this for granted currently when in one epoch we were killed, blinded or had out tongues removed for learning to read or teach others this skill.

It was rather bazaar, some of the comments the article received. One woman said that “he forgot Haiti.” Which proves my point that is like saying we have a black valedictorian, yet 65 % of all the other black students in the class failed the 12th grade. Why is so difficult for people to see how many of us use the medium? I firmly believe that we are wasting a valuable opportunity when we tweet about where one is eating, pictures at the club, or of the shoes we just bought. If we do not maximize its utility – that’s a problem. Just like when only 12% of African American fourth grade boys are proficient in reading; or that only 20% of black boys and girls report having a average in school compared to 55% of whites – that’s a problem.

It’s cool to say that African Americans represent 12 percent of the US population yet comprise 52 percent of the federal prisons but not when you say we make up 25 percent of social media users. I understand MLK Jr and he was correct when he said “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” This makes Harriet Tubman’s words even more sagacious. She said “I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”

It only makes sense for many of us live as mental slaves, continue to enslave ourselves with materialism daily and worse, don’t even know that we are slaves. The unfortunately reality is that as a people, we are not as academically oriented in raising our children as white and Asian communities, or else we would read as much to our kids in the 5th grade as other ethnic groups. Unfortunately we do not. We do read the same to our kids, daily while aged four through six, but less than 30 percent daily by the time they are in the 5th grade compared to 70 percent for whites and Asians. Yes it is true, we are more concerned with what Veblen articulates and described as “conspicuous consumption.”

I find this discussion essential and important. In particular as a single parent of two, my son of which received an academic scholarship to Morehouse, a 30 on his ACT, a perfect score on math and all-state honorable mention in Baseball. And my daughter, who can give correct change, add and subtract and read at the age of five.

But then again what do I know for in the purview of Mr. /Ms. insanityreport self-fulfilling prophecy and in their own words, I am an “idiot and a “dumbass.” for presenting a personal scheme. And we all should know as Daniel Bell pointed out, “conceptual schemes are neither true nor false but [rather] useful or not.

Twack Head

A long time ago I got a clandestine copy of a book out of print called the HAND BOOK OF CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE. The Book had been out of print some while since I saw it and in fact was outlawed. The copy I have is a photocopied version and it details all of the secret experiments of the military and intelligence branches of the government. One section I recant vividly were the experiments on mind control.

Based on this history it would not surprise me that the former had some part in creating the most recent mind altering drug – twitter. Yes I would like to assert that twitter may be a military creation for the purpose of serf mind control. Yes I would like to advance that twitter is addictive and that its users, not all but most, exhibit the same behaviors as substance abusers.

There are several occurrences that I have noticed, not including the manner in which hash mark trends are established. The first is that there seems to be a strange phenomenon of folks following folks they don’t know, namely celebrities and musicians. Unlike most, I follow all folk on twitter instead of the folks i follow and chk my at replies every now and then. You can find some great links and info that way. However, I personally don’t follow them, nor folk that don’t evince the home training of speaking when spoken too. In fact I have a 72 hour grace period before I delete folks I speak to who don’t speak back. This means that there is also a large number of so-called groupies on twitter – men and women who follow and speak to these people as if they actually have contact. Chances are if women, and scantly dressed, they will have a better chance of getting a response from a well known celebrity than a male.

I originally got on to meet fellow bloggers and to micro-blog my post. Now I seem to speak to folk and make my self laugh by making others laugh. I have met bloggers but I have met only one fellow scientist and just a few lawyers, none of which are African American males. Seems that the males I meet are all want to be rappers, producers and Dj’s. As if that is all we can or desire to be. Now its nothing wrong with that, however incessant twits about the beats they make and how much money they have can be annoying. I mean I could listen to 97.5 for mind numbing nonsense. Now its cool to promote shows and other events, for I try to push my writings and books every time I get. But I admit I am a lame and not addicted. I have just as much fun changing my avatar as tweeting and don’t have twitter on my blackberry as most do. Nor do I use a twitter platform to be a more effective tweet and don’t even go online when I’m home.

I have even noticed that folks say twitter is dull, or boring or lame at times in the same manner they would say some weed was bunk or wack. But they continue to tweet as they would smoke that blunt of wack weed. Just like the way mindless birds in a flock communicate by tweets - which this application is named after off. So my fellow tweeps, I say take control for if you aint know, twitter the new crack cause more folk on twitter than smoking them rocks. Besides you don’t want to be known as a twack head.