If I’m not at work, doing homework, or talking to my best friend, I can usually be found on Tumblr. This is a well-known fact. Tumblr is my main source of entertainment. I was recently scrolling down my dashboard and saw a mass of Powerpuff memes. With the return of the Powerpuff Girls on Cartoon Network, a website was created were you could turn yourself into a Powerpuff Girl. All of the memes I saw originated from Twitter and were created by #BlackTwitter. Black Twitter is the large network of black twitters users and their loosely coordinated interactions. Black Twitter is also a force to be reckoned with. It has created many trending topics including: #AskRachel, #ThanksgivingWithBlackFamilies, #Ferguson, #IfIWasGunnedDown, and many other famous tags. Black Twitter can be considered an active audience. Black Twitter is known for its involvement in creating and popularizing hash tags on twitter. For a hashtag to get popular and trend on twitter, there has to be a large enough amount of posts relating that include the tag or speaking about the tag. Some tags gain fame because they bring up important issues. The Ferguson tag was filled with news about the riots that went on after Mike Brown’s murder. People were live tweeting everything that was going down and posting pictures and videos that showed what the news did not. Some of the other hashtags popularized by Black Twitter require certain knowledge for someone to actively participate in the hashtag. For example, the hashtag GrowingUpBlack required a certain understanding of African American vernacular and culture. Nonblack people looking on were often confused because they didn’t share the same experiences or understand the terminology being used.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/04/the-truth-about-black-twitter/390120/
http://heyyymandii.tumblr.com/post/141997331649/trendingcurrentevents-50