15 Priceless Black Twitter Moments Worth Remembering

Black humor: undefeated and can never be replicated.

PublishedOctober 1, 2022

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Where do you get your memes from? Your jokes? Your “slang?” Black Twitter is the answer. For decades now Black folks have been carrying the app with daily thoughts, jokes and personal essays. However, there are some legendary moments in Twitter history where Black users have set off a new trend with their storytelling and reactions to what’s buzzing.

This list is only a glimpse of the greatness we’ve witnessed.

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Zola

I was in a sophomore in high school when I came across the longest, insane yet entertaining and well-written Twitter thread. You wanna talk about records? This was the longest thread ever and transcended the trend of storytelling on Twitter. Here’s the skinny: a Black stripper goes on a strip trip with a white stripper and almost gets sucked into being pimped out. Trust me, the read is worth your 15 minutes. According to Rolling Stone, she’s been living her best life since her story went viral. Oh! And they made a movie about it.

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Negro Solstice

The weather is getting cold y’all. No, don’t start singing Silent Night by The Temptations. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about December 21, 2020 when Black people got their superpowers.

@lottidot tweeted in 2020: “as Black people, genetically we are stronger and smarter than everyone else, we are more creative, on December 21 our Real DNA will be unlocked and majority will be able to do things that thought were fiction. Learn who u are as people, they wanna make us average.”

Black Twitter had a ball with this right here.

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Biblical Memes

Because Black folks literally can’t take anything seriously, anything unfortunately includes the Bible. Our humor knows no bounds. Plus, a lot of Black people came from similar religious upbringings. Our churches, sermons and forms of worship are pretty alike. So, naturally we made a thread matching memes to Bible stories and “tweeting like someone from the Bible.” The original post has since been deleted. God forgive us, but this was worth the laugh.

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#OscarsSoWhite

It’s not as surprising as it is disappointing that for two years no Black actors landed a nomination in all 20 acting categories. However the infamous hashtag went viral on Black Twitter after April Reign took to the app to say, “they asked to touch my hair.” Not only is it near a federal offense to ask a Black woman if you can touch her hair. But this hashtag brought everybody to a group discussion about the amazing Black talents who were robbed of recognition. Recently, it buzzed again after “the slap” and Will Smith’s barring from the award show.

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Thanksgiving Tweets

This trend arguably stems from Facebook as family members are known to post pictures of what they cooked for Thanksgiving and what they are eating from that food. However, Black Twitter is ruthless to those who post plates in confidence with food that looks like it’s made of clay. Also, there’s some jokes to be made about the token cousins, aunties and uncles who arrive and make the holiday likened to a Tyler Perry film. People also share their reactions to holiday-related things such as the meme above (sorry Rick). See y’all in another month.

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#AskRachel

Well, isn’t this convenient now that her nudes have been blasted all over Twitter? Anyways, this hashtag was trending not for her SavagexFenty photos but the debate over her racial identity. In the form of a classic multiple choice quiz, people submitted questions to the #AskRachel hashtag about everything from music to movies to shared Black household experiences. I’m sure Miss Thang couldn’t answer any of them.

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“Sorry to this man...”

Two words. Keke. Palmer. I’m sure she didn’t expect this simple interview clip to go viral the way it did. She was asked to identify Dick Cheney on a lie detector test with Vanity Fair. After that, Black Twitter matched the barely 10-second clip to an endless amount of scenarios. Now, it’s become a regularly spoken phrase when referring to anything or anyone you don’t know from a can of paint.

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Rihanna’s Reign

The Rihanna you know now, mother, beauty business extraordinaire, retired-ish music star, used to be an absolute menace during her Twitter days. Nothing was more entertaining than Rihanna clapping back at people who came for her. Though this era is over, it shall always be remembered.

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Halle Bailey’s Ariel

We knew it was coming as soon as Disney announced Halle Bailey as the new Ariel in the live action Little Mermaid film. The racism, the slurs, the outrage form the whites about a Black fictional princess. Black Twitter responded to the trolls with humor suggesting we Blackify all the other white-led films too and sharing videos of Black little girls admiring Bailey grace the screen in the trailer.

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The Queen’s Death

Did I say we can’t take anything seriously? As the British were crying in the streets, mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Black Twitter was acting a whole fool once they got the news. From the attacks on Meghan Markle to the Irish throwing raves of celebrations, Black Twitter was throwing memes left and right in response to the news.

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Speaking of the UK...21 Savage?!

The biggest plot twist in the Black community was finding out that rapper 21 Savage is actually from the United Kingdom. How did we find that out? When he got arrested by ICE. We didn’t even have time to digest the information being thrown at us but Black Twitter wasted no time sharing their initial reactions.

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The Elephant That Pulled Up to the Funeral

What did that lady do to make that elephant so mad? Black Twitter had a lot to say the day we found out that not only did an elephant trample a lady to death, but decided to pop up for the funeral too. Black Twitter was ready with the memes for a few days, but some backlash to making this tragic event a meme quickly ended the jokes.

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WWIII

You know Black Twitter doesn’t take too many things seriously, so when tensions started to rise between Russia and the United States under Trump’s presidency, Black Twitter users replaced worry with humor. Many Black people started thinking that we would be the first to get drafted and in rolled the memes.

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Trump’s Twitter Suspension Day

Boohoo! Trump got suspended from Twitter and while MAGA stans cried, we laughed harder than ever before. Trump’s harmful rhetoric was impacting the Black people across the country, emboldening racists to harass Black Twitter users. So when their leader got shut down, we rejoiced.

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The N*gger Navy

When Trump expressed the need for a bigger U.S. Navy in 2017, Yahoo Finance let their fingers slip in a post and wrote he wanted a N*gger Navy, and boy did Black Twitter go up in flames. Instead of the outrage for the typo, we thought of all the things Black people would say and do with an all-Black Navy. What a day to be on Twitter.

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