Hulu’s Black Twitter documentary is a vital cultural chronicle

[Pelican Press 0]

Hulu’s ******

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documentary is a vital cultural chronicle

They say “

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isn’t real life,” but ******

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proved otherwise. For years, that phrase has been a way to ignore the real-world impact of social media conversations, especially when they spark radically new ideas. But that’s clearly not true when you look at ******

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, an unofficial community made up of the site’s ****** users, which inspired culturally significant movements with hashtags like

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and

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Hulu’s new documentary, “****** Lives Matter: A People’s History,” adapted from

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, explores the rise and global influence of the community. Over the course of three engaging and often hilarious episodes, the series cements itself as an essential cultural document.

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“The way I would define ******

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is a space where ****** culture specifically was hanging out in a digital way,” said Prentice Penny, the series director and former show-runner of HBO’s Insecure, in an interview on the Engadget Podcast. “And even though it was a public space — clearly, it’s

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, anybody can get on it — it still felt like you were having conversations with your friends that are like on the back of the bus. Or like on the stoop, or in the lunchroom. I mean, that’s the energy of it.”

In particular, Penny says that

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felt special because there was no real hierarchy, especially in the early days. That meant that even celebrities weren’t immune to being mocked, or acting out on their own social media profiles (like

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).

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in its heyday felt like a place where money or class didn’t really matter.

“This was kind of an equalization of a lot of things, that somebody in Kentucky who nobody knows could have the same strong opinion as someone who you revere, right?” Penny said. “And I think that’s what made the space so fresh, because we don’t really have spaces that are kind of a level playing ground in this country.”

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also felt genuinely different from the other social networks in the late 2000s. At the time,

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was mostly focused on connecting you with schoolmates and family members — it wasn’t really a place for simply hanging out and joking around. Prentice notes that the forced brevity on

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also made it unique, since you had to really focus on what you were trying to say in 140 characters.

“Each of the creators [in the series] had a different idea of what

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should be,” Penny added. “Some thought it should be a town square, some people thought it should be a news information thing… I think like with ****** culture, the one thing we do really well is, because we’re often given the scraps of things, we have to repurpose something, like taking the worst of the pig and making soul food… I think we are really good at taking things that could kind of be different things and make it be pliable for us.”

The documentary recounts the many ways ******

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leveraged the platform, both for fun and for kicking off serious social movements. The community helped make live-tweeting TV shows a common occurrence, and it’s one reason Scandal became a hit TV show. But ****** users also helped raise the profile around Trayvon Martin’s ******** by George Zimmerman. His eventual acquittal led to the creation of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, a movement which sparked national protests in 2020 following the ******** of George Floyd and other ****** Americans.

If you’ve been online and following the ******

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community for years, the Hulu documentary may not seem particularly revelatory. But there’s value in charting the impact of cultural movements, especially given how quickly social media and the tech world moves.

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news, gear, entertainment
#Hulus #****** #

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#documentary #vital #cultural #chronicle

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