‘Woke up Black AF’: Black Threads is an official community!
TheGrio...
After three years of using the tag to post about the Black community on Threads, the “Black Threads” subgroup has officially emerged.
“Black Threads” is no longer just a passing topic that also covers the color, comedy style, and culture.
On Tuesday, Sept. 1, with a special black heart emoji and everything, the platform unveiled “Black Threads,” an official subcommunity where users can now post about things directly pertaining to the Black community.
“Me walking into Black Threads, excited to be with fellow Black people in Black Threads!” one excited user on the platform wrote using the newly coined Black Threads community tag.
“Now that Threads is officially recognizing BLACK Threads, it only feels right to celebrate accordingly,” one user began in a post that included a clip of a thunderous Black marching band.
“So in honor of OUR community getting its flowers, I’m dropping a Black marching band on the timeline,” the user continued. “Because if Black folks are gathering, somebody better bring the band.”
“Me immediately joining Black Threads community bc I won’t be left out the revolution,” another added with a meme of Durand Bernarr running through an audience.
Since Meta first launched Threads in July 2023 as a platform focused on microblogging in subtopics like Reddit rather than just one big town hall feel like Twitter, it has led to the emergence of a wide array of sub-communities. Users have created ones dedicated to various reality TV franchises, interests, lifestyles, sports, industries, and, since yesterday, “Black Threads.”
Yes, Black users’ relentless use of the tag may be the very thing that’s led to it finally becoming official. According to Meta, communities, in a sense, create themselves once they gain enough popularity.
“On Threads, Communities grow organically from popular topic tags. As people add a topic tag to their posts and profile, activity naturally increases. Once engagement reaches critical mass, the topic becomes eligible to become an official community, subject to additional review,” a breakdown by Meta explains.
Before the tag, Black users made do by tagging their posts with “Black Threads” or “Black People” and the like in the hopes that they would find their audience. From there, many different trends, memes, and new styles of posting have emerged, including ironic “dear algo” posts, addressing your followers as “Throusins,” and so forth. However, while many of the biggest Black hot topics on Threads would dominate the tag, it frequently returned other results.
Now that we have it, users have not wasted any time putting it to use. There have been grand “welcomes,” declarations that it’s where you’ll find them for the foreseeable future, roll calls, sound-offs, and lots and lots of excitement.
“Hi family,” Amber Riley posted.
“Black Threads is officially a community TUHDAY and they even gave us a BLACK heart when we like posts in here. Oh they knew exactly what they were doing. The cookout officially has an address on Threads,” another user wrote.
“Woke up Black AF again. And will for the rest of my life. What an honor 🙏🏾,” another added.
But by Wednesday morning, however, several had also taken it upon themselves to inform the masses about how we should conduct ourselves, especially since “monitoring spirits” could be lurking anywhere.
Some of the concern is legitimate, particularly around exposing even more of Black culture to the masses and risking it being stolen from us and parroted back to us, or the fact that there isn’t really a way to regulate who is posting under the tag in the first place.
“Welcome to Black Threads. Be careful what you say, what surveys you answer, and how much of the culture you share for free,” Nicole Walters began in a post under the new tag. “They’ve monetized our entire existence since day one. Quiet on the creek y’all.”
“Remember: with a concentrated BlackThreads community comes a concentrated data capture that you know Meta is using for their own gains. Be mindful,” one user wrote under the tag
“They launched Black Threads so they can easily continue their study of the culture and train those bots…..know that and move accordingly,” another added.
Then again, given how the official designation came to be virtually on its own, the Black Threads community was practically inevitable. Black users were already gathering under the tag, finding one another, and creating a culture around it.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t proceed with caution, investigate things further, or question what an official Black Threads community could mean. Black culture has certainly been mined, repackaged, and sold back to us enough times to know better than to rush to applaud simply because somebody finally gave us our own section. At the same time, we shouldn’t let what others may or may not do keep us from being and existing together. Besides, look how colorful and lit we always make a function, virtually or otherwise. Why fully deny ourselves?
Just maybe don’t get so excited about the function that you start handing out invitations to anybody. There’s already been petitions for major figures like Ms. Rachel, for instance.
Among the warnings, rules, and regulations being touted, including not discussing Blueface under the tag, one user did not mince words: “I better not see NOT ONE “cookout invite” after this!”