The House Is Burning
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Ladies, hello. Hi. I switched it up. Ladies, hello. I'm Sam Sanders. I'm Zach Stafford. And I'm Saeed Jones. And you, my loves, are listening to Vibe Check. Vibe Check.

Okay, so this week we are going to talk about Twitter's demise. It's a sinking ship, but it's going down kind of slow. Very slow. And we will have a very slow, very confusing... It's like a house party on the sinking ship. Like everyone's like partying. The band is indeed playing on. Yeah.

And the band is playing an insult song about the owner of the ship. I didn't think I'd have time to go to the bar for a drink, but indeed. We do. So we're going to talk about all of that, what it feels like, what are people thinking about doing next, all of that. And then also, with that in mind, we want to have a well-deserved home-going celebration for Black Twitter.

And we're going to talk about Twitter has given us many things, but Black Twitter has given us far, far more. Just a note to listeners, this episode was recorded on Tuesday, November 8th, before election results. So whatever is about to happen, whatever's happening, we didn't know.

But before we get into all of that, of course, we got to do our own vibe check. Ladies, how are we feeling? Sam, let's start with you. How you doing, baby? I'm in a weird place. It's election week and the weather's crazy here in L.A. And so on top of having to deal with like a lot of rain in ways that annoy me, I also keep seeing all these random L.A. celebrities coming in.

kind of voting for the wrong candidate. Like Katy Perry took a selfie at the polling site, as did Gwyneth. It's wild. And so it's just this moment of confusion because like these celebrities aren't dumb. They know they're going to get dragged for it. And yet and still, like,

And I'm just like, why is the weather wet? Why is Katy Perry in my face at all? It's just weird for me right now. It's still raining. I agree. I've been really gagged because honestly, rich people voting for a pseudo-Republican never surprises me, even if they're Katy Perry. Never, ever. Especially Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt posting about it was like, girl, we knew. The gall of that man. I'm re-watching Avengers Endgame right now, so I'm mad at him. Star-Lord all over again. But

But where I find it just really funny and really, I guess, just like, I don't even know, like I don't respect it, is Gwyneth Paltrow's post when she posted for Rick Caruso and turned off the comments. I'm like, girl, say it with your whole chest. Yeah, come on. This is not the time to be gooped and gagged, Gwyneth.

From the team that told us to put eggs up our yoni, now you can't take comments? I thought she was gold. I thought she was gold, right? I thought you were after talking that good good, girl. What's up? Come on, come on. But that's where I'm just like, what is going on with all these celebrities? They seem like paid endorsements. Because nothing ever, when I'm at the voting polls today, I don't want to take a selfie in that machine. I don't care. It's not even a cute picture. But they all do it, and then they don't engage. They're not having a conversation. And like,

A big part of democracy is dialogue. So that's my issue with these celebrities. They're not even wanting to talk about the recession. And also, when they say why they're voting for Caruso, Gwyneth Paltrow talking about, we must clean up our streets. Right. Your streets? Yeah. You're a Calabasas. It's like, yeah, we know you live in the hills or wherever in some gated... Whatever issues with crime and houselessness are going on in LA, I highly doubt they're like...

you know, Gwyneth isn't taking the trash to the curb. You know what I mean? Exactly. Katy Perry, I think, lives down the street from Adele. Girl, what? Come on. Come on. It's wild. So yeah, wild times here in SoCal. And I would say that LA election cycles are the ones where you do see celebrity culture or celebrity life really intersect hard because we all are suddenly like, oh, all you girls live here full time and vote here. Uh-huh. Saeed, how you doing? Well,

it's interesting to be living in Ohio. Very different. I mean, you know, it's very much a battleground state. I always feel, you know, as someone who, you know, as a black queer person who grew up in Texas and then, you know, went to college in Kentucky, which is to say my vote has always felt a bit like a moot point. Yeah.

When I moved to Newark and then New York, it was kind of like – so living here, it's so different. You're very aware of the stakes, particularly with the Senate race and everything. So I just felt – I'm hoping for the best.

bracing for reality. It's just kind of the vibe I feel. But I wanted to, and obviously we're going to be talking about Twitter this morning. And one of the things that's special about Twitter, of course, is threads. A really good Twitter thread has a whole thing. And so I just wanted to share something I saw from Solomon Missouri. He's one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter. He's a

Pastor, I believe he's in North Carolina and it just really spoke to this. I think this precariousness that I think we all feel in our chest this week, no matter how the votes turn out, it's like, will the Republican candidates even accept the results, for example, if they lose? But he said, and this is just an excerpt from his thread.

And I'll leave it here. He says,

And I was like, see, thank you, Solomon Missouri. I needed that because you're right. It's like it does like the sky is falling. The sky is falling. So much is going on. So much can and probably will go wrong. But it's like if you know your purpose, if you believe in your work, that's not going to change. And so that's that's my vibe. That's what I'm holding on to. I love that so much. That's helping me kind of find myself in this week, too, because I similar to you, I'm feeling different.

A little weird, a little out of it. It's an election week. And I have found myself really living inside of nostalgia a lot. And I'll talk about that later, why, what I've been doing with that. But I think it's to your point that I have lived through skies falling. I have survived. I have learned. I have grown. So I'm feeling prepared because I'm here through all of this. And that's where you find your grounding this week. It's like, okay, it may feel chaotic, but I'm here in this body that has been through things before and has learned things. And we're going to be okay. Something

Somehow.

earlier in the pandemic, you know, holding on to each other for dear life. And look what came of it. You know, poison can turn into medicine. So maybe out of this precariousness, we can develop stronger friendships and bonds with people in our communities.

So before we get into today's episode, we do want to thank you all, my loves. Shout out to everyone I saw this weekend in Portland at the Portland Book Festival. Thanks for coming out. We love you. Thank you for the fan mails, the tweets, the DMs. It's really fun when y'all are like, okay, I'm watching, you know, Reboot because Sam recommended it. It's really fun. And you can keep all of that feedback coming at vibecheckatstitcher.com. But for now, ladies, it's time to jump in. Shall we do it? Let's go, girls. Let's do it.

All right. To kick things off, Wither Twitter. Zach Saeed, we are all watching this. Wither, wather, I don't know. Wuthering Heights of Twitter.

We're all watching Twitter this week, last week. It seems to be melting down in real time since Elon Musk took over at the company. More than half the staff has been laid off, causing a string of lawsuits. No one knows what's going to happen next. There's been talk of a monthly fee to be verified on Twitter. And there are still some big questions about what's going to happen with content moderation and advertising, which constitutes the majority of Twitter's revenue.

But in the midst of all this flux, you cannot get a clear message out of Twitter on any of this because the message from Twitter kind of changes with every Elon Musk tweet. In the midst of this truly hellish chaos, a lot of folks are saying, well, it's time to go. Let's leave Twitter. Let's go to Mastodon or who knows where else.

And I want to talk about what it might take for the three of us to leave Twitter, but I also want to ask kind of a why question. Why are people so dead set on building a new Twitter somewhere else? Why do we need to go somewhere else? Why don't we just maybe take a break and reset and leave social media alone for a while? So one of my favorite authors and Twitter personalities, Brandon Taylor, tweeted about this recently, and it got me thinking. He wrote, quote,

I don't know if we should be trying to replace Twitter. This phase of social media has been socially, spiritually, and physically disfiguring in ways that will take generations to undo. So let's start there, seeing how toxic Twitter has been

In a world of self-care, what should we do and where should we go next? What are you thinking? I don't know where we go next because I'm very much of the mind of not going anywhere. Maybe going home, maybe sitting with friends. Going outside. Going outside. Touching grass. Yeah. I just think that we've spent the past few years

living our lives via Twitter, especially as the pandemic hit, raged on. We all had to go back to our homes. And these online communities became even more fierce for us. We were Zooming with our family. We were living all online. And I do think we now have a moment as the pandemic continues, COVID rates still continue, people still die from COVID, but we're in a different part of it where people can be with each other in safer ways than before.

And I think like this idea that we need to immediately rush to another Twitter called Mastodon or whatever this is called. Sam, you'll have to explain this to me because I refuse to log on. My mother keeps texting me about it. I tried to do it and I was like, look at this fucking organic chemistry of social media. I saw someone mention servers and I was like, uh-oh. No, I'm like, it's like NFTs. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay. It's complicated. But I just like, I'm in a place of grief with Twitter. Twitter was such a huge part of my life for so many years.

It really did create a rocket ship for my career in many ways that I'm sure we'll get into. And I talked just the other day, I ran into Michael Arsenault, a writer I've loved for a long time, I've worked with for a long time. And he wrote the book, I Can't Date Jesus and I Don't Want to Die Broke. And he used to be a big Twitter personality and never tweets now because he's writing television.

And we were just reflecting on, there was an era of all of our lives where like some of the most exciting writers were tweeting every day on Twitter. That's what made it exciting. That's why I followed Sayid Jones and people were creating content that I wanted to interact with and share and engage in dialogue with. And over the past year, it's just all kind of gone away for me. So Elon taking it, I'm kind of like, I don't even want it anymore. I'm good. Goodbye. Yeah. Sayid, how are you feeling? Staying or going? Oh,

I guess I'm staying in the sense that, one, everything's happening very quickly. I mean, one, you're right. Part of the problem is it's like if you're trying to get a sense of the ground, the ground won't settle because it's like every five minutes there's another tremor because of the way Elon is live-talking.

tweeting executive leadership, which is just not how it should go. And so we were like, I can't tell, are you brainstorming or are these literal commandments in terms of how this platform is going to be run? And what I want is an opportunity to catch my breath and think. There is a poem and poetry collection by Camille Dunkey called "What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison."

And I think about that idea very often when we're at a time of transition, you kind of need to think like, what should I be taking in? What is maybe sustenance and what's like accoutrement, like what's the cocktail? And then what's the poison? What have I been ingesting that I need to reject? And I don't know. I joined Twitter in July 2008. It was the summer before I started graduate school for creative writing.

And in the time since then, when I look back, the value of Twitter for me, what I need to figure out is Twitter as a poet, it's really important to understand how you can exist in a broader ecosystem. How can you connect with people and help create a

opportunities for people who might not be looking for poems and poetry to see like, oh no, this is an occasion where we can vibe, you know? And Twitter really helped me understand how to like function in this broader context. And I don't know how easy it will be to replicate that, but I

I'm not gonna ignore all the toxicity either, and all the problems. So I feel like I'm just, I'm not trying to like be complacent, but I'm also not trying to rush into the next burning building. Yeah, I am looking at this moment with Twitter possibly taking a turn for the worst.

For me, it's like a social media move. I might be moving to a different social media house. And moving is hectic and stressful and often chaotic. But one of the great things about moving, and we know this, is that that's a moment in which you can choose what you keep and what you let go. Yes. And you can say this stuff goes to the new apartment and this stuff does not.

And so that's what I'm thinking right now as I figure out what's next for me, whether I stay on Twitter or go somewhere else or do both things. What do I want to keep of this experience? And what am I saying? No more of that. And I think a lot of what I feel like I want to let go is...

This constant production of anxiety for anxiety's sake on Twitter. That has to go because I'm tired. What you just lit up in me is when I moved to Columbus, I had an aha moment after living in New York for a decade because everything you're describing, it's funny, we're thinking of like housing structures, architecture, neighborhoods, but it's true. I realized when I got here to Columbus where with housing, there are a lot more options.

I suddenly got to look like, what kind of lighting do you want in your apartment? How many windows? What floor? There were so many. And I was just trying to rush, rush, rush. And my aunt was like, slow down. And she was like, you've lived in New York for a decade where you're just kind of like, here, take it. I've got my paperwork. Here's the cashier's check. You're begging people to let you live. And I feel like

That's kind of what we're seeing play out on social media. People are just – it's like a scarcity mindset. And instead of thinking kind of big picture about – let's raise the bar of our expectation. Like, okay, get it. We want to be in a place that isn't overrun with Nazis. Well, what do we want beyond that?

Exactly. Exactly. And what do we want our day-to-day to be? Like, I remember the first time people tweeted, oh, this is the worst year ever was like 2016. And then every year after that, everyone was like, this is the worst year ever. And then every few weeks on Twitter, someone's like, this is the worst news week of all time. Or every few days, someone's like, there's never been a day this insane. And it's like,

We're creating the insanity. We're creating the toxicity and we're creating this urgency with which to be anxious about everything. I don't want the next iteration of my social media life.

to have that at all. And if Twitter burning down takes me away from that anxious energy, that will be a benefit. Yeah. And what I'm hearing personally, when you talk about anxious energy or this cyclical nature every week of the house is burning, the house is burning. I think a lot about years ago, I was doing a lot of work within journalism and public health around HIV and why it's so hard to get certain people to

to consider wearing condoms, taking PrEP, even if they have access to it. And this doctor, I knew, his name is Travis Gales, but he's a very prominent Black queer doctor. And he said to me, with Black men, if they don't live in a world that says you should be alive next week, next year, next month, whatever, it's hard for you to do that self-care in the moment to keep yourself protected for that future self. It's hard to take care of your future self. And you get so used to the reactionary nature of life, of just jumping from one pleasure to the next pleasure because you don't think you're going to be here.

And I think Twitter's gotten to the place where we as users just don't think we're going to be here next year. Like I'm like over here spiraling about nuclear war, which we've been doing for decades and decades. And I think like what I want to let go of Twitter and I want all of us to think about is that some immense structural changes have begun in the activism that has really become

on Twitter predates Twitter and it will live past Twitter. So all these things we're afraid of losing, you know, organizing, action, you know, spotlighting racism in different communities can still keep going if you are considering doing that work still or still want to do that work. So don't let Twitter define or limit you and also know that your life is bigger than what this tweet is or the femorality of it all.

And there's a certain myopic view about what we lose if we lose Twitter. I think a lot of Twitter heads think that like if we lose Twitter, does Black Lives Matter go away? Does amplifying trans issues go away? It's like, no. The biggest way to reach people to organize on those fronts is still Facebook. It's got more people. It's got more people. And if you're on the ground organizing, you can do it there.

And so I would also urge people to understand that Twitter is not the entirety of the social internet. There are other spaces. I do want to acknowledge an example that had occurred to me the other day. When I joined Twitter initially in graduate school, I was really just trying to find Black people.

You know, I was living in a new city. I didn't know. And actually one of those people ended up being Darnell Moore, who I literally just encountered because this is probably 2009. I just got on the Twitter and I entered Newark. And at the time, I think he had Newark in his Twitter handle. And I was like, how wonderful that one of the first people I meet is a Black gay writer that, you know, I'm so happy to know well over a decade later. But thinking about something like accessibility, the disability movement, long COVID, the

The thing is, some of the communities, to use this as an example, are newly formed. Imagine that you're experiencing long COVID and you're learning a lot about the disability rights movement, accessibility, like you're catching up. And Twitter has been your touchstone. Maybe you're stuck at home. You know what I mean? Like maybe you're not able to go out and access community in other ways. I want to acknowledge that for some people when they're talking about Twitter, like that it may not be so easy. You know, like to me, like Saeed Jones feels, I'm like, okay, I

Honestly, because Twitter for all we know, it can also just break down. Elon's so incompetent. I wouldn't be surprised if we all log in and it's just overrun with bugs and you can't use it. For me, I'm like, that would be a nice pause for me to reflect. Maybe I get more reading done. But for people who are like, look, the people that I've been able to find to understand my gender journey, dealing with long COVID, accessibility, and something that's new to me in the last few months,

It's really scary to think just like all of a sudden I wake up one morning and I'm disconnected from them. You know, that's scary. I hear that. But also, though, on the other hand, I do think and I want to ask you both your thoughts on this before we close this segment.

I think for the journalism industry and profession, seeing Twitter breakdown is a good thing because you know what Twitter did to journalists? It made us lazy. We could just find any source we wanted to on twitter.com. And I remember there were a few years where the standard of turning a breaking news story was to tweet out what source you wanted.

and then find some person on Twitter, and that was your source. And you weren't on the ground, and you weren't beat reporting, you were just sourcing by tweet. Then there was a moment where you would write entire stories of just other people's tweets. That, I think, has been corrosive and not at all good for the industry writ large. I love that you're bringing that

Because also it's not just journalists, this is and I'm looking at you producers, editors. What I noticed over the course and this really started happening around 2014, 2015. A lot of editors, executive editors that I believe frankly are scared to talk to black people for example. That their conversation, their interactions with black people are limited to the Uber drivers.

But know that, okay, well, it's under my purview because whatever beat me or my reporter's cover. Yeah, started kind of using Twitter, if not to like pull up the specific tweets, but to feel like they had a sense of what's going on by literally kind of spying on Black Twitter conversations. Rather than doing the long-term private hard work of just engaging people on the ground. You're absolutely right. I would have journalists hit me up.

Because I tweeted something random about some world event and they'd be like, you want to come to an interview on the whatever? And I was like, I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm just tweeting. But that was the easy way for them to like fill a story out. And, you know, that was something that we as producers, journalists, editors were doing, which was incredibly lazy and incredibly like presumptuous because you tweeted something. You are the expert that there's not a one to one in that.

But also so many creators I know, we tweet out things that as an editor, I'd be like, no, that should be a reporter piece. That should be something longer. We should take more time with that. You should get paid for that. You should get paid for that. You deserve money. You deserve care to take care of this. So that's where I'm coming at this with Twitter where I think we should grieve it. It's a little bit complicated for me. I love Twitter. I joined Twitter because of Real Housewives of Atlanta because I wanted to tweet with NeNe Leakes and Kim Zolciak in 2009. Yeah.

And then it became this way in which I learned the media business. I wouldn't say I became a better reporter because Twitter. I learned how to navigate the media world because of Twitter. But I do think we need to really invest in ourselves and invest in stories bigger than just a tweet right now. We do. Yeah. I do want to talk more about Black Twitter and how the blackness of it all complicates everything in this conversation. We're going to talk more about Black Twitter and what we love and will miss about it after the break. But I also want to talk in that segment about...

how it's even harder to leave if you are Black on Twitter, because Black Twitter was so good to us. So good to us. Special baby. More on Black Twitter after the break. You are listening to Vibe Check. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

This message is brought to you by McDonald's. Did you know only 7.3% of American fashion designers are Black? Well, McDonald's 2024 Change Leaders Program is ready to change the face of fashion. The innovative program awards a monetary grant to five emerging Black American designers and pairs each with an industry professional to help them elevate their brands.

I know specifically and distinctly how McDonald's can support and empower not just black Gen Z but black people. My first job was McDonald's. I learned a lot there about customer service and how to relate to people. I still love that place and go there very often. Look out for the change of fashion designers and mentors

at events like the BET Awards and the Essence Festival of Culture. And follow the journey of the 2024 McDonald's Change Leaders on their Instagram page, We Are Golden.

All right, we are back. And we've talked about the stress, the grief, the decision-making. And I see y'all. I'm not ignoring y'all. I see people tweeting, all three of us, like, where are y'all going to go? And I'm like, to VibeCheck. We're going to VibeCheck. I don't know.

That's about as good of an answer as I have for now. But we also, as Sam really beautifully said earlier, to celebrate anything that's good at Twitter, if you're really doing it right, you're celebrating Black Twitter. And last...

summer, July of 2021, journalist Jason Parham for Wired Magazine did a cover story on basically a people's history of Black Twitter, which is just brilliant. And I believe it was in two parts. I mean, he goes in depth. It's an oral history. I wanted to read just one of the early paragraphs from his piece because it sums up so much of what the three of us value when we talk about Black Twitter. Quote,

Black Twitter has become the most dynamic subset, not only of Twitter, but of the wider social internet. Capable of creating, shaping, and remixing popular culture at light speed, it remains the incubator of nearly every meme.

Crying Jordan, this you, hashtag, hashtag if they gunned me down, hashtag Oscar so white, hashtag you okay sis, and social justice cause, including Me Too from Tarana Burke, Black Lives Matter, all worth knowing about.

He goes on to say it is both news and analysis, call and response, judge and jury, a comedy showcase, therapy session, and family cookout all in one. Black Twitter is a multiverse, simultaneously an archive and an all-seeing lens into the future. Wow.

Wow. Yeah. What a time. And this is what I find so sad about the Elon of it all, because with every social media platform that has been truly ascendant in this current moment, whether it be Twitter or TikTok or Vine, RIP.

Black folks come in, give it sauce, give it swagger, make it popular, make it unmissable. And then without fail, white people monetize it and black people get nothing for it. And then when this shit goes left or goes haywire or gets messy-

it's always white folks in charge and not black people, you know? Yeah. So many of the things that are now features, literal features of Twitter started basically as hacks that black people were, you know, kind of coming up with. And so much of the language of Twitter that we're all conversant in, even the idea of like throwing shade, which even white folks say now, even straight white men say it, like that's from queer people. That's from black people, people of color. This is a life cycle. It feels like black people start it.

And then the Elons come around and ruin it. It's just, it's disappointing to me. And like so much of what I'm seeing happen on Twitter the past few days, there's been a few viral videos of Black people defending Twitter and saying, don't leave because we have garnered so much power. Some people have argued it's the only place where Black people can forcefully push back and have some equal leverage in it because Black Twitter is so popular.

To jump off of something that Sam pointed out as well, everything feels so pointed lately because you're right. There's already the phenomenon of black, what KSA layman refers to as black abundance. That's that abundance. That is true just wherever we go, but it's really come to define Twitter. And then, yeah, we get to 2014, 2015, I think is that point where producers-

newsroom editors started noticing. And in some ways it was great. It meant some black people, myself included, were getting jobs, were getting job opportunities, if not at freelance writers or staff writers or editors as a result. But there's also the extractive, predatory almost phenomenon where we see. So then if we take it to the present, of course, a literal colonizer, someone's family who's like generations back is benefiting from emerald mines in South Africa of

Like, how pointed can it be that this is the person who comes along to literally mine Black Twitter, to mine what we've created? And then doesn't just say, I want to own this content and mine it. He says, I'm going to charge you either $8 or $20 a month to even share this content. Hmm.

It is crazy. And I mean, that's why I keep going back to like, should we be looking for the next Twitter? Should we be looking for the next version of this extractive relationship? Or is there a better way? I'm in the mindset now where it's like, if I have an original thought that is worthwhile and people care about,

shouldn't I at least own it or get paid for it? Right. Shouldn't I? You know? And like, I hope the next version of black Twitter, of black social web is a little more equitable in that regard. I hope. Yeah. And I think there's some interesting parallels beyond, you know,

Elon Musk coming from literal colonizers and now owning Twitter. Beyond that kind of comparison, we also look at kind of this over obsession with monetizing activism, monetizing our lives, our stories. Twitter is the reason why Black Lives Matter not only became this massive force out of Ferguson, but sustained itself all the way up until George Floyd in that

infrastructure kept building upon itself because Twitter was the bedrock to that. And beyond that, any time a video of a Black person being shot by the police was able to reach global audiences and get global people to start protesting, whether it's in London, wherever, because of Twitter. But what we've seen, similar to Elon Musk right now, Black Lives Matter has become in this turmoil of

what are the activists spending their money on? What are they buying with the funds? As we've seen this kind of like push into the capitalism of it all, it's fallen apart. And Twitter now, as it's being forced to make a ton of money and not just be this free place in which we tell stories, engage, make fun of things around us, we're going to see it fall apart too. So I think it's just a big warning for me of the perils of capitalism in itself, that if you focus on the money, it's going to all die eventually.

And when you think of the moments in which Twitter worked the best for activism, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, the start of Me Too, it was before Twitter really, really, really, really had to focus on making a profit. Twitter was the most social justice-y, the most activist-y when

When the money mattered less and now that the money really, really matters and is top of mind, that energy is leaving. But I want us to take some time to honor. Let's kiki because, yeah, this is a home going. This is a home going. I also want to acknowledge, like, again, I was thinking of things that were special on Twitter that just, you know, can't be replicated, at least that I can easily think of.

elsewhere, either on existing platforms or whatever. And one of them, let's go back to 2015, baby. My girl, Azea Wells, you may know her as Zola. That's right. Her 148 tweet thread. Her 148 long tweet thread. Like, incredible. You know, like a sex worker just being like, you want to hear about this crazy story that went down in Florida one time?

And like she created a new form of storytelling. It was almost Dickensian. She's like, no, I'm going to have a new model through which to tell story. It was compelling. It had plot. It had character development. I even liked the movie too. The movie that were from A24 was great. I want to say she also even played with like, you know, the unreliable narrator. Exactly. It was incredible.

Incredible. The movie's really wonderful. If you haven't watched it from A24, really great work. But I think that, you know, and like the thread that I read earlier this episode during my vibe check from the pastor Solomon Rizzuri, just giving us inspiration, you know, or live tweeting, live tweeting your favorite movie when you're drunk and having a good old time or,

When we came together, when news broke about Michael Jackson's initial health scare, then it was like suddenly his death was being confirmed right on the timeline in front of us. And then a few weeks later, his funeral, Aretha Franklin's funeral and home going. These have been really important live events that Saeed is not going to entrust that kind of moment of

black home going for a black genius. I'm not entrusting that to CNN. I'm not entrusting that to network television, you know? And like when I think about the queen's death recently, the queen died and legacy newsrooms across the country sought to honor her as if she were a deity.

And black Twitter, with the great assist from Irish Twitter, said no. There's a complex history here that must be acknowledged. And I saw, after the queen's death, black Twitter raising these issues of colonialism and oppression affecting the way newsrooms covered her death going forward.

There was a positive shift in the discourse and dialogue because of Black Twitter. That has happened so much over the last 10 to 15 years. When Black Twitter gets involved in a breaking news event, they shift the narrative and they bend it towards justice every time. Yeah. And I also want to say it's international because I love that we're kind of talking about the collective, but also international.

Because Black Twitter has been so vibrant, I have found while traveling outside of the country that maybe people in places like, and I'm thinking of Spain, for example, Black folks in Spain are like really grateful that they can at least online or on their phone kind of be a part of something. In 2012, in the process of kind of grieving my mother, it's interesting that grief has kind of been stitched throughout this whole episode and thinking about this platform.

I decided to circle the globe by myself and I had a hashtag and I think it was #JetJones. It's so simple now that I don't think I can even find it. But I think the hashtag was #JetJones and it was really cool to see Black people in places that I thought at the time rather unexpected, like Barcelona, were like, "Ooh, baby, yes, we are Black women travelers and we saw you tweeting #LetsMeetForCoffee," you know? And I'm thinking of my friend Aisha, who I'm still in touch with over a decade later and it was totally because

Black Twitter also functions as an excellent kind of crossroads where we can kind of make unexpected connections with people. Yeah. And I even think about the way that Black Twitter was a service and a balm to me, even when it was about shit I did not know about. I've never watched Game of Thrones. I followed hashtag them thrones with a passion.

Because you don't even need to watch an episode to enjoy the humor. Yeah. And so I guess what I'm taking away from all of this as we honor these big moments in Black Twitter, and we haven't even mentioned the Dionne Warwick of it all. But as we think about these moments of Black connectivity and Black joy through a space like Twitter, I'm just reminded of the resilience of Black people today.

We found ways to be together before Twitter. I remember fucking Black Planet. We find ways to come together. We will keep doing so. And so I want to use the moment of Twitter's demise not to mourn Twitter.

what we might be quote unquote losing, but to respect and honor the way that we made this space that wasn't made for us our own and we'll do it again because we can and we do that. And that's why I'm very, I'm like sad it's going, but I'm so not bothered by it because I know we will take this collective power to the next platform and shape it and change it because we are the fuel to all of these places and we always have been to the culture. And I think that's why people should

feel good about it at the end of the day. You should grieve that you can't do a scandal live tweet anymore, probably, because the show's gone, but that time has passed. But also know that there's going to be another show where you can also take your voice into the next platform and really hold truth to power and spill the tea for fun. What I will tell everyone, though, is...

do download your archives, you know, do, you know, both your stuff and maybe even other people's stuff. If there are moments of deep meaning, don't underestimate that. You might want to do something with it later. Who knows? You know, you might want to make a collage of the archives. You know, you all are so inventive. And so, yeah, even if you're like ready to move on whatever, you know, download and save what you can, because what is a little bit frustrating about

this modern era, and I would say really of the last 20 years, is that as we move on from technology, like I think we live, oh, it'll live on the internet forever. I think we are actually seeing that there is a lot of destabilization. And then suddenly you're like, damn, I can't even access that old GeoCities website that was really important to me when I was in college or whatever. Don't assume that we'll be able to access that forever. So it's worth holding on to. And I would say for people who have built networks,

through Twitter and made friendships on Twitter with people that they're only friends with online, you know what you could also do as Twitter falls apart? Get that Twitter friend's phone number, email address. If you can, meet in real life. These things are allowed. We can take these networks and make them our own outside of Twitter and keep them going ourselves. We know how to connect with people. There is more than just a DM to stay in touch with folks.

I would say like to the extent it's possible, take those connections into some kind of world other than Twitter and keep them. You deserve to keep them. Yeah. Especially in a qualifier, just so people don't get their feelings hurt. If there are people online that you actually kiki with and like tweet back and forth, DM with, have a real relationship with, definitely message them. But if you're ever here tweeting at Shonda Rhimes all day, she ain't going to return that call. So girls, don't try. Same one.

Before we move on, I did want to say, so, you know, thinking about the heyday of Twitter, it's not a coincidence that when I started at BuzzFeed in 2013, that's when I launched BuzzFeed LGBT. And so I also want to acknowledge that I benefited a lot, you know, in terms of, like you were saying, like the education and community. And so I want to take a moment to thank

Women like Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, Raquel Willis, many of whom I was introduced to via the Girls Like Us hashtag, which centered the experiences and voices of Black and brown trans women online.

I, in the last 10 years, have learned. I just feel like I was able to move ahead in my life like light years, light years because of the generosity and ferocity of women like that. You know what I mean? And that was the beginning. And from there, it was like you take it, you run with it, you learn more. You know, it's like these women don't just become just teachers. They become friends and peers and colleagues. But I really wanted to

say thank you. I want to say thank you because before Girls Like Us, I think, you know, this country and culture's conversation about trans rights, about our Black trans sisters in particular, you know, I think we've learned a lot. And I think a lot of us, hopefully, hopefully, have had some

call-in moments, some aha moments, some wake-up calls that have been really fruitful. And I hope it would have happened anyway, but I know at least speaking for myself, I learned a great deal on Twitter in that way. Yeah. And I know it's time for us to move on, but it is a conversation for another day, but also shout out to Porn Twitter. I don't know what y'all are going to be doing.

You know, the girls with the alternate account. Look, save your archives too, ladies. Yes. I've never dabbled in porn Twitter because I'm like, you get some people have like two accounts and they toggle back and forth. And I'm like, let me not get messed up and mixed up and tweeting the wrong thing from the wrong place. RIP and thank you. Thank you. All right. We're going to take another quick break. Okay. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with our recommendations.

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Hey, y'all, we are back. And before we end the show, we like to do our weekly recommendations of the things that you must check out to keep your vibes right this week. And to begin this segment, I'd like to throw to Saeed because he has something that I want to hear about. Yeah, so in 2018, when I finished the manuscript for How We Fight For Our Lives, as a reward for myself, I bought a PlayStation 4. Okay.

Because I was like, suddenly hours of free time have opened up, you know, in my life. And the first game I got because I love Greek mythology. I was like, I remember I was in the GameStop and I was like just kind of looking, you know, at whatever was right next to me in line, you know, on the wall. And I looked over and I saw this game called God of War. And y'all know I love mythology. You know, I love mythologies.

men like all this i i don't like video games that involve guns i'm not into like the really militaristic you know like that's not my vibe and so i was like okay great i got this game started playing that night fell in love and the next morning i woke up and it won game of the year so you know my impact taste

God of War is about basically a secret god. I don't want to give too much away, but a secret god, a father whose wife has just died. So the game opens with him and his young son having to bury her and do like a funeral rite as they kind of make their way into it. And he's very gruff and it's

A beautiful story of a father and son in their grief, learning to acknowledge their grief and build a new relationship together. It is so good. And you're fighting monsters and dragons and ogres and everything like that. And so it's my recommendation. This is two part because God of War itself is awesome and wonderful. Well reviewed. All the girls know. But also the new game, the sequel, I think comes out today. It's called God of War Ragnarok.

which, you know, if you're into Thor and the Vikings or the Norse, yeah, it's so fun. And I think if you like, if you love a good story, if you love mythology and, you know, having to go find a special potion and all that kind of stuff, you can get into this. It's very much for the girls, the gays and the thays.

I've been told men like it too, but it's really for us. Okay. Love it, love it. Some heterosexuals. Yeah. That's my recommendation. Sam, what are you vibing on? So I was reminded of a classic album that I just love, love, love. Last week, a friend on Instagram posted a flashback photo to a trip they took to Cuba. And I was reminded of this really great album of classic Cuban music by a group called the Buena Vista Social Club.

Their album came out in 1997, and it basically was some of the best –

as traditional Cuban musicians in the country making an album of classic Cuban music. This album did surprisingly well. It was a sleeper hit that sold like millions of copies across the world, but it is just like a fun thing to put on and keep playing, but it gets you in the vibe of just like being on an island,

With a lot of sun and high humidity, drinking a good drink and just vibing. I can't even hear it and I'm sitting here shimmying. Right. Yeah. And I love this album because it's not just Cuban music. It's a lot of Afro-Cuban music and it speaks to the history of Black people. It's so good. It's so fun. You put it on and you just vibe. Trust me when I tell you, Buena Vista Social Club. Okay. I love that because Afro-Caribbean music is my shortcut to...

Yes. It just like immediately makes you happy. Yeah, it makes you so happy. I love it. I mean, you need that now in the winter months, guys, with Daylight Savings, little Afro-Caribbean fusion.

So mine for the week is, I'm going to say one movie, but then I'm going to talk about a process that I think people should try out that I've been doing this week with friends that I've been really loving. So every election cycle, I run to the desert with a group of friends that work in politics. And we hide here during the week, which is like a thing for another day. But what we do is we watch a lot of movies at night to try to detach from the news cycle because everyone works in the news cycle in some way.

And what my boyfriend pitched this week was that every night, we did it for the first time the other night, it's been working, is we will all write down two movies from our childhood on a piece of paper, put it in a hat, and then pick two, and we will vote on it. But what's so cool about it is the prompt is...

a movie that meant something to you as a kid and it could be anything. And mine was Twister last night. And I hadn't watched Twister in a one, but rewatching Twister in any of these like 90s movies. Oh, is that the one with the cow? Another cow? Yes, with the cow, there's another cow. That movie is the movie with Helen Hunt where they're chasing tornadoes and they're remaking it actually right now. But what's been so cool about it with your friends is that movies and what we remember from our childhood kind of give us a window into what we were going through as kids or things that we really loved.

And it's a great way to talk to each other about things you love, things that shaped you, but also a great way to look at the trashy movies you just really were obsessed with that are really bad. And Twister was a hit.

I'll rewatch Twister once every year or two. I love that movie. Yeah. I love that movie. Another cow. Yeah. Another cow. It's so good. It's so good. Yeah. All right. Listeners, what are you feeling or not feeling this week? What's your vibe? Check in with us at vibecheckatstitcher.com and let us know. And we do read them. Some of y'all inspire me and I think I'm going to start sharing some of the things that you say that are helping me with my own vibe.

Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Vibe Check. If you love the show and want to support us, please make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast listening platform. Huge thank you to our producer, Shantel Holder, engineer, Brendan Burns, and Marcus Honvar, theme music and sound design. Special thanks to our executive producers, Nora Ritchie at Stitcher and Brandon Sharp from Agenda Management and Production. And last but not least, thank you to Jared O'Connell and Imelda Skender for all of their help.

Also, listeners, we want to hear from you. Don't forget, you can email us at vibecheckatstitcher.com and keep in touch with us on Twitter at Sam Sanders, at Zach Stafford, and at The Ferocity. Use the hashtag vibecheckpod. Also, follow us on TikTok at vibecheckpod. And if you like the show, tell someone IRL in the real world.

to listen. Word of mouth is the best way to spread the word about this show. All right. Stay tuned for another episode of Vibe Check next Wednesday. Till then, be good to yourselves. Bye. Bye. Stitcher.

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