{"id":1906,"date":"2009-11-04T11:28:14","date_gmt":"2009-11-04T16:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=1906"},"modified":"2009-11-04T11:31:04","modified_gmt":"2009-11-04T16:31:04","slug":"twitter-the-context-of-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2009\/11\/04\/twitter-the-context-of-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter &amp; the Context of Race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/Akona1\/status\/5422368795\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1907 aligncenter\" title=\"Akona\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/files\/2009\/11\/Akona.jpg\" alt=\"Akona\" width=\"622\" height=\"359\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/files\/2009\/11\/Akona.jpg 1036w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/files\/2009\/11\/Akona-100x57.jpg 100w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/files\/2009\/11\/Akona-400x231.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 622px) 100vw, 622px\" \/><\/a>I&#8217;m finally back in Toronto, but had an interesting sidetrip to Qu\u00e9bec and will be blogging about separatism and Canadian identity in a future post. \u00a0I saw on Twitter that a trending topic was the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hashtag#Hash_tags\">hashtag<\/a><\/strong>, &#8220;#thingsdarkiessay.&#8221; \u00a0I knew it had to be some &#8220;inside joke&#8221; or meme I wasn&#8217;t aware of and the above tweet explained that it originated in South Africa, but was gaining attention in the US, due to the use of the term &#8220;darkies.&#8221; \u00a0Several observations on people&#8217;s tweets, pointing out the &#8220;irony,&#8221; noted that blacks were making it a trending topic. \u00a0I didn&#8217;t go through the thousands of tweets, but I&#8217;ll surmise {given the above} that the hashtag originated from black South Africans.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Regardless of intent, as a meme goes viral, it takes on a life of its own, making <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Roland_Barthes\">Roland Barthes<\/a><\/strong>&#8216;s\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Death_of_author\">Death of the Author<\/a><\/strong>{s} quite salient. \u00a0Is this related to -or- independent of an idea that with some content {<em>e.g.,<\/em> race or language referring to race}, the author becomes irrelevant or somehow transformed? \u00a0How does this inform dialogues about race, particularly as the Internet blasts apart contextual boundaries, let alone the determination of the &#8220;offensiveness&#8221; of content in a global context.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><strong>Twitterversion::<\/strong> Trending topic #thingsdarkiessay originated in #SouthAfrica but sparks tweets in the global Twittersphere. #ThickCulture http:\/\/url.ie\/2s8n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><strong>Song:: \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imeem.com\/dizzlelicious\/music\/vo9ZHPVi\/lily-allen-fck-you-distasteful-ruff-n-ready-mix\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal\">F*ck You (Distasteful Ruff n Ready Mix) &#8211; Lily Allen<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 300px\"><object classid=\"d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"300\" height=\"110\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/media.imeem.com\/m\/xb0MQ8cCuO\/aus=false\/\" \/><\/object><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m finally back in Toronto, but had an interesting sidetrip to Qu\u00e9bec and will be blogging about separatism and Canadian identity in a future post. \u00a0I saw on Twitter that a trending topic was the hashtag, &#8220;#thingsdarkiessay.&#8221; \u00a0I knew it had to be some &#8220;inside joke&#8221; or meme I wasn&#8217;t aware of and the above [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2022,2021,1400,14,1676,296,184],"class_list":["post-1906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fuck-you","tag-lily-allen","tag-meme","tag-race","tag-roland-barthes","tag-south-africa","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1906"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1912,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906\/revisions\/1912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}