Official Twitter Thread

[Flojo]

It is, you just hover over their picture and some buttons come up allowing you to follow retweet etc

[Wale]

It is, you just hover over their picture and some buttons come up allowing you to follow retweet etc

u have to edit the settings for it, tweetdeck so confusing...might try that destroy twitter

is they even trending topics on tweetdeck

[Guest faze]

Why I Stalk a Sexy Black Woman on Twitter (And Why You Should, Too)

It all started one day when Anil Dash pointed out how many black people use Twitter. I realized most of my Twitter friends are like me: white dorks. So I picked out my new friend and started to pay attention.

She's a Christian, but isn't afraid of sex. She seems to have some problems trusting men, but she's not afraid of them, either. She's very proud of her fiscal responsibility. She looks lovely in her faux modeling shots, although I am surprised how much her style aligns with what I consider mall fashion when she's a grown woman in her twenties. Her home is Detroit and she's finding the process of buying a new car totally frustrating. She spends an embarrassing amount of time tweeting responses to the Kardashian family.

Sometimes I find her faith charming; other times it is frustratingly childish. "Thanks Lord for letting me see another day!" can be followed by a retweeted "God is THE MAN!" All that can be followed by jokes about someone being a "squirter" in bed. I try not to extrapolate about her culture from just one person's Twitter stream, but that's also sort of exactly what makes following a random person so interesting. Are black Christians more open about their sexuality? Young people? Northern people? I've just got this single data point, but it's more than I had before.

One of the best things about Twitter is that, once you've populated it with friends genuine or aspirational, it feels like a slow-burn house party you can pop into whenever you like. Yet even though adding random people on Twitter is just a one-click action, most of us prune our follow list very judiciously to prevent tedious or random tweets to pollute our streams. Understandable! But don't discount the joy of discovery that can come by weaving a stranger's life into your own. You can start simply, like I did, by finding someone charming and attractive. (I'm not ashamed to say I enjoy looking at the sexy pictures she puts up when she's flirting with guys online.) Once you've got the chops for it, you can move onto more advanced randomness: following a die-hard Justin Bieber fan even as Bieber's fame has started to peak.

all the comments at http://gizmodo.com/5586970/why-i-stalk-a-sexy-black-woman-on-twitter-and-why-you-should-too

& the response

So This Hipster Tech Douche Stalks a Sexy Black Woman On Twitter...

So This Hipster Tech Douche Stalks a Sexy Black Woman On Twitter...To say my post "Why I Stalk a Sexy Black Woman on Twitter (And Why You Should, Too" provoked a response would be putting it lightly.

While quite a few people seemed to grasp the thrust of the piece—"You should follow a few people on Twitter who aren't like you"—several others got caught up issues of race, sex, voyeurism, and the "proper" use of Twitter itself. While there were some good discussions in the post's comments, others gave their take on Twitter, their own blogs, and in a couple of instances via email. (To the person who asked that I check myself into a suicide prevention center: I think I'll risk weathering my great spiritual malaise at home under the watchful eye of Dr. Liquor.)

Regrets, I've had...well, one

If I have any regret about the piece, it's that I didn't title it "Why I Stalk A Sexy Black Christian Woman from Detroit (etc.)". It would probably have underlined the predominant differences that made this woman intriguing to me more clearly. I considered it, but thought it was too awkward.

Moreover, it didn't accurately reflect the reason I first chose to follow the specific person I did. I discovered her responding to a Trending Topic populated mostly by black people, so it would be fair to say I noticed her race first. That she was good looking was a close second. Since my goal at the time was simply to follow someone random who seemed to be from a different culture—racially, socially, locationally—that was good enough.

The lives of others

There's been a lot of talk about me "othering" this woman. Frankly? Duh.

I posit that it is impossible not to recognize any random person as an "other" by default. That's how we perceive new people, no matter how much you want to conflate a precept of Hegelian perception with some sort of discrimination.

But when my stated goal was to pay enough attention to this random "other" to learn more about them—to gain a little bit of fidelity about them as an individual—attempting to pigeonhole me with that accusation is weak.

Especially when some stumble over the same thing they're trying to condemn, as Ann Friedman did in her post "How to win black 'friends' and influence people on the internet" when she writes, "You're probably thinking, what's the big deal? He sounds like every other tech-writer dude on the Internet." I do believe I've just been othered.

But I can forgive Friedman's rhetorical misstep, if only because it highlights exactly how our sorting primate brains work: Since it's impossible to know the billions of individuals on this planet, it is only natural that we sort people into broad categories. It's from categories that stereotypes, accurate or otherwise, can form.

It's not anyone's duty to try to wipe out generalizations entirely—I'd argue that it is impossible unless one is suggesting the cultivation of a form of willful autism—but to instead to pay attention to what makes individual people unique, to acknowledge that they share qualities with others in their overlapping demographic while working towards viewing them as themselves first, their "categories" second.

Every tweet you take

Which leads to another denunciation levied: that if I really wanted to get to know this woman, I should have interacted with her instead of just voyeuristically following her Twitter stream. That's fair—but only if you presume that I actually wanted to befriend her. I didn't.

If that feels creepy and clinical to you, it's because it sort of is? But it's also the very nature of the modern internet. And honestly, it seems far, far creepier if I had tried to befriend her personally.

Shani O. Hilton writes on Postbourgie, "That woman he follows is not a person to him, she's a creature in the internet zoo, and it makes me shudder to think that there are more people out there like him."

Well...yes. You've been on Twitter, haven't you, @shani_o? It's a website where people post things they choose to display to the public, including—unless one has a perfect follower-to-follows ratio or a private account—several people you don't know at all who choose to pay attention to your life, your thoughts, and whatever else you choose to share.

Rather than worry that I might be viewed as a sociopath for using Twitter exactly in the way for which it was designed, I choose to instead be excited about all the new people and perspectives that are right at my eyeballs' fingertips. But that doesn't mean I want—or am even capable of—becoming fast friends with every single person I observe (or read, or watch, or whatever) on the internet. No one really wants that—except for creepy people.

If finding a black woman sexy is wrong...

Some antagonistic responses to the piece spent a lot of time constructing ornate deconstructions of things I never actually said. Many used the term "exoticization" after I acknowledged that I found this particular woman attractive. A few said I had a "black fetish", as if that were damning in and of itself.

Sorry to disappoint, but I copped to nothing of the sort. It may be a cliched, horndog thing to say, but if I have a fetish, it's a woman fetish. There's nothing the least bit "privileged" about looking at a picture that someone's put online and saying, "Yup. She's hot." If you disagree you must find the grocery checkout magazine racks harrowing, let alone spending time around actual human beings. And to toss around a term like "privilege" because a white male mentioned that he found a black female attractive is a serious depreciation of circumstance.

Race to the bottom

Then why mention her race? Because it matters. To pretend otherwise is childish, just as to presume it matters a lot is equally wrongheaded.

The more adjectives used to describe someone, the more (potentially) accurate that description is. Use less descriptors and we're back into Category Land. There's a reason I described her as a "sexy black woman"—because it was important to me to be unashamed to note that those were the qualities I noticed first.

I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing, nor that it's incontrovertibly essential to my neurological instincts to notice race and gender first. Maybe it's an entirely culturally inculcated response. But to pretend that I don't notice race and gender as my primary human pattern recognition process seems like a big, fat lie for the sake of useless propriety.

Bust my balls when I take antagonistic actions or form inaccurate opinions about someone just from a cursory impression—not simply for labeling someone. Otherwise where does it end? Should I be ashamed to notice gender? Sexual attractiveness? Species? It's sexy, black turtles all the way down.

Would it be fair to judge all black people from one woman's tweeting? No. How about all young black women? Of course not. How about all young black Christian women from Detroit? Well, maybe a little.

The larger your sample set, the higher the likelihood of accuracy—but that doesn't stop a person from forming ideas right from the start with only a single reference.

This particular woman was very open with her sexuality, despite being a Christian. It made me question if that had to do with her race, with her local civic culture, or with her own peer group and family. I simply acknowledged the possibility of one or all of those things—including that the premise itself was out of whack, and that many Christians are more open about sex than I realized—as well as the possibility that this woman was just a lone outlier.

Try as I might, I can't find any reason why proposing those questions is wrong. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that that process of winnowing down theories is exactly how we come to better discern individuals and their quirks from groups.

Clumsy

"I know what you're saying, but the execution is clumsy" is pretending to be stupid. I've had that fight before when writing about race, power, or gender issues. It boils down to, "You're fine, but you have a social responsibility to encode what you say so that actually awful racist people can't interpret it in a way that supports their beliefs." If you say so—but I'd rather just say that some of this stuff is mushy, that my opinions are mutable, and slog ahead.

I considered couching the post in a bunch of typical context about my experiences, the people very similar to the woman I followed that I know personally—all the typical caveats. I'm glad I didn't. I might have been more able to get my point across to a wider audience, but I feel like those who reacted the most strongly from their preconceptions—about this "white dork", as I gave you in my only clue—are the people who would benefit most from taking a breath and asking why their own presumptions about me were concrete enough to levy accusations of racism and privilege and (how dare they!) sloppy writing.

(That's right. I'm saying it's you. But we can talk about it! You can even secretly think I'm a creepy, racist, misogynist avatar of the patriarchy. I'd just prefer you not start by calling me an ignorant racist because I mentioned a person's race. Instead, compliment my hair.)

On Stalking

I used "stalk" ironically in an attempt to wink my way past accusations of just that very thing. "I totally stalked her!" he said, non-stalkingly. While I believe that absolutely nothing on earth is off limits for a joke, I can understand how, if you only read the title of the post, you might not get the irony. That probably makes it an awesome headline by "getting you to click on this story" standards, but admittedly does set some more literal people on guard. Fair point to "stalk" critics.

http://gizmodo.com/5588293/so-this-hipster-tech-douche-stalks-a-sexy-black-woman-on-twitter

americans are wierd....

[Black Ant]

Rusko vs Deadmau5

fight soon come

# Ye I called u out diva bollocks 1:12 PM Jul 17th via TwitBird

# @deadmau5 and I will f*ckin see u... 1:11 PM Jul 17th via TwitBird

# @deadmau5 next time I see u ima snap u like a twig u skinny little c*nt 1:11 PM Jul 17th via TwitBird

# I told him to f*ckoff and he ran for some security like a little p*ssy bitch!!!!! 1:10 PM Jul 17th via TwitBird

# so a dj with a HUGE ego last night threw a huge bitchy hissy fit at me last night for smokin weed in the backstage...

[Trilliam]

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

[Cerny]

@tonyblk

[Guest faze]

Rusko vs Deadmau5

fight soon come

# Ye I called u out diva bollocks 1:12 PM Jul 17th via TwitBird

# @deadmau5 and I will f*ckin see u... 1:11 PM Jul 17th via TwitBird

# @deadmau5 next time I see u ima snap u like a twig u skinny little c*nt 1:11 PM Jul 17th via TwitBird

# I told him to f*ckoff and he ran for some security like a little p*ssy bitch!!!!! 1:10 PM Jul 17th via TwitBird

# so a dj with a HUGE ego last night threw a huge bitchy hissy fit at me last night for smokin weed in the backstage...

haha

[Wale]

so funny when famous people beef on twitter lol, i remeber when fabolous was beefing with yung berg and tpain last year lol

lol it actaully true what the dude said swear about 70% of twitter users are black haha, all trending topics got to do with something with black culture...view trending topics...all the users are nothibg but black people

[Guest Yilmaz]

so funny when famous people beef on twitter lol, i remeber when fabolous was beefing with yung berg and tpain last year lol

lol it actaully true what the dude said swear about 70% of twitter users are black haha, all trending topics got to do with something with black culture...view trending topics...all the users are nothibg but black people

[Bruno Di Gradi]

so funny when famous people beef on twitter lol, i remeber when fabolous was beefing with yung berg and tpain last year lol

lol it actaully true what the dude said swear about 70% of twitter users are black haha, all trending topics got to do with something with black culture...view trending topics...all the users are nothibg but black people

top trending topic this morning was Randy Orton.

[Necksta]

so funny when famous people beef on twitter lol, i remeber when fabolous was beefing with yung berg and tpain last year lol

lol it actaully true what the dude said swear about 70% of twitter users are black haha, all trending topics got to do with something with black culture...view trending topics...all the users are nothibg but black people

top trending topic this morning was Randy Orton.

/wale

[Guest Yilmaz]

so funny when famous people beef on twitter lol, i remeber when fabolous was beefing with yung berg and tpain last year lol

lol it actaully true what the dude said swear about 70% of twitter users are black haha, all trending topics got to do with something with black culture...view trending topics...all the users are nothibg but black people

top trending topic this morning was Randy Orton.

/wale

lol

[Dubby]

http://support.twitter.com/groups/35-business/topics/127-frequently-asked-questions/articles/142101-promoted-tweets

Twitter will trend your topic for money lol. I remember they said a while ago they were bringing in heads to monetize it, good plan tbh.

[Platinum50]

twitter has reinfirced the idea that I shouldnt view most girls of our generating as anything more than a beat imo

[Faisal]

they're starting their own data centre aswell, i.e. no more fail whales (except when they're migrating to the new servers obv.)

http://engineering.twitter.com/2010/07/room-to-grow-twitter-data-center.html

[Dubby]

with over 300,000 people a day signing up for new accounts on an average day.

I'm actually plainfacing this statistic. That's some next growth levels.

[The Somalian]

heard them saying 1 in 13 people over the world has a facebook account madness

[Guest Yilmaz]

Not really. It's just like mobile phones a few years back.

nuttam

[NiNES.]

http://tweetphoto.com/34214678

[Bruno Di Gradi]

im not gonna lie..........im getting angry right now

[Guest TimeBomb]

she tattooed chipmunks real name on her arm?

[The Somalian]

so what will come after twitter?????????? fb is about myspace is dead though

[Faisal]

Google Buzz?

Hopefully nothing tbh. I like the parity between FB and Twitter as is. Both are great at what they do.

[bay_u]

http://twitter.com/kanyewest

id say he'd get a million followers by the end of the week.

[Barney Stinson]

I tried to fix up my timeline because it was becoming too crowded so I unfollowed most and put them into private lists, but some of the people who I allowed to remain(cos their friends/following me/need to dm me or whatever) are starting to annoy me. Anyone know a way you can get your lists to automatically appear in your main timelines?