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25: Protecting the Culture
63 Plays1 year ago
I talk about how we should think more critically about the ways we expose Black culture in the name of satisfying an ever evolving demand for more and more content. Tweets/trends referenced in the episode: https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1615745850180763648 https://twitter.com/elle__monique/status/1612303065205325830 https://twitter.com/CamTheKing/status/1615733064025489410
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Transcript
Introduction and Listener Appreciation
00:00:10
Speaker
Hey y'all, it is Brittany Geneva back with another episode of Geneva Says. It hasn't been that long since the last episode. So this feels like some good progress as I am on my continued journey to get more consistent with the pod because I know I just have to say like, thank you guys so much for
00:00:36
Speaker
the wonderful kind messages that I get. People are so encouraging and so uplifting. And I really, really thank you. I thank you for listening. This just, it makes me feel so happy that anybody wants to listen to this at all. Even if it was just one person, I would be like, wow, thank you. And the fact that it's more than one, thank you a lot. So I really, really appreciate you.
Cultural Protection and Viral Moments
00:01:02
Speaker
So today I'm jumping right in. I have been seeing,
00:01:06
Speaker
so much stuff like back to back to back to back to back it was like it was calling my name like there's only one thing I can talk about for this episode because I'm seeing the same theme pop up over and over and over again like I have to get into it like okay so
00:01:25
Speaker
The other day on Twitter, New York Times, which has, you know, posts a lot of like cooking and like recipe things on Twitter, posted a recipe for Jollof rice. And it looked amazing. I mean, that rice looked good as fuck. I was like, Ooh, I might have to make it. I've never tried my hand at the Jollof, but I'll try it this time.
00:01:51
Speaker
And I looked at the comments. These folks were like, y'all just go just go or go on Twitter and search like.
00:02:00
Speaker
New York Times jello fries also like see if I can put a link somewhere for y'all to see it but like these folks were hilarious like don't eat this it gives it gives you diarrhea somebody said don't eat it it made me gay don't eat it it made it made my testicles swell up like Nicki Minaj cousin don't eat this it made me it made me go insane and I'm like yo
00:02:26
Speaker
the links that we are now going to to protect the culture. Like I am okay with it. Like folks are tired.
Cultural Appropriation Concerns
00:02:35
Speaker
We are tired of seeing black things just be out for the world's consumption for them to take it, probably make more money off of it than we could ever imagine. So I appreciate the fact that we're taking matters into our own hands. I, um,
00:02:52
Speaker
It reminds me too of like, this is a little bit older. Like this was probably, uh, a month or two ago at this point on Twitter. I mean, on, uh, Tik TOK, all of like these white women were talking about these. Is it meal? Is that how you say the name of that hair brand? Anyways, I'm going to say meal. That's how it's spelled. And there's like some.
00:03:15
Speaker
They have some sort of scalp drops that like help your hair grow. And apparently I've never used it, but apparently it's been like a staple of like black hair care for years and years. Miele is a black owned brand and that now all of a sudden the white girls are like, Oh, this has been done wonders for my hair. I saw, I saw people using the filters, the women using the filters.
00:03:39
Speaker
to make themselves look bald, don't use the drops. Don't use them. People say, oh no, I used it and it burned my hair off and I went crazy. No, don't use the drops. But I'm just like, you know what? It's extra.
00:03:54
Speaker
But I'm fine. I'm fine with us saying maybe we can protect our things from people because they are constantly taking.
Economic Impact of Cultural Appropriation
00:04:05
Speaker
I can think of so many examples when the TikTok girl said, we're not going to do a dance for Megan Thee Stallion thought shit. Y'all are going to have to come up with your own dance. And them other folks on TikTok fell apart. They didn't know what to do.
00:04:20
Speaker
black people please you guys have to make a dance so we can copy it and then we can go on Jimmy Fallon like that they are just constantly looking to us to create the things for them and to give them the things that they can then capitalize on and I'm just I'm I'm actually very happy to see us starting to really like actively push against that and I know
00:04:43
Speaker
Some people might feel like that's extreme or why would you want to do that? Like, why would you support that? But at the end of the day, like, I feel like outside of the black community, who else has who else has everything taken from them? I mean, really, that's obviously our heritage and our history in this country is things being taken from us. And so that has continued through our experience to the point where there is absolutely nothing that can be
00:05:12
Speaker
off-limits. There can be, there's nothing that we can keep between us. And the, the part about it that is extremely harmful is not just, okay, you took this dance and you got more views than I did when I posted it. It's that that translates to money. That's where on these platforms, those extra views translate to money.
00:05:36
Speaker
So the original person who did it or said it or wore it or whatever it is, is not making money, but you put, what did Gabrielle Union say? You put some blonde hair on it and now you're making the money now.
00:05:51
Speaker
you're the one that gets to go on Jimmy Fallon and teach him how to do the dances. Like, what's that about? So at the end of the day, it's not just that people are taking things from us. It's that they are taking things from us and then making more money off of it than we do for the original. And that's where it really
00:06:11
Speaker
gets dangerous and that's where it really becomes something we're like, okay, wait a second. We actually do need to take matters into our own hands and like protect our culture from vultures who just want to like exploit it and appropriate it and not, and not respect
The Influence of Black Twitter
00:06:27
Speaker
it. And I think every time black people think like that and say that kind of thing, people becomes immediately a reverse racism. Why would you want to, why would you want to do that? Blah, blah, blah.
00:06:41
Speaker
No, I just what other culture is punished, is looked down on for trying to protect the things that are theirs. What other culture has to deal with constant, constant, never ending
00:06:59
Speaker
attempts at exploiting and appropriating what they say and do. There are so many things that are perfectly fine for other cultures to just say, this is ours. Like, this is what we do. You know, you're not welcome. And people be like, OK, thanks. But with black people, God forbid we just say, no. No, thanks. You can't come. You're not invited. It's closed, you know, get somebody else to do it.
00:07:28
Speaker
No, you cannot do it as black people and the reason why they wanna make us feel so guilty about it is because they need us to profit. Let black people stop creating all content right now and see what's gonna happen to the marketing campaigns, what's gonna happen to the video games, what's gonna happen to the fashion, what's gonna happen to anything culture in this country because all of it starts with black people. So let us stop putting things into the world right now and see what happens. Them ads is about to be dry.
00:07:58
Speaker
Then look, that social feed is about to be dry. The meme accounts is not gonna have anything to steal because we are the ones that come up with that. We are the ones that keep giving y'all the sweet, sweet content. But we aren't the ones making money off
Hulu Documentary: Respect or Exploitation?
00:08:16
Speaker
of it. At least if, but we aren't the ones making money off of it, y'all.
00:08:22
Speaker
But look, but I have to let me take that back. Let me take that back. Or let me add something to it, I should say, because we we are seeing more instances where there are black people making money off of sharing more things about black culture and, you know,
00:08:42
Speaker
from their own original content. But that also sort of sometimes is a little bit of a conflict for me too. So an example is I just saw that Prentice Penny, who was a showrunner for Insecure. So
00:09:00
Speaker
He is very much steeped into like black content world. And now he has a deal with Hulu through this thing they have called Onyx, which is like their platform for black content. And I've seen a lot like Onyx stuff be good. Like they had a show called Reasonable Doubt. Oh my God. Injected into my veins. Like that was such a good show.
00:09:23
Speaker
So it's not bootleg content or it's not like to be shit. You know what I mean? If you don't know what I'm talking about, please go on Twitter and just search to be and enjoy. So he is creating, you know, for Hulu through this onyx platform, a docuseries called black Twitter that's focused on the rise of black Twitter and the importance of it in society. I mean, if you're not a part of it, it's very hard to explain, but black Twitter
00:09:52
Speaker
is very much has had a huge impact like on on our culture and on our society and and people routinely think twice about think like, you know, people of note, people with some following think twice about what they say. And they go, is black Twitter going to cancel me if I, you know, whether or not you agree with it or whether or not you enjoy it, black Twitter is very influential and powerful.
00:10:19
Speaker
and has become, is the reason why Twitter exists. Again, to what I said earlier, let Black Twitter stop creating all content right now. Elon Musk's little shit is gonna fall to the ground. It probably is already. I don't, you know, Twitter is on its way out the door, you know? But the only thing holding it together right now is Black Twitter and our content. And I can say our because I am a part of Black Twitter proudly. But at the end of the day, like,
00:10:50
Speaker
so few creators are responsible for pretty much all of the content on Twitter. And most of those creators, if they're not bots, are black people. We are the thing that makes Twitter go. So it is important. I mean, I'm not saying it's not an important thing. And there is a story to tell about black Twitter. But it does make me wonder,
00:11:15
Speaker
Did anybody ask for this? Like everybody who's on Black Twitter knows what it is. If you aren't on it, you probably don't care. So who is even going to be watching this? People who already know.
Challenges of Content Creation
00:11:28
Speaker
And then now, I mean, are you just giving the blueprint for folks to come in and understand how to
00:11:34
Speaker
Infiltrate for lack of a better word this this subculture because that has already happened in 2016 Russian bots got on social media platforms Twitter and others and created like
00:11:47
Speaker
Black Lives Matter pages, pages that look like they were pro-black to spread misinformation to black people. That is already happening. There's already one like notable black female Twitter page that has been exposed as actually being run by a white male. So we already have situations where people have come in and tried to appear to be a part of black Twitter in order to influence or somehow
00:12:17
Speaker
gained from the community. And now like, is it helpful for us to now put on this very broad platform of Hulu, a documentary that's like, look at all the things you can do on black Twitter, you know, here's all the, you know, and then how many people, how much content is going to be featured in that documentary? And are those content creators getting paid? All of the people who contribute and make black Twitter was what it is and who are like the cornerstones of it. Are they going to get paid?
00:12:46
Speaker
for their content being featured in this documentary. And then now we're back to the same thing that I was saying earlier where, you know,
00:12:56
Speaker
It's not just the exploitation of the content itself, but the fact that you're making money off of it while the content creator isn't. And even though the person making money is black in this case, Prentice Penny, what I mean, look, these are questions, right? I haven't seen the documentary. It's not out, but I do have to wonder, is this helpful? And are you just participating in more exploitation of black content creators? And so I just,
00:13:24
Speaker
all of these things sort of happening like back to back are just are causing me to think a lot about like what you know what do we need to do to protect the culture and have we gotten to a point now where
00:13:43
Speaker
We've just sort of jumped the shark and that content rules everything, you know, and it doesn't matter who it's about or what it's about or what, you know, because even. Gosh, I need to get off Twitter because every single I'm about to change the name of this podcast to I saw it on Twitter because I was just about to make reference to a tweet that I saw.
00:14:05
Speaker
of a young woman who was saying that, you know, social media used to be like when we first got on social media in like 2007 or something like it was about just staying connected to people, you're sharing things with like your friends and family. And now we've sort of been conditioned even against our will to be content creators like
00:14:24
Speaker
We didn't try it. We just woke up one day and felt this push to be like, I have to create content. Everything is content. And I feel like that is broadly how we are as a society now. We're just like,
00:14:42
Speaker
it's all about content as, content as king. And like Prentice Penny was hired or not hired, but like had a contract with Hulu to create various things for, uh, for this Onyx platform. So now his job is I have to come up with content that literally like that's what I have to do. And when you are, when your bottom line revolves around creating content,
00:15:09
Speaker
how easy might it be to start crossing lines with content? And we see this all the time. People are oversharing. I mean, Carisha, I don't need to know that you enjoy golden showers. Like, I just feel like that's something
00:15:23
Speaker
Maybe if you have a Patreon and you have people who pay to follow you, you can tell them that. But why are you saying that on your Revolt podcast? It's too much. And people doing these really tasteless pranks on YouTube and people who post stuff that they know is just wrong or gonna get a rise out of people just so they can get the engagement.
Setting Boundaries in Content Sharing
00:15:51
Speaker
we've already gotten to this point where people are so desperate to put content into the world that there's no sort of limit as to what that content can be. And I feel like a little bit of that is applying to like, we're putting like content from the culture, from black culture is being put into the world by people who just, who need to be able to put content in the world. So yes, you have,
00:16:18
Speaker
the outsiders who are trying to, you know, exploit and profit off of that because they can't think of anything cool on their own. But then you also have members of the black community who are like, well, shit, I'm getting paid and I need some. So I'm about to shine a light on, you know, on this black stuff that we do. Nobody's talking about that. There's a reason why. Let's go like maybe everybody doesn't need to be talking about it. You know, like can we
00:16:49
Speaker
Can we be okay with keeping some things closer to the vest? Because we know the dangers that can happen when we just went, when access is given to folks who mean us no good. So it's hard because look, I'm sitting here y'all 17 minutes into a podcast, right? I am a content creator, right? So I too.
00:17:12
Speaker
have the same, like I am, you know, if things go the way I want them to go for my life, I would like to start being able to make money off of my content and maybe even sustain my life and not have to have a regular job off of my content. So I am literally the people that I'm talking about in terms of folks who have to create like folks who are constantly in a state of thinking, what can I be creating? And
00:17:41
Speaker
That is that's scary because now it makes it so that there's access to anything and everything unless you decide within yourself as a creator that I'm not going to cross certain boundaries. I'm not going to give access to certain things, you know, and so I've I've really now this has been a true rant. You all like I really didn't even like have a big plan for this podcast. I just like started talking and all
00:18:08
Speaker
all of this came out. But and I don't I don't have like necessarily like a very buttoned up conclusion. But all I think I'm just thinking more and encourage us maybe to all think more about, you know, what it means to, you know, protect our culture, what it means if you are a content creator, you're putting things out in the world to
00:18:34
Speaker
have a filter of thinking about what would I, you know, do I need to hold back some access and some exposure? And, you know, for those who are part of our own community, just to think more critically about, you know, what are we putting out there? And again,
00:18:56
Speaker
I'm not saying with specific reference to this Twitter documentary, I'm not saying it's gonna be bad or it's gonna be something that's just like a mess. It might be very good, it might be very well done. It may turn out that the creators featured within it are getting some type of compensation, which would be great. But those are the questions that we need to be asking. When we see that, we need to say, are the creators being paid? Why are you making this? What kind of story are you telling? Have you thought about
00:19:23
Speaker
the potential downfalls of this. It's another layer of media literacy that we need to be having, in my opinion, to make sure that we are not so deep into the content sharing that we're forgetting about, okay, but what are we getting access to?
00:19:43
Speaker
And that can apply to like a lot of different things. Obviously I'm coming from the point of view of like thinking about our culture and thinking about things that have already been so hard for us to be able to have to ourselves. But that could be about someone's romantic relationship or that could be about someone's
Listener Engagement and Feedback
00:19:59
Speaker
family. You know all content creators should think about what are their boundaries going to be. And I think you know black content creators specifically
00:20:07
Speaker
let's think more critically about like our boundaries and what we're putting out into the world and what we're potentially giving exposure to. So anyways, that was just a quick little, I would love y'all's thoughts. I really would. Now this is the one where I really, really, really would like for y'all to talk back to me and tell me what you think, you know, find me on social media. I'm on Twitter, obviously all the time, Britney underscore Geneva.
00:20:35
Speaker
and on Instagram, the Geneva says, and I'm also on YouTube, my YouTube channel for the podcast, so comment on there. But I definitely would be interested in people's point of view on this.
00:20:50
Speaker
Because I think it's I think it's an interesting thing for us to have to think about like in the world that we live in 2023 where content is taking over our lives. So Thank you guys so much for listening Really appreciate you as always. I will be back Very soon. And this is the Geneva says podcast. Thank y'all. Bye