We know that Black Twitter has reshaped how activism happens online. Hashtags take on big institutions — #OscarsSoWhite, #BlackLivesMatter — and expose media bias in covering the stories that affect Black people. This is important work: #IfTheyGunnedMeDown was the most cutting example of media criticism in real time. As newspapers shared photos of Black victims of police shootings looking menacing and stoic, Black Twitter showed that there are two sides, suggesting that the media chooses the unsmiling portrayals when sharing news about Black victims. The way these movements reach virality has sparked a trend in other communities, even those seeking antithetical ends: #AllLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter are recent examples.

To me, the way Black humor has taken up residence on Black Twitter is beautiful, and we ought to find some way to document it. In all the talk about archiving the internet, there must be a way to save this other vision of Black identity in America. These jokes are separate from the meme-based web humor that pervades. Instead, they pull from a uniquely Black American referent.

This humor has a revolutionary kind of subversiveness, and it offers a certain solace. I grew up in conventionally white spaces, in classrooms that only addressed narrow experiences of youth or privilege. Seeing other Black people talk about being dragged to Sunday school or the first time they watched Love and Basketball broadens the understanding of what Blackness is and how it lives.

Twitter is loud and messy. One day we'll all migrate to some other platform or some new technology. But this comedy is more than memes — there's an underlying subtext to all of these jokes, that Black people can log in and find pockets of the internet to just be together. It's hard for some people to understand why Black lives matter, but Black Twitter exists without this pretense of having to prove or explain our value. These jokes matter because they're us.