; I'm yet another Black woman leaving social media.

not surprised, not disappointed, just really fucking done.

yesterday, I went out for coffee with a friend. we sat on a sunny patio, my dog at our feet, sipping iced coffees and chatting. it was lovely. I went home afterward feeling upbeat and a little sun drunk—exactly how you want to feel on a summer afternoon.

I slipped off my shoes by the door, sat on the couch, and opened up instagram on my phone. checking my socials after being social had become a habit for me. kind of a “what have I missed” sort of thing. I had a bunch of notifications, which isn’t entirely unusual since I have a good amount of followers, but it was unusual to receive them without having posted anything in the last 24 hours. I clicked on the notifications icon, already uneasy.

the first comment I saw was one tagging me with just the word “lol.” could be harmless enough…maybe a follower who saw a funny post that reminded them of me and wanted me to see it? but then my eyes moved down to the comment below it, also tagging me, that read, “I wish I could force people like you to get the hell out of here. nobody’s making you stay!!”

it’s then that my heart began to race, which is a fucking feat because I’m on anxiety meds and those beat down anxiety symptoms like it’s an MMA match between my brain and adrenaline. it was only then that I noticed that the thumbnail image for both of these comments (and the ones below them) were of me, but it wasn’t a post from me.

I clicked. a verified account called Pr*gerU popped up, and I already knew what was likely to come up next. (for those who don’t know, a friend of mine who’s a journalist summed it up best: “Pr*gerU is a flaming garbage pile of racism and disinformation. They consistently target people knowing damn well their viewers will harass the people they talk about. Just the absolute worst.” this conservative media org caters to white, conservative, nationalists from what I have seen over the years.)

video caption: “brainwashed.”

15,200 likes. 1008 comments.

the video started with a tiktok I had made while on my recent trip to Spain (my first vacation in over 3 years). I’m speaking, softly, about the noticeable difference in how I feel, and how my interactions have been, outside of the U.S. while a light instrumental of Ariana Grande’s “pov” plays in the background. my demeanor in the video isn’t angry, or aggressive…it’s thoughtful. I was sad when I made and posted it to tiktok for my (then) 400 followers to see. I didn’t make any grand, sweeping statements. I spoke only about my experience and my feelings of being traumatized by being Black in the U.S….it was a sincere and vulnerable moment.

the tiktok gets cut off midway, by a mixed-race Black woman with a standard podcast setup who quips “I’ll take ‘things that never happened’ for $2,000, Alex.” the video goes downhill from there. it’s immediately clear to me that she’s the Candace Owens of this media org, spewing a lot of “liberal nonsense this,” “victim mindset that” and using the fact that she’s Black as reason for her white audience to lap up the anti-Black sentiments she’s providing them. the icing on the cake was her saying that there’s never been a better time to be a Black person, and that she’d “love” to see evidence of me experiencing aggression in the U.S. from white people.

cue me scrolling down to find 1k+ comments full of racist aggression from white people, all about how I’m stupid, ignorant, brainwashed, etc etc and they wish they could ship me back to Africa so I could experience “real oppression.” [looks at camera like I’m in The Office]

I blocked the account immediately. put my personal account on private. deleted the racist, mocking messages in my DMs en masse. wiped my sweaty, shaky hands on my shorts. went to my tiktok. deleted new, racist comments on the original video. put it on private.

put my phone down.

cried. a lot.

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this has happened before. many times. there’s a scale in my head that I think every Black person on social media has, where you decide “how bad” racist backlash is. it starts at “one message from an angry/indignant white person that I either respond to/block/delete” and goes all the way to “putting every social media account I have on private for days/weeks until the threats and demeaning messages stop.” anytime I speak candidly about my life experiences, which are all intertwined with my Blackness and/or womanhood, I deal with some kind of consequence on this scale.

every time.

but now, my personal scale has extended to what I’m realizing has always been the inevitable, final stop: leaving social media.

in a lot of ways, I’m happy I’ve stuck with social media for as long as I’ve had. I’ve learned endlessly interesting and also useless but fun things. I’ve met some dope people. I’ve created connections with people I’ve never met but appreciate their online presence, who I know feel the same way about me. it’s been cool. and it’s also, for what I hope is the last time, been horrific, upsetting, and scary.

I’m scared. like right now, as I type this, I’m worried the Pr*gerU shitheads will bring my name to reddit and other places that encourage even worse targeted harassment (like that time they spammed my IG posts with comments that were all some version of “stupid nigger go back to africa and eat your dog” after someone reposted a viral tweet I made about the need for reparations on reddit).

I’m scared of being doxxed, especially since my name, the city I live in, and where I’ll be working is easily found. I’m scared this will finally be the time someone takes their online aggression, offline. even though I didn’t even say anything bad. I talked about my life, my honest experience, and it infuriated thousands of people.

I don’t want to keep dealing with [waves arms around] this, on any part of the harassment scale.

the worst part is how isolating being targeted is. how many people do you personally know have had a white conservative/nationalist account with 2 MILLION followers target them? how many people do you know who have had that happen to them multiple times? are they okay? are they even still online?

truly, the isolation is one of the worst parts. I have 21k followers across platforms and have never felt lonelier because of it. I don’t know how people with more than that can handle it. it feels like people either want to put me on a pedestal, or they want to bury me.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I didn’t sign up for this. I’m a regular, degular Black woman who enjoys writing and sharing and just wanted to do that for the catharsis and the fun of it. nobody’s paying me to be vulnerable and honest at this expense. I have to deal with backlash on my own. I have to heal from reading the most vile words you can imagine being sent to me, on my own. I get some thank you messages, I get a few venmos. but at the end of the day, it’s me, by myself, trying to have an authentic little corner of the internet while being shitted on in a thousand big and small ways.

I’m making this post because, even though social media ain’t an airport and I don’t have to announce my departure, it’s important to me that folks know why yet another Black woman is leaving the online spaces she’s cared for and built. I’ve posted consistently to social media for over 10 years. I have more funny, viral posts floating around than I can count. I wouldn’t have my bookstore if I’d let myself be harassed off the web any time over the previous years. but it’s not worth it anymore. and this is true for a lot of Black people, but women especially.

visibility without protection and support is just a target. and many of us have been unwittingly made targets by the elevation of our voices without any way to stay safe. this is on the people who tag us into arguments, who repost our words and don’t preface it with rules of engagement, who follow us without any commitment to doing internal anti-racist work. and it’s also on these social media companies for making it so fucking easy to harass marginalized people with no repercussions.

today: 25,000 likes. 1,500 comments. who knows how many shares to other websites.

another message: “do you ENJOY being a victim?? this is why Black people will never amount to anything in this country. you’re pathetic!”

whew. hard pass.

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thanks if you’ve helped make social media tolerable for me. thanks for showing your support for the things I do. I genuinely love and appreciate the jokes and the camaraderie and the solidarity I’ve found in the little bit of internet space I drummed up. it’s been dope when it’s been dope.

if you’re interested in hearing my thoughts, this substack will be the only place I’ll be posting them. you can subscribe, you can check back periodically when you randomly think “what happened to that ohdionne person” six months from now… whatever you want.

if you want to monetarily show appreciation for my time and energy, my venmo is @ohdionne45 or or orrrrrr you can donate to the bookstore (which is where the majority of my time and energy is going these days, but I’ll keep writing posts too).

and I’ll still be in community as always, of course. be good to each other. keep up with mutual aid and opportunities to volunteer your time. acab. no terfs. y’all know what it is.

okay byeeeeee.