#TimeTitles

Overview

#TimeTitles is a hashtag associated with tweets featuring satirical news headlines that try to explain African American culture or slang in an out-of-touch way. The hashtag was inspired by Time Magazine's superficial coverage of the term's popularity in an article titled “This is What ‘Bae’ Means.”

Background

On July 23rd, 2014, Time Magazine^[1] published an article titled “This is What ‘Bae’ Means," which described not only the definition but the origin of the word "bae," prompted by Pharrell Williams’ same-day release of his latest music video “Come Get It Bae. Upon its publication, Twitter user PiaGlenn^[2] introduced the hashtag #TimeTitles to poke fun at Time’s coverage of trends which began in the African American community with the fictional title “Who in the world is Daquan, anyway?” which references the fictional young black man often joked about within black communities on Twitter.

Notable Developments

On July 24th, The Root^[4] published an article titled "Time Tried to Explain the Word ‘Bae’ and Twitter Went in With #TimeTitles." The same day the hashtag was covered by several sites including Hip Hop Wired^[5] and UpRoxx.^[6] Within 24 hours the hashtag^[3] was tweeted out over 27,000 times.

External References