I believe it was William Shakespeare, in his great tragedy, Othello, who said:
“Everybody wants to be a nigga, but nobody wants to be a nigga.”
Or maybe the quote comes from the 192nd chapter of Psalms. Or the Emancipation Proclamation ... I’m not quite sure. But in the two thousand and eighteenth year of our transracial lord and savior Rachel N’Becky Shaka Zoolander Dolezal, blackness has become a removable costume.
And now, a Twitter user whose name is a portmanteau from the n-word and “Catfishing”—the practice of using the internet and a gallon-sized bottle of bronzer to change one’s identity into something more attractive—has revealed a long list of Alabaster-Americans who have been posing as black on social media.
On Wednesday, someone who calls herself “Niggerfished” (whose name I assumed was a racial slur like “porch monkey” or “moon cricket”) started a twitter thread outing white people who have been cosplaying as African Americans on the internet.
Despite what Shakespeare, Megyn Kelly and Abraham Lincoln would have you believe, apparently there are at least a few people who want to be black, the first of which is Swedish Instagram figure Emma Hallberg, who has been using what seems to be a diluted, Dollar Tree bottle of blackface paint to portray herself as black-adjacent.
And apparently, Emma once dated the famous actor Jesse Williams, who was shown during his younger days wearing braids and ... Wait. That’s not Jesse Williams? It’s just some white dude wearing cornrows? That can’t be right. What in the name of Allen Whiteverson is going on in Sweden? Someone call 23AndMe, stat!
But Hallberg is tame compared to some of the others like @Lilysawtheboysn, who looks like she used a tanning bed set on broil to get her Great Value melanin look. Although many denounce this as new-millennium blackface, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.
Maybe Kim Kardashian fell asleep in an oversized air fryer.
The thread is also a valuable scientific tool that can be used to teach genetic biology. Did you know that if an Olsen twin sits in the sun for too long, her DNA is altered and she becomes Amber Rose?
It wasn’t just women who were being outed. Niggerfish brought out notorious Niggerfisher Danrue, the jolly-footed Caucasoid cosplayer who had previously come out of the closet as preferring Kale to collard greens.
Aside from the skin darkening prevalent on the thread, there were some incredible body transformations that seemed absolutely unreal.
(Editor’s note: No, really. This can’t be real. — Maiysha)
I don’t know what kind of satanic technology is required to achieve this neo-blackness, but this some next-level shit. And why is her phone on Low Power Mode at 41 percent? Maybe we can gather these caricatures of blackness up and make them march in a caravan to Central America.
While this may seem funny, it must be nice to occupy such a fortunate space in society that you want a temporary reprieve from all that privilege. Being white must be like being full at a Las Vegas buffet. White people do shit like this all the time. They will live in a million-dollar mansion and build a vintage log cabin on Lake Whiteynono. The will pay $100 an hour to go rock climbing... Inside!
Maybe niggerfishing is the new “glamping.”
Or maybe their racist minds can only conceive of blackness as a caricature. For them, blackness is just big booties and box braids. Blackness is being allowed to use the n-word without guilt and saying “yasss queen!” at the negro dancery.
I can’t condemn them, though, because, I too have niggerfished. On June 23, 2001, I portrayed myself as a white man on the internet but it didn’t work for me.
They liked my resumé but knew I was niggerfishing them when I showed up for the interview.
I’ll end with this one:
Also, to Latisha Holmes, who called me a fake-ass nigga in college when I refused to buy her a drink because I only had $7.34 to my name, I say...
I told you I was a real nigga.