Shafiqah Hudson (January 10, 1978 – February 15, 2024) was an American Black feminist.[1] She launched the #YourSlipIsShowing hashtag, exposing a disinformation campaign in which anti-feminist trolls posed as Black feminists.
Early life and education
Hudson was born January 10, 1978, in Columbia, South Carolina and grew up mostly in Florida with her mother, a computer engineer, and her brother, after her parents divorced. Her father was a martial arts instructor and author. She also had three sisters.[1]
Hudson attended Palm Beach County School of the Arts, then earned a BA in Africana studies with a minor in political science in 2000 from Hobart and William Smith Colleges.[1]
After college, Hudson moved to New York City, where she worked for non-profits,[1] and as a freelance writer who wrote for publications such as Essence, The Toast, xoJane, Model View Culture and the website of Ebony.[2][3][4]
Online work against disinformation
Hudson became aware of digital blackface in the mid-2000s, and began calling it out on Twitter after she joined in 2009.[5]
Beginning in 2014, under the Twitter handle @sassycrass,[6] she was responsible for the #YourSlipIsShowing hashtag, which exposed anti-feminist trolls who were pretending to be Black feminists.[2][7][8] She became suspicious of the accounts due to an inability to verify the identities of the accounts, the contempt shown by the trolls for the people they were attempting to imitate, the outlandish nature of the tweets and their inaccurate use of African American Vernacular English.[2][8] She aggregated their posts under the #YourSlipIsShowing hashtag.[1] The trolls' invention of the fake #EndFathersDay hashtag, as part of a broader 4chan-based campaign called Operation: Lollipop,[7][9] has been identified as a precursor to Gamergate and the disinformation spread during the 2016 election that resulted in Donald Trump becoming president of the United States.[2]
Despite the significance of her work on disinformation, Hudson was never compensated.[1]
Death
Hudson died at an extended-stay hotel in Portland, Oregon on February 15, 2024, at the age of 46. Hudson was survived by her father, her brother and her sisters.[1] She had suffered from Crohn's disease and respiratory illnesses, her brother told The New York Times.[1] She also told social media followers that she had Long COVID, a recent cancer diagnosis and that she had no money to pay for her care.[1]
Publications
- "Black In The Imaginationscape". Model View Culture. Retrieved 2024-03-06.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Green, Penelope (2024-03-05). "Shafiqah Hudson, Who Fought Trolls on Social Media, Dies at 46". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-03-06.
- ^ a b c d Hampton, Rachelle (2019-04-23). "The Black Feminists Who Saw the Alt-Right Threat Coming". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 2024-03-06.
- ^ Netroots Nation: Speaker/Trainer Profile: Shafiqah Hudson
- ^ "Black In The Imaginationscape". Model View Culture.
- ^ Jones, Ellen E. (2018-07-08). "Why are memes of black people reacting so popular online?". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-03-07.
- ^ York, Jillian C. (2021-03-23). Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism. Verso Books. p. 195. ISBN 978-1-78873-880-4.
- ^ a b Eordogh, Fruzsina (March 9, 2018). "Black Feminists Are USA's Best Defense Against Meme Warfare, Fake News, Foreign And Domestic Trolls". Forbes. Retrieved 2024-03-07.
- ^ a b Gallagher, Fergal (October 25, 2020). "Minority communities fighting back against disinformation ahead of election". ABC News. Retrieved 2024-03-06.
- ^ Jackson, Lauren Michele (2019-11-12). White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue . and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation. Beacon Press. pp. 98–100. ISBN 978-0-8070-1180-5.