There are loads of caveats to this analysis, which I'll get to in a moment. But first, a digression into one of the leading explanations for these memes—the theory that the hashtags are sparked by something particular to black culture. "There's a long oral dissing tradition in black communities," says Baratunde Thurston, the Web editor of the Onion, whose funny presentation at this year's South by Southwest conference, "How To Be Black Online," argued that blacktags were a new take on the Dozens. "Twitter works very naturally with that call-and-response tradition—it's so short, so economical, and you get an instant signal validating the quality of your contribution." (If people like what you say, they retweet it.)

I don't twitter so I don't know about this phenomenon, but "playing the dozens" was a staple of my formative years (I went to predominantly African-American public schools.) Anyone know about this?