Dear Vibe Magazine, About Your Twitter After Dark Chat
The other night, Vibe Magazine’s Twitter account turned was turned over to radio personality, Angela Yee, for an hour for a “Twitter After Dark” chat. And I’m here to tell them to sit down for this decision. Because it was terrible, in my opinion. So here’s a sternly worded letter for the Vibe Magazine team.
Dear Vibe Magazine,
Ok what was that? Seriously. What was that Twitter chat about because I don’t understand. For many reasons. And it was terrible. For many reasons.
First of all, you’re a music and entertainment magazine that WAS cutting edge, and the go-to for young folks who loved to be in the know. What in the good world are you doing by having a crass sex-focused Twitter chat? It doesn’t e’em GO with what you represent. Not one bit. It was so damb irrelevant and I took it to mean you’re rebranding. You MUST want us to start thinking of you differently if you allow your corporate account to become smutville for a full hour.
Angela Yee, your moderator of choice, had me wanting to attack your account with bleach because it was gross and weird. I get it that we’re adults and sex is natural, but like with everything else, HOW you talk about something matters.
We were blessed with such gems as:
I’ve seen people tweet like this but not on an account with 390,000 followers. And not on a major brand’s channel. Not even on Playboy Magazine’s Twitter will you find this type of discussion.
And as if just that stuff wasn’t side-eye worthy enough. The tweets that were being posted on the account were so reductive of women. AND THEY WERE BY A WOMAN! I mean, what the hell?!?
Yes, because what we don’t have is enough conversations about “hoes.” Surely. O_O
This is what I call that boolsheet. This basic ass conversation with these basic ass questions only showed that Vibe was cosigning trite and stupid crap that did nothing to advance conversations about sex. These questions are the same things those wack relationship experts would ask. And the fact that they’re coming from a woman is doubly sad.
If you wanna talk about number of partners and you wanna talk about head or whatever else and you’re this once-classic magazine, then you find a better way to do it. You don’t have to create codenames of stuff but you also don’t have to paint this gross picture.
Did y’all even vet Angela Yee before this convo? Did you create guidelines? Clearly not, because she got on that account and ran ALL the amoks on there. And you let her. And I don’t e’em blame her because she did what y’all told her to do. And maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t smack dab in the middle of primetime.
Y’all talmbout “Twitter After Dark” and it was 9pm when this chat kicked off. It’s summertime. The sun JUST ended its shift and the moon was just clocking in. It’s barely time for that. Y’all coulda waited til 11pm for this trash or e’em midnight. Thirst.
It was a bad idea and I wonder how the team meeting that led to this chat went. Who are the people who thought a gutter chat like this was the move that the magazine needed?
If your mission was to get attention, then congratulations. And if your goal was to get folks replying to your tweets, kudos. However, all attention isn’t good and all engagement isn’t quality. Do I wanna read your publication more right now? Absolutely not. I’d rather read an essay by Joseline Hernandez.
As a company, you whored yourself out for retweets and used social media coupons that expired. Shame on you. Go have a seat and re-assess the judgment of the team that approved this decision. ALL’EM need to go sit in a corner and face the wall until they figure out what they did wrong.
Because FAIL.
Yours in side-eyedom,
LuvBug
So what did you think of Vibe’s tweets? Am I a prude for being like “ew?”
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25 Comments
Girl you better stop. I almost dropped my glass of wine @ thirst. And the gif. Idied. Its too early in the morning luvvie lmao
9 pm? Hm no. That was a mess of affairs from start to finish. I am so disappointed in Vibe for that hot ass mess. Smh.
I stopped reading after Danyel Smith and Emil Wilbekin were left, so I didn’t even know it was still around. But really? It just goes to show you that this generation gets nothing but trash thrown at them and they’re a generation that matters as well. Completely disgusting!
You get all the interweb points today! I totally agree that this current generation gets bombarded with nothing but smut & soft porn on all fronts. You can’t listen to the radio, watch videos or cartoons or read a damn book without it being saturated with sex or innuendos! I’m grown and I get sick of it; AND this is the generation that matters…
Damn I luv you for this world-class dressdown. POW!
My favorite tweet in response to this mess: “@Embassy730:
Vibe found a new species of shark and jumped it.”
I’m someone who both likes sex and likes to talk about sex, but I thought this “After Dark” talk was a HOT AZZ MESS. It was so the opposite of sex positive and I had no idea it was a woman behind those tweets. It sounded like the rambling awkward questions of a 12 year old boy who’s been taught about sex by his drunk and inappropriate uncle. This was all the way wrong and I say shame on Vibe and Angela Yee.
And this is one of the main reasons I’m over social media. People will do anything for a like, retweet, or mention.
“Y’all talmbout “Twitter After Dark” and it was 9pm when this chat kicked off. It’s summertime.” <—*logs the hell off* lmaooo!!!
I gasped at that first tweet. Seriously, VIBE? And I agree.. 9pm does not constitute as ‘After Dark’. Scandal doesn’t even come on until 10PM. So VIBE.. and Angela Yee need to have several seats and stay there.
Vibe knew exactly what they were doing by having Angela Yee moderate. She used to have a radio show on XM/Sirius where they talked the same way. So this was intentional. I realize that Vibe has an annual sex issue, but this tweetchat wasn’t sexy, it was simple like a majority of what they cover lately.
Sooo that’s 7pm west coast time. Alla the babies are still up at 7pm. Its summer and my 3 year old is still up at 7pm. Its still hot azz hell at 7pm. No one thought about time zones. Their team needs to do better. SMH
Well I, for one, applaud Vibe. There should be more respected publications that delve into hard hitting issues such as these.
I was just thinking, as a matter of fact, why haven’t Vogue or The New Yorker, for that matter, concentrated their energies on a Buss Down Issue…why haven’t they attempted an issue focused on Road Head Techniques.
You have to give the people what they want, dammit! And apparently the people are very very crass nowadays 😐
@Brittni, I was wondering the same thing…maybe that’s what their readers want nowadays? Who knows. @Luvvie it’s not prudish to want your sex presented with class. Some of us have standards.
ummm, i thought Luvvie would mention the obvious. This ‘after dark’ convo on twitter is not the same a cinemax after dark before tivo; hence twitter lives on forever, aint that part of the point, it’s not always live chat, but you can go back and read this. So all the 12 year old boys who read/follow vibe now are thinking i’m supposed to buss in her mouth, eww, and kiss her, double ewww. (ok, if we were 20 years ago – hopefully that’s what my 12 year step son would say)
I just really wonder why no one can seem to have sex talks without scraping the bottom of the darn barrel…UGH, it’s just not necessary, ESPECIALLY for a company such as Vibe. Not all young folk like that, all young black folk are thugs and sexual deviants. SMH
Well when you have a known thotiana running the chat, what should you expect? I swear, yall gon’ learn to stop letting these hoes have important positions….Nola from Hustle and Flow got some of yall fucked up…No ma’am you are not in charge #DAFUQ #VibeWhoHurtYou
The fact that you said you’d rather read an essay by Joseline, when she basically quit school after she learned how to spell “cat” is just…
Wait. Vibe is still in existence?
Wow, I didn’t know Vibe was still being published. Sounds like it has really taken a turn for the worst.
I assume you mean 9pm in Chicago, which means it was only 7pm here on the West Coast (and it’s the Internet, so it was the middle of the day somewhere.) VIBE, and Black Twitter as a whole, needs to stop with this basic sex talk. Not here for it. At all
Vibe is still around? I’m getting OLD…ewww
I bet Tyrese would have done a better job.
I was taking a quick flight from DC to Connecticut a couple of weeks ago and bought an issue of Vibe for nostalgia’s sake. Sadly, the quality of the publication mirrors the base level of this twitter chat. I can’t believe that this is the same magazine that published that issue with TLC on the cover in fire suits and broke down Left Eye’s version of crazy. The writing was always provocative but never smutty. When I was 16 years old copping it, I felt cosmopolitan and urbane. Now I just feel like I needed a good bath after reading.
“I’d rather read an essay by Joseline Hernandez.”
_____I_______DIED___A_LITTLE_________________________________
Luvvie, you better stop that shit! you gonna get me fired lol
BUT…Vibe should have been snatching her wig soon as the first one was posted that sound like some mess dudes talk about at a bachelor hang nite