Dayna Carney

YouTube soon became a game of “What’s the craziest thing you’d do for attention?”

My answer? Legally marry my sister’s boyfriend.   (It was meant to be a lighthearted joke. Our union has since been annulled.)

Nearly three million people have watched that video; by the numbers, I should consider it and others like it as successes. But there’s an

This element of neighbourly communication is hugely important for early warning systems, says Jennifer Trivedi, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware's Disaster Research Center.

"Often, when I ask people in the field where they heard about an incoming hurricane, or changing floodwaters, they talk about hearing it from

Then you’d walk outside and squint at the sky, just you in your body, not tethered to any network, adrift by yourself in a world of strangers in the sunlight.

Even so, I was also a teenager, making decisions based on the visibility that our culture teaches us to desire. I knew that my audience wanted to feel authenticity from me. To give that to them, I revealed pieces of myself that I might have been wiser to keep private.

Nielsen  reported  that Black consumers are in a “remarkable period of influence,” with the “highest smartphone ownership and usage of any demographic group and an unyielding desire for self-expression and image control.” 

Black teenage girls are the invisible tastemakers creating and popularizing some of the biggest trends simply by being their authentic selves. It’s the everyday Black girl, without a platform or the machine of capitalism behind her, who exudes cool without having to try.