Isn’t technology amazing? I cannot fathom a world without a search engine at my fingertips. How did we cope before them? Sometimes, I remember I completed university without the distracting diversions of YouTube, and marvel silently. When I realise neither Tumblr nor Twitter were around to derail my academic career, I thank my lucky stars. In 2017, aka the hyperbolic age, we get to receive (perceived) threats of nuclear war issued via 140 characters (or, as of last month, 280), and people with strange avatars can threaten you with bodily harm. It’s sometimes easy to forget there is joy to be wrung out of a life lived even partly online.

CaShawn Thompson’s inadvertent #BlackGirlMagic movement has weathered all sorts since its inception, from applause to cries of “reverse racism” (no such thing exists, friends). The concept is simple: it’s a celebration of black girls and women in a world all too happy to make them small, and to discard their contributions.

At its best, it creates a waterfall effect of good news, of black women living life on their terms, succeeding beyond every expectation. It exists for the parade-worthy achievements, but also for the little victories and innovations that move us as individuals and as a collective, across social platforms. If you’re a sentimental fool like me, it might have helped make the internet a little less bleak on the roughest of days. And on buoyant days when I feel invincible, the idea of that magic feels like the sun on my face: pure and life-giving.

Hashtags won’t save us, in the end. But they’re useful, all the same.