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This year, we’re celebrating Pride by acknowledging the LGBTQIA+ community’s long-standing history of breaking down barriers and lifting each other up. Throughout June, we’re featuring customers who embody the reality that resilience isn’t only about being persistent—it’s also about becoming stronger than before. From building community, to fueling creativity and encouraging activism, we’re honoring the LGBTQIA+ community as a continual source of strength, evolution, and inspiration.
Peyton Dix’s social media followers know that her work unapologetically and intentionally centers on Black and queer experiences, voices, and creators. She talked to Squarespace about her commitment to transparency, life as a social butterfly, and why being both a student and a teacher of others’ lived experiences will never stop.
SQUARESPACE: As a social media expert, content creator, and writer, you wear many professional hats. What inspired you to pursue a multi-faceted career?
PEYTON DIX: I honestly didn’t know having a job like mine was even possible. For a long time I didn’t even know what I wanted to do. All I know is I love learning about people, I love storytelling across all mediums and the way we tell stories on social media is quite literally evolving everyday and that excites me so much.
There simply is no way to detach my Blackness and queerness from my voice and it’s my voice that makes me so good at my job. It’s my Blackness and queerness that makes me even better at my job, honestly. We understand the internet and virality and communication in ways our straight or white counterparts simply do not.
I’ve always been a ~social butterfly~ as my negative childhood report cards would concur, so my ability to communicate with so many different types of people benefits the way I use social or tell stories. Basically, I pride myself on talking too damn much.
SQSP: How do you use your online presence to connect with or create community?
PD: My favorite thing to remind people is that sharing is “$free.99.” It costs 0.00 American US dollars to add to a story, to retweet, to forward to 10 friends or you will be cursed for a year. Especially now, it’s so easy to use our most immediate platforms to “amplify” others, but specifically Black folks. I put amplify in quotes because as my dear friend Mona Chalabi passed along to me, the word amplify infers a power dynamic that shouldn’t exist. Basically, use your platform to pass the mic.
I’m a slut for saved folders. I use them to categorize petitions to sign, people to follow, things to share, networks to build, etc. There are a lot of conversations happening online right now and new information thrown at us every day. This is good. This is great. This is change. And I personally always have more learning to do. I’m trying to engage as much as I can, and learn and educate in real-time.
SQSP: You’ve grown a loyal and engaged social media following. Can you share your approach to your audience — how do you decide which stories and themes resonate with your followers?
PD: My favorite thing to tell myself is to post whatever the fuck I want and also to archive whatever I want.
I know the things that inherently excite, energize, anger, or invigorate me will very likely reflect the interests of the following I’ve “built.” I don’t know why anyone would follow me if they weren’t prepared for pure chaos, Black power, or discourse about a female celebrity’s lesbian phase.
Transparency is key to me. I acknowledge I have truly terrible taste, I know my interests are niche, and I also know that I will never not be loud about the things that matter to me.
SQSP: Squarespace is exploring the idea of ‘resilience as a revolution’ as it relates to pride. How does the idea of resilience factor into your definition of pride and your experience as part of the LGBTQIA+ community?
PD: It’s been said before but I will say it again and I will say it loud: PRIDE WAS A RIOT. The original pride was the definition of resistance and its origin (which is often erased by rainbows and white cis gays) is in reaction to police brutality. The movement was thrown into action by Black trans women and Black queer femmes. That lives in me. I’m here to remember the *accurate* history of my people, to talk my shit, and to pass the mic to the more marginalized members of my community.