Twitter’s logo is displayed on a computer screen in London. (Leon Neal/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

There’s a lot to chew on in this great roundtable discussion between Slate’s Jamelle Bouie and Aisha Harris, NPR’s Gene Demby and Virginia Commonwealth University professor Tressie McMillan Cottom about what happens when white readers ask black writers to tell them what to feel or to rule on their racial bona fides. Because I’m a critic, I was especially struck by an observation McMillan Cottom made about the role of writers and how social media has inflected what audiences expect from them.

“With Jamelle and Gene especially, I think these people think they are friends when they are really fans. Social media has collapsed the difference. And then this is refracted through racist assumptions about black people and black men specifically,” she wrote. “If the medium were books or something then people would be less inclined to think you’re ‘friends.’ Social media fleshes you out. We see glimpses of your humor and personal life, etc. For white people that gives just enough safe familiarity of a group they’d usually think is superdangerous. That heightens the appeal of thinking you’re friends.”

To a certain extent, social media is just an extension of the requirement writers and plenty of other artists have always faced to market ourselves and our work. But I think McMillan Cottom is correct to identify the unique demands social media makes as part of that marketing process. It’s not merely enough to tweet out or post your latest story on Facebook. To build a genuine following, you often end up having to share at least some minutiae of your life. It’s a development that’s turned all of us, no matter how disinclined we are toward the form, into confessional writers.

The burdens imposed by that illusion of intimacy are different for writers, of course. Nobody’s pinging me to make sure that they’re not being anti-Semitic, or to ask me to validate that they are, in fact, sufficiently feminist. But in an environment where social sharing is an increasingly mandatory part of interacting and keeping up with other people, writers have to measure the cost of what they share. Sometimes, that’s because of concerns about privacy: Opening up your life means it’s possible that your moments of joy or humor will be used against you. And for other writers and in other ways, the problem isn’t always the possibility of violation: It’s that readers might think they know you a little too well, and assume the prerogatives of friendship.*

*None of this is intended to cast aspersions on any of you. Y’all are awesome.