Social media is the most powerful tool of communication in our modern era. If you doubt that, look at the decisions the people in power are taking to control it. The battle rap community on Twitter(not calling it X) is one of the best and easiest ways for a battler to promote themselves, network with other leagues, build potential matchups, and connect with fans and supporters. A new era of battlers has gone from Spaces to Places, doing audio-based battles and transitioning into in-person battles. Names like Oppa, Yunus, Rainefire Moon, Woosaah, Rocq-lee, and many others eventually evolved from Twitter Spaces to professional leagues like GTX, I-battle, KOTD, URL, and QOTR. We’ve seen entire cards built off the energy of the spaces and even a league form basically off of straight spaces’ momentum in Midnight Madness. The platform’s immediacy and accessibility have amplified voices, sparked rivalries, but, most importantly, redefined how the culture engages with the art form. The impact is undeniable. There’s entertainment there as well, but with impact and influence come controversy, negativity, and questions. The topic arises every few weeks/months/days: “Are spaces important? Why does anyone care? Are they more harmful than good?” The truth is the questions aren’t totally invalid, but the answer is more complex.
Twitter and battle rap have always had a symbiotic relationship. In 2022, when Tsu Surf(Free the Wave) hopped on almost daily, it was like a new energy surfaced. Midnight Madness for LTBR mainly served as a massive wave of followers for the platform because of the intense, constant promotion and talking. It was a fun time that sparked endless conversations. Now, for as great as that moment in time was, we can’t gloss over the negatives and flaws that were shown in spaces becoming the primary hub of battle rap media consumption. It displayed the cracks in the foundation, how easily it could go from a fun place to an entity of mindless, pointless content that would too often end with unproductive conversations that led to no battles, only empty threats as the results of arguments that went left. Then there’s the unfortunate ending to the entire Midnight Madness situation that ended in the same manner it began, loudly on the spaces. A sad ending for what was a productive platform that helped showcase some talents that didn’t have that level of attention and spotlight, but the question of whether it was destined to end that way because of how online it was couldn’t be ignored.

Fans were early on the spaces; you could pull up at any time of day and hear a debate about any battle rap topic you can think of. It’s an awesome community within a community, but one shift happened once battlers got more involved and started running their own spaces; there were fewer honest conversations being had. There would be active revisionist history that would go unchecked and unchallenged due to the status of the host. It’s similar to the athlete-run podcasts of the day, where many players get to create or rewrite their stories to put themselves in the most positive light despite what many know to be the ins and outs of situations. This isn’t saying everyone shouldn’t be able to tell their own story, but a little bit of challenge and pushback can go a long way into building a full picture that tells a greater story; life is full of good and bad, and downplaying one for the other is never good.
Everyone Can Have a Voice
As time goes on, spaces are still frequent. There are your consistent faces that run a bulk of the spaces you can find aggregated and chopped up on YouTube. You can pop in at any time of day and turn on a space to help pass the time throughout your day. It’s a nice way to break up the monotony for sure. However, there is a fascinating blurring of the lines. In a lot of ways, spaces have taken over as an instant source of news. A lot of the consistent faces you see there identify themselves as fans, yet their opinions and influence can sometimes rival media brands within the culture. Some have even parlayed their spaces experience into management or even league owner positions, which is awesome. But the problem is once you take an official role in the culture, you are no longer just a fan.
You are now in a position of influence on the game. Once you have influence, you now have a greater responsibility for your words. Now it’s the internet. Anyone can say anything, which happens plenty enough. The point is that once you get into a professional role within the game, you are no longer simply a fan, and you can be held accountable for the things said. Anything said in a public forum can be scrutinized, regardless of your status, and once someone is consistently in a place enough to where their conversations become consistent content fodder, they are now something greater than just a fan. They’ve become a spokesman of sorts, whether that was their intention or not. I believe these blurred lines are the cause of a lot of the backlash and rejection of the spaces community.
Blurred Lines

Blurred lines are the easiest to cross, and oftentimes, the strongest negativity in spaces comes from disrespect. We all know and have lamented at some point the emboldened nature of people when it comes to speaking through the digital medium. It’s much easier to raise your voice or be disrespectful on a platform where you can’t see someone’s face and don’t know if you ever will. It’s also much easier to get reckless with your tone when you aren’t having a direct conversation or the person you’re speaking to isn’t in the room. Tact can quickly become a foreign concept on the internet. There’s also the strong wave of main characters; a frequent thing you’ll find in these environments is that many people aren’t comfortable just to exist; many people want to be the show and will try to be that by any means. This is a natural thing for us as people, especially if they’re frequently in a place; the more likely it is for a person to feel a strong sense of self-importance.
The spaces aren’t exempt from this behavior at all. This often leads to wild arguments that remind me of trashy guilty pleasure reality TV shows, with just nonsensical yelling into the void for hours; it’s not uncommon to see 2-3 spaces happening where it’s two people yelling about one another, but in separate spaces; of course, it’d be simpler for them to just hop in their space shuttle and go to the other planet, but that would require one to put their ego down for the greater good. We just can’t have that on the internet. When things like this happen, it’s easy to see why someone would call the spaces corny and question why they are needed or why these people have so many listeners and feel important.
Spaces Implications On Media
Spaces are largely a fan-run community, and I think it’s amazing to have battlers interact so directly with the people who support them. The legendary quote is, “With great power comes great responsibility.” There is power in the tongue; the spoken or written word has defined society for millennia. It cannot be overstated how much value there is in the power of speech. This isn’t to say all views and opinions must be respected or taken seriously. Still, it is saying if you choose to say your opinion in public, your view is subject to criticism regardless of how you view yourself, even if you only identify yourself as a fan. No one should be violated for a simple opinion, but no one is immune to critique. For me, this is where the spaces can make things blurry.
As a media member, I believe one of the most important traits is the ability to receive constructive and non-constructive criticism without getting into your feelings. I believe this trait is essential because we here often criticize someone’s art, and if a media member is incapable of taking critique, they shouldn’t give critique out, simply as that. You’ll often hear those in spaces frequently push off any notion of being media. While I understand why they do that, I don’t necessarily agree. The more your opinion is in public, the more weight it carries and the more visible you become. You’ve now involuntarily signed up for criticism, similar to any media platform. I think people should always be mindful of that. Also, if you don’t want that burden or criticism, there are plenty of ways to get your opinion off that aren’t in public. Group chats and Discord servers were created for a reason. Please use them.
Financial Implication

Nowadays, people can make a name for themselves in battle rap media by uploading long-form versions of heated or interesting exchanges from Twitter Spaces. You might find it more often battle rap pages will upload and archive these raw, unfiltered conversations, becoming the go-to source for capturing the moments that fans might have missed. This approach builds a loyal audience and will likely be more lucrative than traditional battle rap coverage. Instead of analyzing battles or doing recaps, they’re curating and preserving the digital history of these conversations. It’s easier to screen record and make more money than to break down bars and see less of a return for your time. You can make more money without ever having to reveal your opinion or having to show your face.
Make no mistake, uploading the spaces does have value for creating a paper trail, and it’s still a form of entertainment, but it also dilutes the media landscape entirely. If you are in the business of making money by covering battle rap, this resonates deeply with fans who crave authenticity and the playback option for some of these spaces (mainly if they aren’t recorded.) It’s become the new outlet of media in the culture.
It serves a purpose, and even tho traditional media is becoming more scarce, it still brings a necessity to depth, context, and expertise. Traditional Media invests in original reporting and in-depth analysis and provides an opinionated, discourse-driven society.
So Are Spaces Ruining Battle Rap?
Battle rap is a culture that can consistently garner hundreds of thousands of views; viral clips of battles can get into the millions. A space getting 2,000 listeners is a massive deal. Sometimes us battle rap degenerates can get so caught up in our online bubble that we can forget how much bigger this culture is than us; there is a huge contingency of battle rap fans who have never been on a space, don’t pay attention to the bloggers, and just watch every battle that drops. Spaces are more like stars; stars are important; they were even used to help navigation in ancient times, and now I would encourage any young talent in battle rap to navigate the Twitter spaces and build themselves a community of supporters through there. While spaces are like stars, this culture still revolves around the content; as long as good battles are being produced, no one thing can ruin this game we love. Blaming the negativity in battle rap on spaces is a simplistic take that’s easy to say, but much harder to prove when put under a microscope. Truth is battle rap is a largely negative culture; I joke all the time how battle rap is the most negative thing in my life because the content is all mostly violent, negative stuff, and I shamelessly love every second of it.

Negativity breeds negativity, so of course, there will be negative energy around it often; that’s the nature of what we do here. Twitter spaces are similar to podcasts; there are millions of them; a lot of them are more useless than useful, no doubt; treat it like a buffet; just because a buffet says “All-You-Can-Eat,” it doesn’t mean you have to eat until you can’t move anymore; go around, pick up what you want to pick up, go sit down and enjoy it; nobody picks up a bunch of food they don’t like at a buffet just to hate-eat it; you don’t go there and say “These Brussels sprouts are ruining food for me!” You just don’t put them on your plate; you ignore them and get something you like. Spaces are the same way: you pop in and listen to who you want to, treat everything in moderation, and things are much better. I’ve seen the spaces produce some amazing things: people have gotten real money, become genuine real-life friends, and get new experiences, perspectives, and all sorts of things. They’ve also had their destructive moments. There’s another cliché: “If you don’t feed it, it won’t grow.” I encourage everyone to take inventory of what they’re consuming, change their habits if needed, and see how much more they enjoy things.
There’s truly something for everyone; you have to put the work in to find it. “Touch grass” comes off poorly, but I encourage all of my fellow battle rap degenerates to get out of your online community echo chamber and hear some viewpoints from others who are less online than us. It’ll provide vital perspective. So no, spaces aren’t ruining battle rap; our consumption habits are ruining our perception of battle rap. Truthfully, we should all be getting off Twitter anyway, but that’s another story.