One of the largest and most vocal group on social media are K-pop fans.
These tens and thousands of Korean pop music lovers have tweeted some 6 billion times in 2019 alone, making them one of the most influential social media users.
As the death of George Floyd while under police custody stirred one of the largest public demonstrations in recent history, hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter and #BlackoutTuesday gained large traction online.
Proving that Newtonian law applies online as well, parodies and opposing hashtags also became much more active. The opponents of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement used hashtags of their own such as #WhiteLivesMatter.
As these hashtags, some of which were used by those who clearly showed racist tendencies, became more prevalent, K-pop fans decided to step in and essentially render these hashtags useless.
By posting many completely unrelated memes, pictures and videos of their favorite boy / girl bands, the anti-BLM posts have been drowned away online.
The essence of a hashtag is that when one searches the hashtag, that user can see what everyone else is saying about that issue. By bombarding them with completely unrelated content, the anti-BLM hashtags have lost all its usefulness.
Now, when a Twitter user search hashtags such as #WhiteLivesMatter or #BlueLivesMatter, all they can see are a seemingly infinite number of performances from popular K-pop groups such as BTS, Black Pink and Twice.
For instance, one Twitter user used #BlueLivesMatter and went on to say that the only blue that is important to her is the hair of BTS’ Namjoon, who has blue hair. Twitter is full of these obvious jokes and deliberate attempts to stop anti-BLM posts and hashtags gaining traction.
In another instance, K-pop fans also nullified police efforts that encouraged people to report videos of protestors. When the Dallas Police Department made an app for this purpose, it was also bombarded by videos of K-pop celebrities. The app has been pulled off due to “technical difficulties”.
K-pop celebrities themselves have spoken out on the issue, which is one of the reasons why the fans are supportive of the BLM movement. For instance, BTS used the BLM hashtag after criticizing racism and violence.
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Replaced!