K Pop fans have been supporting the Black Lives Matter movement both on and offline
making sure to use their voices to speak out about racial inequalities after the tragic
murder of George Floyd.
What’s up? It’s Sussan Mourad here with Clevver News and this week many people have
been using their platforms, big and small, to speak out on the wrongful death of George
Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many more who have tragically lost their
lives due to the color of their skin.
At Clevver we all stand with our black co-workers, friends, and viewers in this fight for change.
We’ve linked some resources and places to donate down in the description below and we
will continue to cover these stories and have these conversations because this is only just
the beginning.
Alright, so let’s talk about K Pop fans. We know that K Pop fans are some of the most
passionate, biggest, loudest, proudest and most widespread fans in the world.
I mean we’ve all seen how they can get something to trend at number one on Twitter just in
a matter of minutes, we see you BTS ARMY and BLINKS.
And now they are stepping in and stepping up to use their strong voices where they are
needed to support the Black Lives Matter movement.
Earlier this week we all saw many people sharing either a black square or amplifying black
voices for #BlackoutTuesday.
The day was originally created by activists to observe, mourn, reflect and reset, and
bring about policy change following the death of George Floyd.
And unfortunately, the trend was followed by the disgusting and disturbing hashtag,
#WhiteOutWednesday, on Twitter, which was started by white supremacists.
The hashtag #WhiteLivesMatter was another tag that also started trending as part of
this horrible attempt to shift the narrative.
As the #WhiteOutWednesday hashtag started trending many people shared the vile tweets
they were seeing writing things like “I can’t believe what I’m seeing #whiteoutwednesday”
And “#whiteoutwednesday helps me expediently find my racist white friends. Super helpful!”
And as the hashtag continued to trend on Twitter, this is where K Pop fans stepped in and did
what they do best.
They completely took over the hashtag and swarmed it with Black Lives Matter related
content.
One K Pop fan shared links to donate and wrote quote, “#whiteoutwednesday kpop stans eating
tf out of this, love yall not gonna lie. Anyways sign and donate!
Another chimed in with this meme writing quote, “I'm gonna hijack white out wednesday and
show y'all what you're doing. Fuck #whiteoutwednesday”
Another person shared this video and wrote quote, “kpop stans ruining every white supremacist
hashtag. i truly love to see it. #whiteoutwednesday”
And this person shared this video thanking the K Pop community writing quote, “To all
the KPOP stans that are drowning out the #WhiteLivesMatter and #WhiteoutWednesday hashtags.”
And others are just using the hashtag to drown out negative tweets and share photos of their
favorite K Pop artists.
But this isn’t the first time K Pop fans have stepped in during this movement.
As people have been protesting in support of the Black Lives Matter movement around
the country and world, the Dallas Police Department put out a call on Twitter for people to report
quote "illegal activity from the protests" via its iWatch Dallas app.
Their tweet said quote, “If you have video of illegal activity from the protests and
are trying to share it with @DallasPD, you can download it to our iWatch Dallas app.
You can remain anonymous.”
But instead, K-pop fans took the opportunity to call on each other to spam the app with
fancams.
And in case you don’t know what that is, fancams are short videos, in this case of
a K Pop star, usually taken by a fan and posted online. In most cases the K Pop star is performing,
or it could be a video montage.
They look a little something like this...
And here’s what K Pop fans were saying and doing.
This person tweeted, “guys download the app and fucking FLOOD that shit with fancams
make it SO HARD for them to find anything besides our faves dancing”
Another wrote quote, “The only reason to post fancams in 2020 is to protect the identities
of BLM protestors. Go do your thing”
In addition this fan tweeted, “Download the app and send all your fancams! Send them
all! Make their jobs as hard as possible! Get them frustrated! Make them take the app
down!”
And others started sharing what they were sharing in the app like this person who posted
screenshots and wrote “I’m in.”
And another shared this screenshot and wrote quote, “Let the games begin MOTHERFUCKERSSSS”
So many K Pop fans downloaded the app and uploaded their fancams that the Dallas Police
app actually temporarily went down.
A K Pop fan, who preferred to be referred to by their Twitter handle @YGSHLT, spoke
to Insider saying why they decided to flood the iWatch app.
They said quote, “Originally I tweeted because I saw a post about how the Dallas PD would
probably be using the app to arrest protestors, and I wanted to do something to stop them/slow
them down. I saw a few comments underneath it with the idea to spam the app with something,
and since I'm a kpop stan the first thing I thought of was fancams.”
And the fan also said that many K Pop fans have also been using their voices offline
and donating to bail out funds.
They said quote, “All of us want to help in any way possible. We really appreciate
everything the protestors are doing out there and we don't want them to get in trouble.”
I want to know what you guys think about all of this and let us know how you are using
your voices to create change.
And if you want to see which celebs have been getting involved in the protests, click right
over here for another Clevver News video.
I’m your host, Sussan Mourad, bye guys!