K-pop stans have emerged as hashtag heroes amid Black Lives Matter protests across the country, and after coordinating to spam a Dallas P...
K-pop stans have emerged as hashtag heroes amid Black Lives Matter protests across the country, and after coordinating to spam a Dallas Police Department reporting app with fancams earlier this week, they're using their collective might to drown out tags like #whitelivesmatter and #bluelivesmatter on Twitter and Instagram with fancams and other memes.
On the morning of Wednesday, June 3, hashtags like #whitelivesmatter, #whiteoutwednesday, and #BlueLivesMatter were all trending for at least on Twitter, with the term "K-pop" itself also trending at number 14. Later, #kpopstans also trended in the United States, with people expressing messages of support and at times, surprise, of the ways that K-pop stans had commandeered the hashtags.
All of the tags are full of memes, fancams, and messages of support from K-pop fans.
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Similar tags on Instagram looked the same, showing K-pop content instead of "whiteout" squares.
The tag spamming is intended to drown out any chatter on tags that run counter to ongoing protests over the killing of George Floyd in police custody and other Black Americans like Breonna Taylor who have recently been killed by police. That includes #whitelivesmatter or #whiteoutwednesday, both of which are intended to mimic other hashtags that have recently been circulating like #Black_Lives_Matter or #BlackoutTuesday.
K-pop stans have put their collective fandom might to use in the digital space over the course of the protests, working to prevent fandom-related tags or topics from trending out of respect for #BlackLivesMatter and later drowning out racist posts by doing what they do best: spamming fancam after fancam after fancam. They also might have contributed the Dallas Police Department's iWatch Dallas app going down by overloading it with fancams (Dallas PD did not provide comment on why the interruption in service occured), and also recently took over a hashtag proposed by the Kirkland Police Deparment (#calminkirkland), causing it to trend under the "kpop" label as well.
The #whitelivesmatter K-pop takeover is just the latest in a series of incidents that have made K-pop stans hashtag watchdogs on platforms like Twitter and Instagram as protests around the world continue. Given that K-pop fans are extremely online, organize and rally around hashtags better than most fandoms, and have more than proven their willingness to support Black Lives Matter in the digital space, any further K-pop hashtag takeovers shouldn't come as much of a surprise.
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