K-pop Fans Are Flooding Racist Twitter Feeds With Fancams And Fan Art

As demonstrators in major cities around the nation continue to collect to protest systemic racism and police brutality against the Black community, and to mourn the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, among numerous others, a unlikely order has chimed in to issue its support: K-pop fans are collectively stanning in solidarity with protesters by fighting back against online racism and policing tactics.


By Wednesday morning (June 3),  the hashtag #WhiteLivesMatter was trending on Twitter. Nevertheless as an alternative opposed to the racist comments one would friend with the white supremacist slogan, which was coined in 2015 in opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement's protests after the killing of Michael Brown at the hands of a Ferguson policeman, the feed was dominated by vibrant fan art, cartoonish memes, and joyful clips of South Korean boy bands dancing in brilliant harmony. The images and fancams, or short videos of live performances, were overwhelmingly shared with captions denouncing racism and calling out police brutality.


"Queen Lalisa mentioned racists can fuck off!" One post read, featuring a drawing of Lisa, of the popular girl sort Blackpink, holding up her middle finger. Another post shared similar messaging in all-caps ("F*CK RACISTS") while declaring a bias for the industry's titanic Bangtan men ("Stan BTS"). This tweet, like several others flooding the platform, also included the rhetorically similar hashtag #AllLivesMatter and the pro-cop #BlueLivesMatter, two other racist eats that K-pop stans have since inundated.


The move came in the wake of The Show Must Be Paused, a plea to the music industry by executives Jamila Thomas and Brianna Agyemang to halt normal firm operations on Tuesday (June 2) to mirror, bring attention to the issues in this instance, and hold their colleagues accountable, which eventually became referred to as "Blackout Tuesday." Several people took the possibility to share black squares on their social media eats and tagging #BlackLivesMatter in a task to declare allyship; although, the action effectively flooded a feed filled with actionable products and resources from activists on the ground with dark boxes, only causing further confusion.


As Variety suggested, this inspired K-pop fans to take action, who flipped the action on its head and turned it into a tactic to intentionally flood racist spaces. Several have since incorporated the hashtag #WhiteoutWednesday.


The mobilization followed an earlier move by K-pop fans to protect protesters in Dallas, Texas. On Sunday (May 31), right after a wave of demonstrations in the city over the weekend, the Dallas Police Department asked followers through the Twitter to send in "video of against the law activity from the protests" through their iWatch Dallas app. K-pop fans took notice of the opening tweet, per BuzzFeed News, flooding the app with gifs and videos. The following day, the Dallas police tweeted that "due to technical difficulties iWatch Dallas app will be down temporarily."


The Dallas Police Department's iWatch Dallas app is currently back up and running, according to a statement.