Met Gala Sparks Social Media Outrage Over Celebrity Silence on Gaza War: NPR

Zendaya at the 2024 Met Gala in New York. The actress is one of several celebrities whose names have appeared on social media “block” lists this week for not speaking out publicly about the conflict in Gaza.

Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

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Zendaya at the 2024 Met Gala in New York. The actress is one of several celebrities whose names have appeared on social media “block” lists this week for not speaking out publicly about the conflict in Gaza.

Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

A collective effort on TikTok and other social media platforms to push celebrities to speak publicly about the conflict in Gaza gained momentum this week after the Met Gala.

Creators on TikTok have earned millions of views for videos they made linked to hashtags like #celebrityblocklist, #letthemeatcake, and #blockout.

Many of these posts list the names of actors, musicians and other high-profile figures who, according to the video’s creators, have not yet spoken out against Israeli attacks on the region – or have not spoken out. not sufficiently pronounced – and should therefore be blocked.

And there has been a special push in recent days to name those who attended the lavish, star-filled annual Met Gala on Monday.

“I created a Google Doc of every celebrity who attended the Met Gala, and now I’m going through and writing about whether they stayed silent or used their platform to speak out about the genocide in Gaza,” a said one TikTok user in a video displaying a long list of celebrity names on a black background with the word “SILENT” in red alongside some, including Zendaya, Nicki Minaj, Keith Urban and Andrew Scott. “Some of these celebrities have not remained completely silent,” continues the Tiktoker. “Zendaya posted an article last October about her support for Palestine, but has remained silent since. So I decided to put ‘silent’.”

The Met Gala fans the flames

Calls on social media to boycott celebrity silence have been slowly growing for months.

But the fact that the New York event, with its uncontrolled display of privilege and wealth, took place around the same time that thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee Rafah less than 24 hours before Israeli troops took control of the border of Gaza territory. crossing with Egypt, fanned the glowing embers until they fully ignited.

“The Met Gala was a bit of a hyperbolic moment that caught a lot of people’s attention,” said Marcus Collins, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan. “Celebrity boycotts had existed, but they weren’t really at the top of the social zeitgeist. But then there was a moment like the Met Gala that wasn’t really about the conflict, but where all the elements were at play. When the attacks (in Gaza) took place on the same day, the juxtaposition just got people talking and moving.”

Even relatively minor celebrities like social media influencer Hayley Baylee — who wasn’t even a guest at the event, but was hired as a pre-gala host to interview guests as they headed to party – were caught up in the backlash. TikTok.

Many creators posted negative reactions to a video Baylee posted of herself that night (which has since been taken down), saying, “Let them eat cake!” It was a nod, as she later admitted in a video apologizing for her actions, to a current social media trend for looks inspired by Marie Antoinette, and to a line from the film from 2006 starring Kirsten Dunst, about the unfortunate Queen of France.

“The world is simply not peaceful or stable enough for the average person to accept and appreciate celebrities flaunting their wealth on social media,” one TikTok user said in response to both Baylee’s comments. misstep and the general display of wealth in New York that night. “Putting pressure on farmers only works when farmers don’t see other farmers disappearing from the face of the planet.”

The impact of celebrity blocking on the population of Gaza

The reason behind calls on social media to block celebrities, which would negatively impact their advertising revenue, is to put pressure on them to use their massive influence to try to end violence in Gaza.

“We hope this will bring more visibility to the cause and shift the balance in getting political forces like the U.S. government to do something to alleviate the violence happening in the Middle East,” Collins said. “But as rational as that logic sounds, I don’t think there are many examples where it actually worked.”

Collins cited the example of George Clooney’s efforts, although predating the rise of social media, to end the war in Sudan. A 2014 article in The Guardian by Sudanese journalist Maeve Shearlaw assessed the impact of the celebrity’s dedicated efforts over the years to bring about change: “I don’t see that it stopped, or even reduced, the genocide. The killings, displacements, sexual assaults and rape have never stopped. »

On the other hand, pressure on social media has sometimes impacted the way celebrities speak out about world events. For example, the backlash against Oprah Winfrey and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for asking the public to donate to a Maui wildfire recovery fund last fall led both men to invest more of their own resources in this effort. However, the amount of their contribution was not disclosed.

The impact on everyone

It remains to be seen whether the latest campaign to block celebrities on social media will bring positive change for the people of Gaza.

But some experts say the fact that it doesn’t directly target the problem, but rather celebrities who remain silent, obscures the desired goal.

“It’s not what we debate and what we talk about and talk about,” said Chris Morse, a communications professor at Bryant University. “It’s the fact that Celebrity A won’t tell us their position. Isn’t it weird that they won’t do that? Let’s boycott them until they do.”

Indeed, some stars have seen their number of followers decrease over the last week. For example, Taylor Swift, who tops many blocklists, lost about 300,000 followers on TikTok over the past week, based on a comparison of her current follower count on TikTok to the number she got last week via Wayback Machine, and about 50,000 on Instagram. But that’s nothing for a star of Swift’s magnitude.

“A big celebrity goes on tour, has several big social media channels, is featured on TV, is featured in the press,” said Eric Dahan, CEO of social media marketing company Mighty Joy. “If you have over 100 million followers and you lose three or five million, that sucks. But is that the end of the world for you? No.”

Dahan added that blocking celebrities does not prevent them from appearing in targeted social media advertising campaigns.

“Blocking an account does not prevent you from receiving an ad, because the ad is not delivered through the celebrity’s account itself,” Dahan said. “And so, for example, you could block Kim Kardashian, but Hulu could run an ad targeting the Kardashians.”

At the same time, controversies involving celebrities very often attract attention on social media platforms.

“TikTok is definitely benefiting from this, right? Because the trend is happening on their format,” said Bryant University’s Morse. “We constantly mention TikTok in all the stories, and it makes people curious to see the trend and what people are doing. So you have to go to TikTok, and you really have to become a member because you can “I don’t really see too much without actually interacting with the platform.

TikTok did not immediately respond to NPR’s request for comment.

And even if the many widely viewed videos aimed at canceling celebrities do little to bring about change for the people of Gaza, there is at least an emotional reward for those who cancel.

“It gives a certain sense of action,” said Collins of the University of Michigan. “The feeling that I did something to inspire other people to do something that maybe could make a difference. Because in these people’s minds, it’s better than doing nothing.”