Culture

People Have Hijacked #BlueLivesMatter By Flooding It With Their Favourite Blue Characters

In conclusion: Blue Lives are not a thing.

by Michelle Rennex  4 June 2020
#BlueLivesMatter blue character

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

In the last week, internet communities have banded together to help fight against racism online.

We first saw it when K-Pop stans used their size and power to successfully take down police ‘snitch’ apps in the US.

Following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, Black Lives Matter protests have grown across all 50 states of the US, with over 430 cities and towns taking part.

As a result of some peaceful protests turning into riots, the Dallas Police Department urged people to use the iWatch app to submit videos of any of these illegal activities. In response, K-Pop stans instead worked together to flood the app with fan-cams and videos of police brutality to render the app useless — and it worked.

Following the police app takedown, K-Pop stans also suggested the fanbase do the same with racist hashtags online like #WhiteoutTuesday and #BlueLivesMatter. If you now search these terms, you’ll be greeted with fan-cams of members from groups like Blackpink, BTS, Big Bang, GOT7 and EXO — give them a stream, they deserve it for the fandoms hard work.

Anyway, beyond the concept that “blue lives” are even a thing, comparing a job that someone chose to do over a skin colour that one cannot change and is persecuted for is ridiculous. But this didn’t stop racists from using the hashtag to share pro-police propaganda and to denounce the Black Lives Matter movement.

So, to join the stans in rendering these hashtags useless for racists to share their views, people across the world took a different approach to the #BlueLivesMatter hashtag.

After seeing the phrase trending yesterday, people hijacked the hashtag and used it to share their favourite blue characters in pop culture — from Stitch from Lilo and Stitch all the way to the icons that are Blue Man Group.

But beyond characters from movies and tv shows, some also used #BlueLivesMatter to highlight the real life blue lives that matter — the health professionals, who actually work tirelessly to actually protect and serve, not target and kill.