K-Pop fans took over the hashtag #whitelivesmatter, drowning out white-supremacist messages with nonsensical or anti-racist posts.
While some of the posts were met with anger and hostility from people who didn’t get the joke or responded just to the hashtag, far more signaled their approval. For a period of time, the posts completely buried nearly all actual racist messages using the hashtag.
The fans are likely based in the U.S., as many of them have American accents and fans in Korea are less active on Twitter.
The campaign was soon broadened to include hashtags like #MAGA and #BlueLivesMatter.
K-pop fans made a similar mobilization on Tuesday, in response to a call from the Dallas Police Department to send videos of “illegal activity from the protests” that took place over the weekend using a special app called iWatch Dallas. They deluged the software with content from music artists, gifs and games. The following day, Dallas police tweeted that “due to technical difficulties iWatch Dallas app will be down temporarily.”
