Celebrities Can't Save Us
On #blockout2024, the "digital guillotine", and the value of online activism.
If you’re algorithmically attuned to seeing Palestine content, the average scroll through your Instagram or TikTok feed usually progresses something like this: dead kids; dead kids; an ad for dish detergent; dead kids; makeup tutorial; the latest dance trend; dead kids; the president asking you for money for his campaign; celebrity fashion; dead kids.
So yeah, people in the movement generally aren’t doing okay! Most of us aren’t doing well financially ourselves, and are scrambling to find something, anything we can do about the ongoing genocide in Gaza as people in power continue to do nothing. In fact, about a month ago, a new social media “movement” started in response to the stark contrast between the images of violence coming out of Gaza and various celebrities and influencers at the Met Gala. The goals of the movement are to get people to block celebrities on social media as a form of punishment for not speaking out against social injustice. The two major originators of this trend were @ladyfromtheoutside, who coined the term “digitine” (digital guillotine) and @blockout2024, who has consistently made videos selecting celebrities to block on social media.
As someone who often writes about the relationship between social media and social movements, specifically the effectiveness of posting about important issues, there are several things I have to say about this trend.
Distractions
My stance on celebrities is known: I value art first and foremost, and I might value what an artist has to say about the art after the fact, but my interest in artists ends far before I’m learning what they eat for breakfast, who they’re dating, or what the inside of their house looks like. In fact, the more I see what a famous person’s home looks like, the more detached I feel from them and the more negatively I view their art. So, I just choose not to engage with their personal lives. I also never allow myself to be disappointed when a celebrity says something politically abhorrent, while appreciating the positive impact when they say something that furthers my social causes, a balance that’s typically pretty challenging to maintain.
The leftist thing to say is that celebrity culture is inherently a distraction from real-world political causes. Sometimes, as essayist Herby R points out in his video on the Blockout, momentary distraction is important to stay sane: I wouldn’t want to live in a world without escapist fantasy, lord knows we need that from time to time. But as Malcolm X reminds us, we probably shouldn’t look to celebrities to be our leaders in times of crisis; those who are the most famous are usually those who are most aligned with the interests of the state (otherwise how would they have become that famous?)
It seems that the online left is tenuously aware of this fact, yet we’re still making demands of them. In other words, we are simultaneously saying that celebrities are tools of the state used to distract us, and also that we want celebrities to speak up on important issues. Which is it? We probably need to figure that out before going any further with this cause.
I know how much this makes me sound like an edgy teenager, but it’s unfortunately true that much of the media we consume is meant to distract and pacify us. Never has that been more apparent than in our time of “second screen content” and social media algorithms designed to feed us content passively (on TikTok, you don’t even choose what content to watch, an algorithm chooses for you). This quote from a Justine Bateman interview with The Hollywood Reporter is illustrative…
I’ve heard from showrunners who are given notes from the streamers that “This isn’t second screen enough.” Meaning, the viewer’s primary screen is their phone and the laptop and they don’t want anything on your show to distract them from their primary screen because if they get distracted, they might look up, be confused, and go turn it off. I heard somebody use this term before: they want a “visual muzak.” When showrunners are getting notes like that, are they able to do their best work? No. And when these companies control the entire pipeline from beginning to end, then you wind up doing what they ask.
More Information Needed
Given this context, it’s worth mentioning that even if celebrities were capable of meaningfully challenging the status quo, many wouldn’t be capable of doing so, due to a tangible lack of media literacy. Quoting myself from a while back…
Even when a celebrity has no right-wing ambitions whatsoever, we still should be wary about holding them to a high standard. Yes, it’s nice when famous people are feminist, pro-Black, pro-trans etc. but in general, people who end up being famous often aren’t the most educated on political issues, almost by design. This is for a few reasons—they got famous very young so they never finished school or had a “normal” job, they’ve always gotten by from being attractive, etc.—but for certain celebrities, it’s a mistake to view them as genius auteurs who deserve a level of mystique and respect. Celebrities are merely people, whose internal politics are as inconsistent as everyone else’s, which is to say, pretty inconsistent and often bad. Setting aside some gently ableist/classist language, I’m compelled to agree with the spirit of Chelsea Fagan’s conclusions about famous people’s general political awareness.
I’ve seen a lot of content creators echo a frustrated sentiment along the lines of, “at this point, how can anybody NOT know that what’s going on is a genocide?” However, to say that celebrities should know what’s going on in Palestine because of all the videos of violence coming out totally ignores the informational and algorithmic gap that exists between everyday people and the media elite. This could be a whole other essay (subscribe now!) but a lot of people—especially the rich and powerful—are simply not on social media (certainly not on Leftist TikTok), and thus have missed out on the past 9 months of Bisan updates, crying kid videos, Zionist talking point debunkings, and 80-year history lessons. Rumor has it that many actors don’t even watch the movies they themselves star in. After all, what is a fabulously wealthy person’s incentive to stay in touch with popular culture, other than whatever’s relevant to getting them even more money?
This sentiment also assumes that the quality of information on TikTok is sufficient to educate a famous person to the point of turning them into an adequate spokesperson for the movement. Yes, it’s hard to argue with a video of tents being bombed. But the political analysis from Westerners on the ongoing genocide is still very prone to misinformation and bias, including (as I’ve written about before), anti-Semitism and orientalism. Next time you’re scrolling, make note of how many TikToks overstate the influence of AIPAC and Zionist Jews as though there aren’t scores of Christian Zionists and white supremacists who happily take up the pro-Israel cause without incentive. Despite what you might initially guess, white supremacists love Israel, because 1) it’s a religious ethno-state, and thus a model of what they want to create here but with Christianity rather than Judaism, and 2) they want Jewish people to leave this country and move to Israel, because either 2a) they just straight-up hate Jewish people or 2b) they want to trigger the Rapture.
Ask yourself seriously: do you really think your average skinny, hot, famous white boy knows any of this critical background knowledge? Do you think Justin Bieber is capable of parsing out fact from fiction, synthesizing truth from a variety of similar posts, sectioning off well-meaning misinformation from tangible facts?
This is a criticism that’s been made before, to which the Blockout crowd usually responds with, “we don’t need perfect voices, we just want awareness”. Correct, you don’t need a degree in foreign affairs to know that genocide is wrong. There’s no need to articulate a complete, principled position when one can share a fundraiser; just last week, Ariana Grande posted a PCRF fundraiser link, after which donations increased by $20,000, an undeniably positive impact!
My only wish is that this attitude was applied consistently. No movement is a monolith, particularly movements that take place entirely on social media, but it’s clear that some users just have it out for famous people due to a vague class-based angst. When singer Lizzo spoke out in favor of Palestine a few weeks ago, many praised her for platforming the issue while just as many mocked her for “taking so long”. If the goal is to get more celebrities to speak out, why create conditions where even if they do, they’ll still be out of our favor?
I get the sense that many celebrities choose to be “apolitical” (i.e., aligned with the status quo, a political position in and of itself) for purely strategic reasons. The conservative adage “go woke, go broke” is largely an unproven one, with a celebrity/brand’s falling out having to do with numerous factors, including who their core audience was, who their inciting post inflamed, how they respond to the initial backlash, and more. Matt Walsh will never be “canceled” because his core audience enjoys his genocidal rhetoric. Lizzo, on the other hand, courted a leftist audience through years of messaging about body positivity and Black female empowerment; this core audience understandably dropped her when news broke about alleged worker abuse last Fall. If you never speak out an anything politically, then (hypothetically) nobody will ever get upset with you.
Celebrities: they really are just like us (fallible, cowardly, media illiterate)!
If You Die In The Game, You (Don’t) Die For Real
This point is more for me than anyone else, but it’s worth saying anyway: Social media isn’t real life. Obviously, the events that take place on the Internet have a material impact in the real world. We enact many of our relationships online. Fundraisers and information are shared online. Yet I couldn’t help but cringe when I first watched ladyfromtheoutside’s original video inciting the Blockout 2024 “movement”.
The comparison of blocking someone on Instagram and cutting their head off with a guillotine should offend you. A guillotine, popularly known for its use in the French Revolution, is a murder weapon when, used as intended, literally kills (in real life) the targeted person, usually in a public space so that their death (literal, real world death, as in they are not alive anymore afterward) can send a message to other wealthy people about the strength of the social movement. Whereas, an individual person blocking somebody on Instagram…does not do that.
Those in favor of the Blockout actions typically claim that blocking them does a few good things: it removes you from vapid celebrity culture, reducing the overall relevancy of the celebrities in question, and second, it prevents celebrities from making money off you via social media advertisements. To me, it’s extremely unclear how true these claims are. First, focusing so much of our movement’s energy on celebrities inherently means we’re centering them, which isn’t a great start. Yes, the more we engage with famous people’s posts, the more algorithmic traction they get, which increases their social relevance. But going onto someone’s page, even to block them, counts as engagement. To see how effective this blocking procedure is, I myself blocked Kim Kardashian on Instagram. Never before have I gotten more ads for the Kardashian’s TV show, fashion lines, and other products. I now see more celebrity news than I ever have on my feeds, which still isn’t a lot, but I fear that if you weren’t already following a given celebrity, going to their page to block them may not yield the results you’re looking for.
The original “digitine” video doesn’t even get basic facts right: the influencer Haley Kalil, who’s presence at the Met Gala sparked all this outrage, did not actually pay the $75,000 ticket to attend the gala, a fact that most reporting on the issue continues to get wrong. She only reported on the red carpet as an influencer. Yet the video lists out her crime as an “ignorant decision to attend the $75,000 ticket MET Gala”—capitalized as MET as though it’s an acronym and not short for Metropolitan—before showing Kalil’s now-blocked TikTok page over the sound of a falling guillotine. What an impotent movement we have if we assume that a social media block is equivalent to literal death. What an impotent movement we have that can’t even do simple information retrieval and accuses people of wrongdoing on totally baseless claims.
Eyes On The Prize
The most damning thing that can be said about “Blockout 2024” is that it’s totally out of alignment with what Palestinian activists are telling Westerners to do. Along with lists of hundreds of randomly-selected celebrities, people are passing around lists of hundreds of companies to boycott. In my view, this scattershot is dangerously ineffective and distracting.
The account that’s attracted the most attention and influence in this movement belongs to someone named…well, we don’t know his name, actually, but his handle is @blockout2024. The majority of these videos consist of lists of 3 new celebrities to block on social media (the posts are purported to be daily, although uploads are getting increasingly sparse).
It’s still unclear who this person is or what his intentions or beliefs are, aside from being vaguely pro-Palestine and anti-wealth hoarding. He admits in his comment sections that the account started out as a joke page until he suddenly found himself with a huge following after a viral post. Perhaps understandably, he seems unprepared to wield this new following, being either massively uninformed or inconsistent in his messaging, perhaps both. In one video, he encourages his followers to block Jennifer Lopez, in another he says to block Selena Gomez, in another the target is Drake. All three of these celebrities called for a ceasefire in October 2023. The only reason I can think of as to why he would have a grudge about J-Lo is because it’s currently in vogue to call her cringe; his beef with Selena Gomez and Drake is anybody’s guess (perhaps he’s a Kendrick fan?)
This, to me, is the whole Blockout 2024 movement in a nutshell: random people identifying hundreds of random targets, without doing much fact-checking or research, distracting everyone from more actionable, material goals.
It’s worth stating the importance of the actual Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement. BDS is not just any activist organization, they are the activist organization, a Palestinian-led group who’s been working for years to reduce the economic reach of pro-Israeli businesses. Their list of companies to boycott is incredibly well-considered, and consists of only about 30 companies. Boycotting and divesting from these few dozen companies is what Palestinian organizers are asking for; everything else is just something we made up ourselves.
The scattershot of celebrity- and business-sharing has gotten so bad in the past few weeks that the BDS movement had to respond to Westerners’ lack of organization…
Most disappointingly, the official BDS Instagram has ~500,000 followers. Meanwhile, the underinformed @blockout2024 guy has over 200,000 followers. Given that these accounts are on two different platforms, it’s almost certainly the case that thousands of people are following some random guy pulling famous people’s names out of a hat instead of an actual Palestinian activist group with material goals.
We need to get our head in the game and not get distracted by random wannabe-activists. While you are welcome to block whomever you want to and use your attention however you want to (disability activist Crutches & Spice has a good video about a possible, more helpful Blockout structure), I strongly suggest getting guidance directly from the people being oppressed.
…Speaking of which, I’ve decided to give my money from paid Substack subscriptions in May to Palestinians in need. I initially intended to give to the Operation Olive Branch Perinatal Project, but their Gofundme has since far exceeded their goal (awesome news!) and is no longer accepting donations.
So instead, I’m giving this month’s funds—$81.53—directly to Ghazal Abu Dalal, a 24-year-old graphic designer who needs money to evacuate herself, her parents, and her four siblings out of Gaza. Since this is my first time using my Substack funds like this, I thought I’d be extra generous and round that up to $100. I will also be fundraising for her in my video content from now on; you can always find her donation link in my website’s link tree: www.thatannamarie.com/resources
You can follow Ghazal on Instagram and contribute to her Gofundme today. Let’s keep the support flowing! 💖
Currently Reading
In May, I read three books, all of which I recommend: “Hijab Butch Blues” by Lamya H is perhaps the best memoir I’ve ever read. Its title an homage to Leslie Feinberg’s “Stone Butch Blues”, the book is also a retelling of real events in this queer authors complex relationships with both queerness and political work.
“Fledgling”, Octavia Bulter’s final book, is ostensibly an anti-racist vampire novel. Need I say more?
Edward Said’s “Out Of Place” is a memoir dense with information about his life, from his upbringing in Jerusalem and Cairo in the 1930s and 40s to his university days and beyond. I chose the book because Said wrote the book (literally) on Orientalism. It was so interesting reading about what life was like halfway across the world, and to see how much I have in common with a Palestinian born more than half a century before me.
Watch History
Speaking of orientalism, ever wonder if the vaguely Middle Eastern-sounding music from “desert levels” in video games are accurate to the region they’re trying to portray? Spoiler alert: they’re not. This fascinating and humorous breakdown covers the actual history of Middle Eastern various instruments and how orientalist music came to be.
An inspiring analysis of how our thoughts about aliens reveals our beliefs about humanity.
An investigation into how Rabbit’s “revolutionary” AI systems are little more than ChatGPT and duct tape.
A very, very deep dive into evolutionary psychology and how science is used as a tool of oppression (in other words, exactly what I love to see!!)
Bops, Vibes, & Jams
Palestinian artist Nemahsis is back with new music! Listen to “stick of gum” and look out for new drops soon!
Rap fans are eating well this year: Vince Staples is back with new music, and Rapsody’s new album is my top AOTY contender.
And now, your weekly Koko.
That’s all for now! See you next week with more sweet, sweet content.
In solidarity,
-Anna