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Untangling the #BlackoutTuesday confusion and the BTS ARMY's potential for world domination.
Hi, and thanks for tuning in to the b-side.
Recently, the nation has witnessed mass uprising in response to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others who are victims of police brutality. But the history of police violence against black people is not recent news.
I have not personally watched the video involving the death of George Floyd, and I don’t have to watch it to know how upsetting and serious it is. In 2014, a white police officer killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. In 2015, I watched hundreds of non-violent protestors take to the streets of Baltimore because of Freddie Gray. Last night, I watched police and the national guard descend upon protestors in D.C.
For those of you looking for an entry-way into the larger conversation around the protests and systemic racism, Delia Cai (author of Deez Links) has compiled a strong collection of articles that can help you do that. I would also recommend this article from the L.A. Times titled “What is anti-racism? And what do experts say you can do?”
Now more than ever we need the news. There is no doubt that we are now at a turning point.
But, this is a music newsletter. So let’s talk about music.
“ad-tivism” highlights black artists you need to know.
Want to donate to the BLM movement, but you don’t have the funds? YouTuber Zoe Amira seems to have hacked the code and uploaded a growing series of videos highlighting art, music and poetry from black artists. These hour-long videos are chock-full of ads with a catch—100% of the ad revenue will be going directly towards organizations offering financial support to victims’ families, bail funds and advocacy groups. The exact organizations that Amira will be donating to are listed at the beginning of the video.
The video listed above features covers and songs by musicians like Jenifer Lewis (a Broadway veteran and part of the infamous “In These Streets” video feat. Brandy and Roz Ryan), Clint Bent Music, and Nyota Parker.
This article from Polygon does a good job explaining how to disable your ad-blocker and make sure you generate revenue.
don’t f*ck with k-pop stans
On Sunday, the Dallas Police Department sent out a call for “video of illegal activity” during Black Lives Matter protests using the iWatch Dallas app. Shortly after, the K-pop stans took to Twitter calling for fellow stans to submit their favorite fancams to the app.
Buzzfeed reported that “many people also claimed to have submitted videos of the police harming protesters, as well as fan edits of K-pop artists, to the iWatch Dallas app” and reported “hundreds of K-pop fans” replied to the Dallas Police Department’s tweet “with photos and videos of their favorite artists.”
Within hours, Dallas Police followed up saying the iWatch Dallas app was down “due to technical difficulties.” While the Dallas Police won't say what made the app crash, it might be worth seeing if any of them have a newfound obsession with “Kill This Love.”
If that wasn’t enough, people also bombed the app’s ratings giving it one-star reviews on Google Play and the Apple App Store.
In another surprising twist, many fandoms have been hard at work making sure their faves don’t trend on Twitter in order to center the recent protests and work of the Black Lives Matter movement. In a collective cross-fandom effort, Mashable reported that K-pop fans, including fans of popular groups like BTS (named ARMYs), BLACKPINK (named BLINKs) and NCT-17 (known as NCTzens*), have been working since last week to promote awareness by not using the affiliated trending hashtags and mentioning #BlackLivesMatter instead.
There looked to be some in-fighting within the ARMYs as well, with one ARMY posting these racist interactions from the official Big Hit (BTS’s management company) app on the allkpop message board. Soon after, in a show of heartwarming solidarity for the BLM movement, the ARMY fandom made the hashtag #WeLoveYouBlackArmy reach # 1 trending in South Korea Twitter.
As K-pop stans have become a fixture in numerous internet corners over the years, it seems their collective ability to organize and activate astounds (almost) everyone. Exhibit A: an American Twitter user expresses their amazement:
the confusing saga of #BlackoutTuesday, #TheShowMustBePaused and…Apple Music?
On June 2nd, millions of people have taken to Instagram to post a black square using the hashtag #BlackOutTuesday and/or #BlackLivesMatter prompting confusion from organizers and activists.
Blackout Tuesday was originally a day of action inspired by Atlantic Records’ senior director of marketing Jamila Thomas and former senior director of marketing Brianna Agyemang’s initiative #TheShowMustBePaused. In the early morning of June 2nd, Kehlani (who’s new album is absolute FIRE, I really love the track “Open” but I’ll discuss this another time) tweeted a note drawing attention to the two women.
The initiative was originally targeted at disrupting the music industry “in observance of the long-standing racism and inequality that exists from the boardroom to the boulevard.” The mission, according to the website, is “to hold the industry at large, including major corporations and their partners who benefit from the efforts, struggles and successes of Black people accountable.”
According to Mashable, major record labels responded to #TheShowMustBePaused “including Universal Music Group, Atlantic Records, Capitol Music Group, Warner Records, Columbia Records, Def Jam, Elektra Music Group, Sony Music, Virgin EMI, and more declaring Tuesday a day when all business would be halted.”
Some have been critical, like Tiny Deaths vocalist Claire de Lune who called the various social media posts released by the labels “empty.”
Some streaming services have offered their own responses:
Spotify added moments of silence (specifically 8 minutes and 46 seconds which is the amount of time Minneapolis police office Derek Chauvin held his knee against George Floyd’s neck.)
Amazon Music completely paused their social media presence.
Apple Music canceled its popular Beats 1 radio schedule to encourage listeners to stream black artists.
The surprise disruption to many users’ “streaming-as-usual” experience has wrought both praise and criticism on social media. While some users expressed their concerns with their lack of consent to any #TheShowMustBePaused action, others were critical of their discomfort. One Twitter user threw it back to Apple Music and that one time a surprise U2 album appeared on everyone’s iPhones.
So, how did a music industry movement reach the general public? The method is unclear, but the potentially co-opted trend has users showing their solidarity on Instagram with a solid black square with only the hashtag #BlackoutTuesday and/or #BlackLivesMatter. This prompted activists (unrelated to the original music industry adjacent founders) to take to social media pleading posters to remove the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter saying the movement was causing more harm than good.
While the original intentions may have been obscured, I did find a Twitter post that looks like an Instagram story screenshot with further directions surrounding the Instagram blackout. The below looks to be quite different from the phenomena many experienced on their feeds.
With the sudden suppression of information on Instagram, many who relied on such resources were facing panic—especially in light of the increased use of force against protestors. Eventually, Instagram issued an official statement via Twitter addressing the issue.
So, now what? Can you still post your photo and support the work of organizers and protestors? The short answer is yes, as long as you don’t use the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. But, as shown by an era of fake news and unprompted social media blackouts, it might be worth considering showing your support in other ways.
For those of you here for my normal format, I’ll eventually go back to our regularly scheduled programming. But for today, take a moment to reflect on what is going on in our country right now.
-j.b.
Note: Huge thank you to Rollin Hu who gave this an edit. He was part of The Atlantic’s recent layoffs and is available for hire.
*Correction: a previous version of this noted the NCT fanbase as NCTizens instead of NCTzens.