K-Pop Stans Swarm Police Tweets With Fan-Made Videos

Adrianna Freedman
·3 min read

From Men's Health

As the world watches as protests for George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement occur throughout the U.S. and other countries, there has been a split on social media on how people are responding to the situation. K-Pop stans—usually hardcore for their musical biases—are using their growing platform to make a political statement.

The Dallas Police Department tweeted on May 31 that they were looking for people to submit videos of what they referred to as “illegal activity” from the past weekend’s protests in response to the wrongful killing of George Floyd. “If you have a video of illegal activity and are trying to share it,” they wrote, you can download it to our iWatch Dallas app.”

When K-Pop fans noticed this, they chose to respond in their own unique way. Instead of assisting them in their mission, they began to spam the app with photos and videos from their favorite artists, purposely malfunctioning the system. The result? Dallas PD had to tweet a confirmation that the app would be shut down temporarily due to “technical difficulties.”

Buzzfeed News also reported at the time that people were leaving 1-star reviews on the app as well to ensure no one uses it, demanding justice for the situation and highlighting the Black Lives Matter movement.

And if you think that this was the only incident that occurred with the fans, then you’d be sadly mistaken. It turns out that K-Pop stans have been encouraging each other to follow suit nationwide with their own videos in order to belittle the police's doings and stand up for the right to assemble.

Just like what happened with the Dallas PD, when the Philadelphia Fire Department asked for submissions of people starting fires amid the protest, K-Pop fans spammed their Twitter accounts. When the Kirkland Police Department asked their followers to use the hashtag #calminkirkland to relay information, videos featuring bands like BTS flooded their responses instead. Grand Rapids Police also had a similar scenario occur over the weekend, with one viral tweet stating, “You know the drill!” in response to an ask from them to upload incriminating photos to a portal.

For a hardcore fanbase that can sometimes annoy social media users for the constant spamming of bands like BTS, EXO, Blackpink and Twice (even when it's not relevant), it’s refreshing to see that K-Pop stans leading the way in groups targeting police brutality and supporting the ever-growing movement with their own unique twist. But it can leave some for concern about privacy.

As one Twitter user pointed out, be informed and make sure of the permissions of personal data on apps, especially if you plan on using them for political purposes.

You Might Also Like