One of the wonders of witnessing a political revolution led by people who are firmly rooted in online culture is watching new forms of insurrection develop and be deployed almost instantaneously.
This week, thousands of K-pop stans—the passionate, Web-literate followers of bands such as BTS, BLACKPINK, Monsta X, GOT7, and others—have been steadily defusing racist hashtags by flooding Twitter with “fancams,” or fan-edited videos of K-pop stars singing, dancing, and serving looks.
Fancams are often used to defang or derail an online conversation. Per stan grammar, to post a fancam is to roll one’s eyes; it’s a pointed, efficient way of refusing to engage in unsavory rhetoric while also boosting the presence of something beautiful.
This week, as the hashtag #whitelivesmatter began trending in the U.S., the stans promptly organized, posting enough fancams to make the tag functionally useless within hours.
Anyone who clicked was greeted by apparently endless footage of K-pop stars engaged in elaborate choreography.
Stans are as savvy as they are righteous—when the tag changed to #whitelifematters and then #whiteoutwednesday, they simply regrouped and reëngaged.
Amanda Petrusich is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of “Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records.”
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