K-pop fans join forces to drown out opposition to #BlackLivesMatter

K-pop fans around the world have joined forces to drown out online opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement, flooding social media with videos and images of their favourite artists alongside the #WhiteLivesMatter hashtag and other racist content.

While their collective action meant the hashtag, as well as #WhiteOutWednesday and #BlueLivesMatter were trending in the top 10 on Twitter in the US earlier this week, the accompanying messages and attachments were emphatically off-message.

Posts from K-pop stans – slang for obsessive fans – came with anti-racist messages and video footage of artists including the boy band phenomenon BTS and the rapper Ryujin.

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The social media bombardment saw K-pop fans commandeer rightwing and pro-Donald Trump hashtags to drown out racist and offensive posts, including criticism of protests in the US against the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis last week.

Instead of revealing opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement, clicking on #WhiteLivesMatter revealed thousands of messages of support for protests that have rocked the US for almost two weeks.

Followers of South Korea’s most successful cultural export had already used their organisational skills to sabotage a request by the Dallas police department for video evidence of illegal activity during last weekend’s protests.

The barrage of videos of singers, gaming clips and even anime GIFs apparently overloaded iWatch Dallas, forcing the city’s police department to announce it was temporarily removing the app “due to technical difficulties”.

Some users later “invaded” other hashtags, including #AllLivesMatter and #ExposeAntifa, an attempt to discredit the anti-fascist movement.

Their efforts were applauded by other internet activists, with the hacktivist collective Anonymous tweeting: “Respect out to the Kpop Stans”.

As their fans mocked the online far right, BTS made a rare foray into politics, voicing solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

“We stand against racial discrimination. We condemn violence. You, I and we all have the right to be respected. We will stand together. #BlackLivesMatter,” the band told their 26 million followers on Twitter.