Blockout 2024: celebrities face backlash over Gaza
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 747 Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2024
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Now trending: the ‘digital guillotine.’ It’s a campaign known as Blockout 2024 to block celebrities on social media. Launched after the Met Gala in New York, it’s meant to hurt celebrities’ ad revenue. Will it have an impact?
In this episode:
- Ahmed Shihab-Eldin (@ASE), Journalist
- Dr. Marcus Collins (@marctothec), Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Michigan
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Sarí el-Khalili and Khaled Soltan with our host Malika Bilal. Catherine Nouhan and Manahil Naveed fact-checked this episode.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik and Adam Abou-Gad is our engagement producer.
Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.
Connect with us:
@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and YouTube
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Today, the hottest trend on social media, the digital guillotine. |
| 0:16.8 | We're just going to block all of these celebrities and, in turn, block their ad revenue. |
| 0:23.0 | What started with Gaza has gone global. |
| 0:26.5 | Can the block movement make an impact? |
| 0:31.0 | I'm Malika Bilal, and this is the take. |
| 0:44.7 | It all started with the Met Gala on May 6, |
| 0:47.5 | an annual red carpet event in New York City. |
| 0:57.0 | It's where big celebrities from arts, fashion, film, and music show off their prestige and glamour. Beautiful! |
| 0:58.0 | Our Met Gala special, all the sleeping beauties came to serve and slay. |
| 1:05.0 | This year, the circumstances were different. |
| 1:09.0 | Let's go! The circumstances were different. |
| 1:21.1 | Protesters targeted the event to call attention to the war in Gaza, where the death toll stands at more than 35,000 people. |
| 1:25.2 | The NYPD, saying close to a thousand pro-Palestinian protesters made their |
| 1:29.6 | presence felt in Manhattan near last night's famed Met Gala, officers making several arrests. |
| 1:37.0 | At the gala, the stars remain silent, a silence that's been ringing for months. |
| 1:48.7 | So a TikTok creator by the name of Pablo Ardick posted this video. |
| 1:54.0 | Block celebrities on social media so they don't earn ad revenue from you. |
| 2:03.6 | Pablo and many other creators launched a movement with hashtags like Blackout 2024 and celebrity blocklist. Social media users are blocking celebrities they believe haven't used their platforms to shed light on important issues like Sudan, Gaza, Congo and beyond. |
| 2:12.6 | We gave them their platforms. It's time to take it back, take our views away, our likes, our comments, |
| 2:19.8 | our money. To break it all down, I talk to journalist Ahmed Shaheddin. |
| 2:30.0 | I am a journalist, actor, and storyteller, and I'm coming to you from Tunis. |
... |
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