A movement on social media has emerged in recent days, directed towards celebrities who are perceived as being indifferent or even endorsing the devastation and deaths occurring in the Palestinian enclave as a result of the mounting protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. Blockout 2024, Celebrity Block List, and Digitine are the names of the campaigns that gained popularity following the May 6 Met Gala. The plan is to ban well-known celebrities from popular social media platforms like X, TikTok, and Instagram.

However, what is the whole point? Why are there similarities to the French Revolution? Does it hurt them to be blocked by a celebrity, and is the campaign progressing?

What is Blackout 2024? 

The Blockout 2024 movement is a digital boycott of prominent celebrities, ranging from Hollywood actors to social media influencers. It’s a response from internet users who believe these celebrities have either supported the war in Gaza or remained silent about it. Lists of celebrities and their companies to block have started to circulate among TikTok, Instagram, and X users. The goal of the action is to reduce revenue from celebrity social media platform advertisements.

Why did the Met Gala this year spark so much controversy over the Israeli-Gaza war?

This year’s Met Gala, which occurred in New York on May 6, ignited the Blockout movement. Social media users took offence when pictures of the opulently attired celebrities from the yearly fundraiser appeared online. They drew attention to the fact that some of these celebrities had never commented on the ongoing conflict in Gaza, where Israel’s constant bombardment has killed over 35,000 people, the majority of them women and children, or made any remarks on social media. 

The moment  “let them eat cake.”

A video of TikTok influencer Haley Kalil lip-syncing the phrase “Let them eat cake” outside the Met Gala went viral on May 7. On TikTok, Kalil has 9.9 million followers under the handle @haleyybaylee. 

These famous remarks, frequently credited to Marie Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution, have come to represent an elite so cut off from the people’s everyday lives that they can’t even find bread and instead recommend cake as a substitute. The starvation crisis in Gaza was a backdrop for Kalil’s video, which incited anger. Over the seven months of the war, there has been an increase in food insecurity.

The head of the World Food Programme (WFP), Cindy McCain, stated in a news interview on May 4, just two days before the Met Gala, that a “full-blown famine” is occurring in northern Gaza.

On May 10, Kalil posted an apology video to her TikTok channel. She said she only participated in the event as an E! News host and had not received a formal invitation to the Met Gala. She used the fact that the audio was trending on TikTok as justification for using it.

When asked in the apology video why she is not discussing what is happening in Gaza, she responded, “I am not informed enough to talk about it in a meaningful or educational way.” In the video, she made no mention of “Palestine,” “Gaza,” or “Israel.”

What is the impact on a celebrity of being blocked?

In addition to Kalil, notable people on the blocklists are American actors Zendaya and Noah Schnapp, American singer Taylor Swift, British singer Harry Styles, Israeli actor and former soldier Gal Gadot, and American media personality Kim Kardashian. Experts have stated that blocking is a more successful protest tactic than unfollowing, despite previous online movements to unfollow some celebrities who are currently blocked.

Eddy Borges-Rey, an associate professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera that unfollowing a celebrity has little impact on their total audience and engagement metrics. Borges-Rey’s study examines algorithms and social media.

He explained that unfollowing a celebrity just results in them no longer appearing in the user’s feed. “Social media celebrities heavily rely on high visibility and engagement to attract and maintain advertising deals,” he said. However, the content can still appear inadvertently on their search pages or algorithm-driven feeds, like the “For You” pages on TikTok and X or the Instagram Explore page.