Blocking Celebrities for Staying Quiet Won’t Change the World

Attending the Met Gala now has a brutal consequence: You’ll be blocked by 100 strangers on the internet.

The horror! Zendaya is quaking in fear over the fact that she’ll never be able to see a man she’s never met posting about his dog. Camila Cabello is crying over the fact that she lost a couple hundred followers on Instagram, bumping her 66 million followers down to… 66 million. Nicholas Galitzine is worried that The Idea of You will earn a few less streams, although the movie is already one of the biggest on streaming in the country.

If you can’t tell, I’m being sarcastic here. I find this new trend of creating celebrity block lists to be appalling. It’s a new movement happening on TikTok and other social media platforms. Everyday people are fed up with celebs staying silent about the state of the world, particularly the war in Gaza. So, following a tasteless night of opulence at the Met Gala last week, social media users around the world decided to start blocking handfuls of celebrities in an act of defiance against them, including Gigi Hadid, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish. These names, while seemingly picked out of a hat, mostly comprise Met Gala attendees—although any other big celebrities who have been silent on the matter will be added as well. The goal? They’ll be compelled to speak up.

This is pointless for a number of reasons. The first—and perhaps most pressing—is that blocking celebs en masse won’t actually do anything. Stars can’t even do their own hair and makeup; now we want them to end a war?

Sure, a celeb speaking out against violence and murder may inspire fans to donate or otherwise help the cause. A-listers could use their stature for good, but it’s also not their responsibility to be advocates for everything under the sun. They’re too busy to actually put the work into researching these topics! Plus, a lot of times, when celebrities do take political stances, they face intense backlash from their fans and the industry: Even when they get blacklisted, it’s still not enough.

Take Melissa Barrera, for example. The former Scream actress has been vocal about defending Palestinians in the ongoing Gaza war—so vocal, in fact, that she was fired from the upcoming Scream 7 for “incitement of hate.” Barrera’s activism cost her part of her career, and yet, you can still find her name on a blocklist circulating around the internet. Why? Who knows! There’s no explanation for why her activism hasn’t met the requirements of the internet. Even if celebrities speak up, apparently, it’ll never be enough in the eyes of these picky TikTok users.

Other stars have faced similar backlash for even thinner reasons. In a viral screenshot of a TikTok comment thread, one user blasts a creator for posting positively about singer Chappell Roan. “Her management has ties to Israel,” the comment reads, implying that the singer should face criticism either for hypothetical similar views or by association.

A response to this: “Do you have anything that shows this? I haven’t been able to find anything.”

“Someone else told me about it,” the original commenter replies. “Don’t really care to look into it. I believe it’s the truth and idc.”

Not only are we blaming Roan for her management’s comments—which she has no control over—we’re now basing our entire beliefs on complete speculation. This is so hypocritical. Why are these fans blaming celebs for bad politics when they’re the ones making baseless, unethical claims? To add to that, Bella and Gigi Hadid, who are half-Palestinian and have been vocal advocates for Palestine for years, have been added to a few blocklists following Gigi’s appearance at the Met Gala. Our morality has flown out the window.

We shouldn’t be expecting the celebs to interact with these. Why should they? They’ll just be nitpicked for whatever response they post—which, by the way, they probably won’t even write, it’ll be some PR flack coming up with damage control. That’s not going to change the world. It’s performative.

While I am not against the concept of pushing celebrities to speak out on certain subjects—I’d love to see Taylor Swift donate a chunk of her money to climate change prevention efforts, following the discourse surrounding her private jet emissions, for example—the war in Gaza seems like a topic most stars are both unrelated to and uninformed about. We shouldn’t be putting all our effort into forcing them to become activists, when we could instead platform journalists who are covering the war, circulate aid fundraisers, and applaud the actually well-informed celebrities who have already gone the extra mile to reshare information.

There is some good in social media. Comedian Erin Hattamer recently started the #PasstheHat trend on TikTok, which implores everyday users and big names alike to help donate to Palestinian families’ GoFundMes. Stars like Chris Olsen, as well as Hank and John Green, have helped to circulate the fundraiser and make it popular, getting it as many eyes—and as much money—as possible.

It all comes down to the fact that there’s no “right” way to handle activism. Celebrities have jobs to do—be celebrities. They’ll fail us, they’ll delight us, and most of them will continue putting their jobs first before anything else in the world. That’s not going to change because an angry mob of Instagram users blocked them. But you know what you can do? Make donations. Contribute to aid funds. Increase the public’s knowledge of what is happening in the world.

If there’s one positive side to this blocklist movement, it’s that people are realizing that parasocial relationships with celebrities are exactly what they sound like: one-sided and toxic. You can’t always rely on a big name to constantly be the perfect political activist who is educated on and vocal about every world issue under the sun. Sometimes they will! But sometimes they won’t, and while we can block all we want, there are more pressing issues in life than a celebrity’s PR-friendly Instagram page.

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