BLM Aesthetic

Monty O’Rielly

Black Lives Matter- Aestheticized

I’m sure everyone reading this has heard of the tragic

death of Geroge Floyd on the 25th of May 2020. He and many other innocent people of colour have died at the hands of predominantly white police. His, and other similar deaths, led to a justifed public outcry and continued race-based activism. While modern activism continues to move online, much of the news today comes from social media sites like Instagram or TikTok, which were not designed to be news sites, more sharing pictures of friends, products, comedic videos etc. This is not to say that amazing activism cannot be done, I’ll leave some links to other articles about the amazing work being done by mostly youth activists currently. However, many times the result can be toxic: the combination of activism being undertaken on social media platforms, and those platforms not being designed to properly disseminate news, with the platforms prioritising aesthetics over fact.

It can be really problematic when powerful activist

movements turn trendy. I’m sure you’ve all seen it. There was a big trend of “hello kitty says ACAB” a while back, showing the popular cartoon character Hello Kitty next to signs that say something like ”disarm the police” as a funny contrast between the innocence of Hello Kitty and this political movement steaming from literal murder. However, the same imagery of Hello Kitty and other Sanrio characters was being used for aesthetic purposes, and the combination of the two led to ridicule of the movement. By using these cute kawaii aesthetic images it dulled the meaning of statements such as “All cops are bastards” which caused people to take the issue less seriously than they may from an actually informative post. If you’re already sceptical about the whole movement then seeing a post with a children’s cartoon character, you aren’t exactly going to be convinced that this is something you should care about, in fact, it makes it really easy to make a mockery of it. It’s also very common to see Black Lives Matter being used for reposts, for example, a few weeks ago a friend of mine reposted an image onto her Instagram story. It was a cartoon image of the killing of George Floyd with a text above it reading “Repost or else you’ll have one year of bad luck”. I was absolutely disgusted by this, George Floyd didn’t die because of “bad luck”, he died because of a corrupt system and posting this shit isn’t helping take it down. It’s using someone’s horrifc murder for your own gain.

It digusts me to see this poor excuse for “activism” being us when there are people having tear gas

thrown at them for actually trying to make a diference.

Now, you could argue that by making these aestheticized Black Lives Matter posts you’re just spread-

ing awareness, surely people are more likely to repost something more pleasing to the eye, or something that suits their feed than something that doesn’t? And surely any awareness on the issue is good, regardless of how it is presented? Yes, it is defnitely important to spread information about social issues such as racism in the police force, and sometimes the best way to spread this information is by making it “aesthetically pleasing”, to appease the social media algorithms that would rather you post something bright and colourful than the gory reality of this movement.

“People have entire Pinterest boards called “Black Lives Matter Aesthetic,” (yes those exist, look it up) ...”

However, there is a thin line between appeasing an

algorithm and making the protests “trendy”. When you have people who have entire Pinterest boards called “Black Lives Matter Aesthetic,” (yes those exist, look it up) I think it becomes an issue. Sure, you can have some aesthetically pleasing posts on your story reading “Defund the Police” but you also need to have resources where people can help. You need to attend protests, sign petitions, keep updated with news articles. And everyone reading this can help with this, encourage your friends to protest, put petitions in your bio just do the little things. We can’t let this incredibly important political movement be sullied by turning it into a trend, leaving people associating it with the image of Hello Kitty and teenagers who will forget in a week. Too many people have already died, we can’t let the movement die too.