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TikTok users and why the ‘digital guillotine’ is blocking celebrities

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Voluminous headgear. Brilliantly made dresses. The world’s view of the Big Apple.

The Met Gala is home to fashion’s biggest night, and on the first Monday of every May, the world’s biggest stars parade up the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City at the event curated by Vogue Editor-in- Chief Anna Wintour.

But this year, the annual fundraising event for the museum’s Costume Institute, like many others, became a battleground in America’s class and culture wars. As the cost of living and concurrent deadly international conflicts continue, the reported $75,000 price tag for a ticket to the party has already rubbed some on social media the wrong way. Then came the viral TikTok.

Influencer and model Haley Kalil attracted attention for a video with a TikTok sound muttering “let them eat cake,” a slogan often associated with French Queen Marie Antoinette, who was at the center of the social unrest of the French Revolution in the 18th century.

Like Antoinette, the internet wanted to make off with Kalil’s head – and a slew of other A-list influencers and celebrities, from Kim Kardashian to Taylor Swift.

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The now-deleted video sparked a digital movement called the “digitine,” a digital guillotine that urges social media users to block celebrities in a modern “eat the rich” social movement. Here’s how it started – and why.

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The ‘digitine’ movement appears to be the brainchild of one user, @ladyfromtheoutside, who responded to Kalil’s ‘let them eat cake’ comments with a message of her own. The video has 2.5 million views and almost 600,000 likes on the platform.

“It’s time for the people to execute what I like to call a digital guillotine, a ‘digitine’ if you will. It’s time to block all the celebrities, influencers and wealthy socialites who aren’t using their resources to help those in dire need.” said @ladyfromtheoutside.

While the Met Gala has long been a lightning rod among social media users for its “outrageous” opulence, frustrations this year center around the war between Israel and Hamas and the ongoing news cycle.

“We gave them their platforms. It’s time to take it back, take away our opinions, our likes, our comments and our money by blocking them on all social media and digital platforms. And I think the first person we should all focus on is Haley here,” @ladyfromtheoutside added.

In an apology video, Kalil addressed the controversy, saying she was not invited by Wintour to attend the Met Gala. Instead, she said she was stationed at The Mark Hotel, a celebrity hotbed ahead of the evening’s red carpet festivities, as host for entertainment outlet E! handling hotel exits and creating content.

Online ‘digital’ activist explains why social media users want to ‘eat the rich’

Karen Fragoso, an online activist who has worked professionally in influencer marketing and “grew up idolizing the Met Gala,” first became involved in the digital guillotine movement after Kalil’s video went viral. Fragoso’s own video about Kardashian losing three million followers on Instagram in recent weeks has been viewed more than 1 million times so far.

“It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re an influencer, but you’re not like us. You’re pretending, but you’re going to the Met Gala,’ and then we were all like, ‘Okay, we as a people have to unite and I know we are all in different places in the world So we said ‘we are together virtually’,” Fragoso tells USA TODAY of her frustrations.

As the movement gains momentum, some users are pushing back on digital guillotine efforts as a second wind of “cancel culture.”

“It will take much more to change the world around you. You can’t do things that are simply awkward or uncomfortable, you’re going to have to do things that are downright painful,” said one TikTok user.

“Nobody owes you anything. That’s my point. Just because someone doesn’t speak up about a topic and you’re upset about it, it’s cancel culture 2.0,” another TikTok user added.

But Fragoso says celebrity blocking is crucial for social change because it has an economic impact.

She added that blocking is important because brands look at an influencer or celebrity’s follower count and engagement data before choosing to work with them to promote a product. She added that people should “eat the rich” and “tax the rich” because “the elite need to know they can’t get away with everything.”

Met Gala has a history of controversies over the intersection of classes

The Met Gala has a history of controversies related to the evening’s intersection with class. A recent example came in 2021, after the first post-pandemic gala. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore a controversial dress and the criticism was damning.

The Democratic congresswoman from the Bronx attended the gala in a white Brother Vellies dress, accompanied by the brand’s designer Aurora James, with “Tax the Rich” written in red on the back.

Powerful or hypocritical? AOC’s ‘Tax the Rich’ dress at the Met Gala draws mixed reactions

“The medium is the message,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Instagram at the time with a photo of her dress. “Now is the time for childcare, healthcare and climate action for all. Tax the rich.”

It did not go down well with the general public. Social media users reacted angrily, as one wrote: “While voters she failed in are being evicted or wondering how they’re going to eat tonight, @AOC living big here at the #MetGala. She’s wearing a dress with the text #TaxTheRich, but that won’t do anything to make it reality.”

Last year, the Met Gala sparked controversy due to its theme honoring Chanel’s late creative director Karl Lagerfeld, which is also controversial in its own right. During a 2018 interview with French fashion magazine Numéro, Lagerfeld criticized the #MeToo movement and its impact on the fashion and modeling industries.

In the same interview, Lagerfeld called models “stupid,” “toxic” and generally “filthy creatures.” He once called supermodel Heidi Klum “insignificant” in the fashion world because she was “too glamorous”; denounced singer Adele as “a little too fat” in 2012; and later that year he rejected Pippa Middleton’s face, suggesting she only showed her backside.

The Met Gala also received criticism for cultural insensitivity in 2015 for their Met Gala theme, which was originally called “Chinese Whispers: Tales of the East in Art, Film and Fashion” before being renamed “China: Through the Looking Glass.” The planning commission was also criticized in 2018 for its Roman Catholic theme.

“This shows us the power of social media,” says media expert

Paromita Pain, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno who specializes in editorial practices in a global context, says it’s too early to know the movement’s impact.

Pain said in an email to USA TODAY that it is unclear whether this will have a similar impact online as the #MeToo movement or the Black Lives Matter movement, which ushered in a new era of social change in the late 2010s.

“What is certainly worth celebrating at this time is the fact that people are using these mechanisms at their disposal to make their voices heard and protest, thereby keeping alive issues of human rights abuses in the public domain ,” says Pain. say.

“This shows us the power of social media platforms and how they can be a force for positive change when users use them in such powerfully positive ways,” she says, noting that the Met Gala usually draws strong reactions and responses from the public each year. calls to the public. .

She is right. The Met Gala only appears on the calendar once a year – and its controversy never seems to go out of style.

Contributions: Charles Trepany, Edward Segarra

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