By: Fletcher Pike

The 2024 ‘Celebrity Blockout’ is a newly formed social media movement that has recently started in the past few weeks to bring awareness about the events that are happening in Palestine, more specifically Gaza. It was mostly formed on TikTok and has now spread to several other social media apps.

The movement initially began when a TikTok influencer and content creator, Haley Kalil, also known as Haylee Baylee, posted a video on her account, featuring her at the Met Gala. In the video, she wears an extravagant outfit with an audio over the video from the 2006 film, ‘Marie Antoinette’, saying “let them eat cake”. The famous sentence was supposedly said by the French queen Marie Antoinette in response when informed of the famines occurring in the country.

The video received severe backlash and angered many people at the lack of awareness about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how several celebrities and influencers have remained silent about it or brought awareness about the situation. People on TikTok began posting videos, suggesting that they should begin to block celebrities who have not spoken out about Gaza.

Several popular celebrities have been mass blocked, with some even losing millions of followers. Some of the celebrities that are being blocked include Taylor Swift, Travis Scott, and the Kardashians, with Kim Kardashian having lost about 3 million followers since the Met Gala.

People on TikTok have overall mixed opinions about the Celebrity Blockout, with many standing for it and blocking many celebrities, while others argue that blocking celebrities will not help bring awareness or help the situation in Gaza.

In my personal opinion, I believe that it is extremely important to bring awareness about Gaza or Palestine in general and do as much as we can to help, but I’m uncertain that blocking celebrities is necessarily relevant to helping Gaza.