People Are Trying To Cancel Celebs By Blocking Them. Will That Actually Do Anything?

Is 2024 the year we finally come to our senses about celebrity worship culture?

That’s the question on many people’s minds as the #blockout2024 trend continues to grow online. The TikTok-led social movement, also (somewhat more dramatically) called the “digital guillotine,” has people unfollowing or blocking celebrities who they feel have not been supportive enough of Palestinians as the war in Gaza continues and an estimated 35,000 Palestinians have died.

The mass blocking began earlier this month, shortly after celebrities and socialites attended the Met Gala, a yearly costume ball to benefit the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, where individual tickets go for $75,000.

“It’s time for the people to conduct what I want to call a digital guillotine — a ‘digitine,’ if you will,” TikTok user @ladyfromtheoutside said in a May 8 video that’s gotten more than 2 million views.

“It’s time to block all the celebrities, influencers and wealthy socialites who are not using their resources to help those in dire need,” she told viewers.

Another posted a montage of Zendaya, one of this year’s Met Gala co-chairs, alongside videos of Palestinian children crying in front of the rubble of destroyed homes in Gaza and other war zones.

Some participating in the trend say they’re just fed up with the worshipful nature of modern fandom when wealth inequality is so stark.

“I’m not blocking celebrities, because I think they are going to save the world,” artist Spencer Katherine wrote on Threads. “I’m blocking them, because I’m so tired of idolizing celebrity-culture and witnessing extreme wealth out of touch from reality. This is the free market.”

The idea is to block celebrities so that a lack of social media engagement affects their lucrative brand deal. If you simply unfollow a celebrity, the algorithm still might suggest a sponsored post of a brand they work with; blocking prevents such posts from appearing on your feed.

The trend seems to be working, at least in terms of drawing attention to itself. Last week, Google said that searches for the term, “celebrity boycott,” “digitine” and “let them eat cake” have all spiked.

Needless to say, it was a bad time for Mark Zuckerberg to post something like this:

There also seems to be an effect on follower counts: A-listers like Kim Kardashian, Selena Gomez and Taylor Swift have lost tens of thousands of followers per day, according to Social Blade, a website that tracks follower and following statistics for several social media sites. (For instance, Kardashian lost 44,000 Instagram followers the same day @ladyfromtheoutside posted her TikTok.)

The call to “divest from celebrity culture,” as it’s been referred to, began in earnest during the pandemic, when some celebrities showed just how out of touch they were with normal-person existence. Think Dua Lipa taking tropical vacations when everyone else was locked down, or Gal Gadot and her brigades of famous friends singing “Imagine,” not realizing how ironic it was to sing the line, “Imagine no possessions,” while sitting in their multimillion-dollar mansions.

“COVID highlighted to the public how removed celebrities are from the lived experiences of their fans,” said Rebecca Forster, an assistant professor at Chapman University in California who studies media psychology.

Of course, the entire notion of celebrity and the parasocial relationships we have with them is about the celebrity being “idealized and unattainable, creating an alluring distance between their dreamy lives and their admiring fans,” the professor said.

But COVID-19 inalterably turned this idea on its head. “Celebrities’ disconnect from regular people started to appear distasteful, irrelevant, and even immoral,” Forster told HuffPost.

This is a mini cancel culture moment, too, Forster said ― a fan-led attempt to hold those in power accountable, even if those in power are their faves.

Even Swift ― a popstar who historically could do no wrong in the eyes of her fans ― has been called out in the last year for not being vocal on Palestine, for dating someone fans disapproved of and for her ample private jet use.

On TikTok, kids wonder: Does the having the privilege of a platform mean you’re obligated to use it for good? (The “divest from celebrities” movement is happening as teens and college students are calling for a cease-fire and divestment from Israel by corporations and universities they consider complicit.)

The #blockout2024 trend shows that Gen Z wants more from celebrities than a decent rom-com or a song of the summer, Forster said.

“I’m not surprised by this conversation,” Forster said. “Compared to millennials and Gen-X, members of these younger generations also prioritize ‘meaningfulness’ in choosing their occupation and I think they similarly look for more ‘meaningfulness’ in the values represented in their pop stars and others entertainers.”

In some ways, the trend is the flip side of fandom culture, said Lynn Zubernis, a psychologist and professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania who researches fan psychology.

“We like to put our idols on pedestals, but we also like to knock them down,” she said. “There’s a reason that schadenfreude is well known.”

Group shaming has also existed for a very long time, it just plays out differently in different environments, Zubernis said: Now, it’s not tarring and feathering, but blocking, boycotting, unfollowing and piling on.

“I think many of these fans are motivated by social justice concerns and a desire to do good after feeling like a moral violation has happened, but there is also an emotional payoff to being a cyber vigilante and joining in online shaming” she said.

There’s also a general feeling that celebrities are celebrities because of their fans, said Brittney Brownfield, a clinical professional counselor and co-host of the Popcorn Psychology podcast.

Given the amounts of money many fans fork over to celebrities for stadium tours and re-releases of albums, some feel entitled to a little control over those celebrities’ platforms, Brownfield explained.

“It’s a continuous transactional relationship,” she said. “There’s a feeling of, ‘Why am I giving you my energy to help you get famous and live a lavish lifestyle I can’t even touch, but you can’t even give a shout out to a cause that is so meaningful and could create significant positive impact?’

Critics of the ‘digitine’ wonder it could be the equivalent of people posting black squares on Instagram at the height of the Black Lives Matters protests: performative and ultimately hollow.

Online shaming can be extremely effective against non-celebrities or minor celebrities, but major celebrities have a better chance of bouncing back, Zubernis said.

There are times when a high-profile person’s bottom line is impacted, though, Zubernis said. She pointed to “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, who’s lost a significant part of her fanbase because of her anti-trans comments over the years.

Others have pointed out that it’s impossible to know what people support behind closed doors, and that a social media post isn’t the be-all-end-all when it comes to political commitment.

Case in point: Some criticized Amal Clooney ― an international human rights lawyer and George Clooney’s wife ― for not being vocal enough on Gaza, but it was revealed earlier this week that she advised the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor behind the arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense ministers.

“A timely reminder that performative activity on social media is not ‘action,’” British lawyer Abimbola Johnson wrote on X. “Amal Clooney has been dragged continuously for the past few months for supposedly being silent on Gaza. She was diligently doing her actual job and making a tangible difference in the real world.”

And there are plenty who feel that we shouldn’t be looking to pop stars for solutions to complex issues in international relations — the “shut up and dribble” segment of a fandom, as Forster calls it. (In 2018, Fox News pundit Laura Ingram said that Lebron James should just “shut up and dribble” when the basketball star voiced his feelings about Donald Trump.)

“There’s definitely fans out there who want their favorite celebrities to stay out of politics — not only because they do not want to have to face a dissonance when they disagree with a beloved celebrity, but also because they just want to maintain entertainment as an escapist, purely hedonic, politics-free space,” Forster said.

Regardless of who we block or don’t block, it’s probably healthy for all of us to interrogate our attachment to and expectations of celebrities.

“A healthy attachment to a celebrity is where you can admire them and their work in a positive way and can separate the person from their public persona,” said Nicholette Leanza, a psychotherapist in Beachwood, Ohio.

It’s fine to unfollow someone when their content becomes offensive to you or if their views don’t align with your personal values, Leanza said. But it’s also important not to “expect them to be perfect in every way.”

“Social media can be brutal if a celebrity makes a mistake or may just be going through typical human experiences, like a breakup or mental health concerns or not know[ing] what to say about something,” she said.