#BoycottStarWarsVII

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Part of a series on Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. [View Related Entries]

About

#BoycottStarWarsVII is a Twitter hashtag ostensibly promoting a boycott of the upcoming science fiction film Star Wars: The Force Awakens for being racist toward whites. While the hashtag was widely reported by Internet news media as being an authentic campaign against the movie, many have speculated that it was a hoax campaign engineered to cause widespread outrage.

Origin

On October 18th, 2015, Twitter user @DarklyEnlighten^[4] posted a tweet urging readers to boycott the film Star Wars: The Force Awakens, claiming that the new film "barely has any whites in it," followed by a @DarklyEnglighten^[6] tweeted a call for followers to make the hashtag #BoycottStarWarsVII a trending topic.

Spread

The same day, Twitter @genophilia^[7] tweeted the hashtag claiming that "JJ Abram's political correctness is a code word for anti-white" (shown below).

On October 19th, an anonymous 4chan user submitted a link to the "BoycottStarWarsVII" hashtag to the /tv/^[3] (television & film) board, adding "It's happening" (shown below).

That day, #BoycottStarWarsVII became the top trending topic in the United States on Twitter. Meanwhile, Twitter user @genophilia^[8] posted a tweet mocking "SJWs" for being outraged by the hashtag (shown below).

Also on October 19th, YouTuber TheAmazingAtheist posted a video titled "Racists Boycott Star Wars VII for Promoting White Genocide?," in which he criticizes many of the racist tweets using the hashtag (shown below).

On October 20th, Redditor KRMcNamee submitted a post asking about the hashtag to the /r/OutOfTheLoop^[2] subreddit, where Redditor vexinom submitted the top-voted commenting replying "A few people are trolling, idiots are falling for it and 'journalists' are looking for clicks." The same day, Mashable^[5] published an article titled "Don't give in to your anger: That #BoycottStarWarsVII hashtag was the work of trolls," which reported that the hashtag was created for the purpose of making people angry. Additionally, the article claimed that 94% of the tweets using the hashtag were "expressing outrage over its existence," according to a sample taken by the social media analytics firm Fizziology.