In the past two weeks, the showrunners of Game of Thrones announced that their next show would imagine a world in which the South won the Civil War and slavery still existed. In the Confederate, the South successfully secedes from the Union with the newly formed country on the brink of a Third Civil war. The announcement of the series was met with severe backlash from the general public. The show continues to feed into the ever growing list of slave movies; the only films/tv shows that Hollywood seemingly wants to make about black people and their stories. Moreover, the announcement seems hypocritical considering the amount of criticism that Game of Thrones has received for its own treatment of people of color characters on the show.

The huge public backlash towards the Confederate has even resulted in a social media protest against the creation of the show. During today’s (07/30) episode of Game of Thrones, people on twitter will be tweeting at HBO with the hashtag, #NoConfederate to protest the show. I feel that these recent turn of events demonstrate one of the key ideas expressed in the Digital Activism podcast. The podcast mentions how social media has really helped for people to voice their own personal experiences when contributing to social justice movements or even protests; in a sense, social media has helped to better convey that idea that the personal is political. Ever since the show’s announcement, people have been taking to twitter and facebook to express personal stories and beliefs about how the show is incredibly triggering to and commodifies the brutalization of black people.

Therefore, we see digital activism in people’s expediency to mobilize and protest through social media.