Notice anything different about your Tumblr and Twitter feeds this morning? You can thank Tumblr user Y.R.N for inspiring social media users to replace photos of celebrities with a beautiful stream of selfies, gifs, and videos of "regular" black people, in what has been coined #BlackOutDay.
Y.R.N explains the driving force behind the campaign: "I got inspired to propose Blackout day after thinking 'Damn, I’m not seeing enough Black people on my dash'. Of course I see a constant amount of Black celebrities but what about the regular people? Where is their shine?...Black History Month is always excellent, but one month isn’t enough to celebrate our heritage and our beauty....We need a unified agreeance that ALL black people are beautiful and worthy of praise and admiration, and Blackout day is a step towards that.”
ABC News spoke with YouTube personality Frenchesca Ramsey, who helped promote the event and had this to say about the significance of #BlackOutDay: "Unfortunately, in most popular media talking about black people and our bodies, it's mostly of us breaking the law, being killed or mistreated. So it's nice to combat these negative images and stereotypes with positive representations of ourselves."
If you're a person of color, you're invited to join in with your own selfies. Others are encouraged to reblog and retweet in a show of solidarity.
Before you get to posting or reblogging, check out these great examples of how #BlackOutDay is manifesting on Twitter today:
