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Our return policy lasts 30 days from the date of purchase. We cannot accommodate exchanges and can only offer refunds on items that are defective or damaged. To begin the process of a return, please email stacy@fridaythings.com with the subject line \u201CFriday Things Merch - Return.\u201D
To be eligible for a return, your item must be unused and in the same condition that you received it. It must also be in the original packaging.
Once your return is received and inspected, we will send you an email to notify you that we have received your returned item. We will also notify you of the approval or rejection of your refund.
If you are approved, then your refund will be processed, and a credit will automatically be applied to your credit card or original method of payment, within a certain amount of days.
We will provide you with a return address to ship your items to upon approval of your refund.
You will be responsible for paying for your own shipping costs for returning your item. Shipping costs are non-refundable. If you receive a refund, the cost of return shipping will be deducted from your refund.
Depending on where you live, the time it may take for your exchanged product to reach you may vary.
If you are shipping an item over $75, you should consider using a trackable shipping service or purchasing shipping insurance. We don\u2019t guarantee that we will receive your returned item.
If you haven\u2019t received a refund yet, first check your bank account again. Then contact your credit card company; it may take some time before your refund is officially posted. Next contact your bank. There is often some processing time before a refund is posted. If you\u2019ve done all of this and you still have not received your refund yet, please contact us at stacy@fridaythings.com.
This website is operated by Friday Things. Throughout the site, the terms \u201Cwe\u201D, \u201Cus\u201D and \u201Cour\u201D refer to Friday Things. Friday Things offers this website, including all information, tools and services available from this site to you, the user, conditioned upon your acceptance of all terms, conditions, policies and notices stated here.
By visiting our site and/ or purchasing something from us, you engage in our \u201CService\u201D and agree to be bound by the following terms and conditions (\u201CTerms of Service\u201D, \u201CTerms\u201D), including those additional terms and conditions and policies referenced herein and/or available by hyperlink. These Terms of Service apply to all users of the site, including without limitation users who are browsers, vendors, customers, merchants, and/ or contributors of content.Please read these Terms of Service carefully before accessing or using our website. By accessing or using any part of the site, you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree to all the terms and conditions of this agreement, then you may not access the website or use any services. If these Terms of Service are considered an offer, acceptance is expressly limited to these Terms of Service.
Any new features or tools which are added to the current store shall also be subject to the Terms of Service. You can review the most current version of the Terms of Service at any time on this page. We reserve the right to update, change or replace any part of these Terms of Service by posting updates and/or changes to our website. It is your responsibility to check this page periodically for changes. Your continued use of or access to the website following the posting of any changes constitutes acceptance of those changes.Our store is hosted on Shopify Inc. They provide us with the online e-commerce platform that allows us to sell our products and services to you.
By agreeing to these Terms of Service, you represent that you are at least the age of majority in your state or province of residence, or that you are the age of majority in your state or province of residence and you have given us your consent to allow any of your minor dependents to use this site.
You may not use our products for any illegal or unauthorized purpose nor may you, in the use of the Service, violate any laws in your jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright laws).
You must not transmit any worms or viruses or any code of a destructive nature.
A breach or violation of any of the Terms will result in an immediate termination of your Services.
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time.
You understand that your content (not including credit card information), may be transferred unencrypted and involve (a) transmissions over various networks; and (b) changes to conform and adapt to technical requirements of connecting networks or devices. Credit card information is always encrypted during transfer over networks.
You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any portion of the Service, use of the Service, or access to the Service or any contact on the website through which the service is provided, without express written permission by us.
The headings used in this agreement are included for convenience only and will not limit or otherwise affect these Terms.
SECTION 3 - ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS AND TIMELINESS OF INFORMATION
We are not responsible if information made available on this site is not accurate, complete or current. The material on this site is provided for general information only and should not be relied upon or used as the sole basis for making decisions without consulting primary, more accurate, more complete or more timely sources of information. Any reliance on the material on this site is at your own risk.
This site may contain certain historical information. Historical information, necessarily, is not current and is provided for your reference only. We reserve the right to modify the contents of this site at any time, but we have no obligation to update any information on our site. You agree that it is your responsibility to monitor changes to our site.
SECTION 4 - MODIFICATIONS TO THE SERVICE AND PRICES
Prices for our products are subject to change without notice.
We reserve the right at any time to modify or discontinue the Service (or any part or content thereof) without notice at any time.
We shall not be liable to you or to any third-party for any modification, price change, suspension or discontinuance of the Service.
SECTION 5 - PRODUCTS OR SERVICES (if applicable)
Certain products or services may be available exclusively online through the website. These products or services may have limited quantities and are subject to return or exchange only according to our Return Policy.
We have made every effort to display as accurately as possible the colors and images of our products that appear at the store. We cannot guarantee that your computer monitor's display of any color will be accurate.We reserve the right, but are not obligated, to limit the sales of our products or Services to any person, geographic region or jurisdiction. We may exercise this right on a case-by-case basis. We reserve the right to limit the quantities of any products or services that we offer. All descriptions of products or product pricing are subject to change at anytime without notice, at the sole discretion of us. We reserve the right to discontinue any product at any time. Any offer for any product or service made on this site is void where prohibited.
We do not warrant that the quality of any products, services, information, or other material purchased or obtained by you will meet your expectations, or that any errors in the Service will be corrected.
SECTION 6 - ACCURACY OF BILLING AND ACCOUNT INFORMATION
We reserve the right to refuse any order you place with us. We may, in our sole discretion, limit or cancel quantities purchased per person, per household or per order. These restrictions may include orders placed by or under the same customer account, the same credit card, and/or orders that use the same billing and/or shipping address. In the event that we make a change to or cancel an order, we may attempt to notify you by contacting the e-mail and/or billing address/phone number provided at the time the order was made. We reserve the right to limit or prohibit orders that, in our sole judgment, appear to be placed by dealers, resellers or distributors.You agree to provide current, complete and accurate purchase and account information for all purchases made at our store. You agree to promptly update your account and other information, including your email address and credit card numbers and expiration dates, so that we can complete your transactions and contact you as needed.
For more detail, please review our Returns Policy.
We may provide you with access to third-party tools over which we neither monitor nor have any control nor input.
You acknowledge and agree that we provide access to such tools \u201Das is\u201D and \u201Cas available\u201D without any warranties, representations or conditions of any kind and without any endorsement. We shall have no liability whatsoever arising from or relating to your use of optional third-party tools.
Any use by you of optional tools offered through the site is entirely at your own risk and discretion and you should ensure that you are familiar with and approve of the terms on which tools are provided by the relevant third-party provider(s).
We may also, in the future, offer new services and/or features through the website (including, the release of new tools and resources). Such new features and/or services shall also be subject to these Terms of Service.
Certain content, products and services available via our Service may include materials from third-parties.
Third-party links on this site may direct you to third-party websites that are not affiliated with us. We are not responsible for examining or evaluating the content or accuracy and we do not warrant and will not have any liability or responsibility for any third-party materials or websites, or for any other materials, products, or services of third-parties.
We are not liable for any harm or damages related to the purchase or use of goods, services, resources, content, or any other transactions made in connection with any third-party websites. Please review carefully the third-party's policies and practices and make sure you understand them before you engage in any transaction. Complaints, claims, concerns, or questions regarding third-party products should be directed to the third-party.
SECTION 9 - USER COMMENTS, FEEDBACK AND OTHER SUBMISSIONS
If, at our request, you send certain specific submissions (for example contest entries) or without a request from us you send creative ideas, suggestions, proposals, plans, or other materials, whether online, by email, by postal mail, or otherwise (collectively, 'comments'), you agree that we may, at any time, without restriction, edit, copy, publish, distribute, translate and otherwise use in any medium any comments that you forward to us. We are and shall be under no obligation (1) to maintain any comments in confidence; (2) to pay compensation for any comments; or (3) to respond to any comments.We may, but have no obligation to, monitor, edit or remove content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libellous, defamatory, pornographic, obscene or otherwise objectionable or violates any party\u2019s intellectual property or these Terms of Service.You agree that your comments will not violate any right of any third-party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, personality or other personal or proprietary right. You further agree that your comments will not contain libellous or otherwise unlawful, abusive or obscene material, or contain any computer virus or other malware that could in any way affect the operation of the Service or any related website. You may not use a false e-mail address, pretend to be someone other than yourself, or otherwise mislead us or third-parties as to the origin of any comments. You are solely responsible for any comments you make and their accuracy. We take no responsibility and assume no liability for any comments posted by you or any third-party.
Your submission of personal information through the store is governed by our Privacy Policy. To view our Privacy Policy.
SECTION 11 - ERRORS, INACCURACIES AND OMISSIONS
Occasionally there may be information on our site or in the Service that contains typographical errors, inaccuracies or omissions that may relate to product descriptions, pricing, promotions, offers, product shipping charges, transit times and availability. We reserve the right to correct any errors, inaccuracies or omissions, and to change or update information or cancel orders if any information in the Service or on any related website is inaccurate at any time without prior notice (including after you have submitted your order).
We undertake no obligation to update, amend or clarify information in the Service or on any related website, including without limitation, pricing information, except as required by law. No specified update or refresh date applied in the Service or on any related website, should be taken to indicate that all information in the Service or on any related website has been modified or updated.
In addition to other prohibitions as set forth in the Terms of Service, you are prohibited from using the site or its content:
(a) for any unlawful purpose; (b) to solicit others to perform or participate in any unlawful acts; (c) to violate any international, federal, provincial or state regulations, rules, laws, or local ordinances; (d) to infringe upon or violate our intellectual property rights or the intellectual property rights of others; (e) to harass, abuse, insult, harm, defame, slander, disparage, intimidate, or discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, race, age, national origin, or disability; (f) to submit false or misleading information;(g) to upload or transmit viruses or any other type of malicious code that will or may be used in any way that will affect the functionality or operation of the Service or of any related website, other websites, or the Internet; (h) to collect or track the personal information of others; (i) to spam, phish, pharm, pretext, spider, crawl, or scrape; (j) for any obscene or immoral purpose; or (k) to interfere with or circumvent the security features of the Service or any related website, other websites, or the Internet. We reserve the right to terminate your use of the Service or any related website for violating any of the prohibited uses.
SECTION 13 - DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES; LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
We do not guarantee, represent or warrant that your use of our service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free.
We do not warrant that the results that may be obtained from the use of the service will be accurate or reliable.
You agree that from time to time we may remove the service for indefinite periods of time or cancel the service at any time, without notice to you.You expressly agree that your use of, or inability to use, the service is at your sole risk. The service and all products and services delivered to you through the service are (except as expressly stated by us) provided 'as is' and 'as available' for your use, without any representation, warranties or conditions of any kind, either express or implied, including all implied warranties or conditions of merchantability, merchantable quality, fitness for a particular purpose, durability, title, and non-infringement.In no case shall Friday Things, our directors, officers, employees, affiliates, agents, contractors, interns, suppliers, service providers or licensors be liable for any injury, loss, claim, or any direct, indirect, incidental, punitive, special, or consequential damages of any kind, including, without limitation lost profits, lost revenue, lost savings, loss of data, replacement costs, or any similar damages, whether based in contract, tort (including negligence), strict liability or otherwise, arising from your use of any of the service or any products procured using the service, or for any other claim related in any way to your use of the service or any product, including, but not limited to, any errors or omissions in any content, or any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of the service or any content (or product) posted, transmitted, or otherwise made available via the service, even if advised of their possibility.Because some states or jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or the limitation of liability for consequential or incidental damages, in such states or jurisdictions, our liability shall be limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.
You agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless Friday Things and our parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, partners, officers, directors, agents, contractors, licensors, service providers, subcontractors, suppliers, interns and employees, harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable attorneys\u2019 fees, made by any third-party due to or arising out of your breach of these Terms of Service or the documents they incorporate by reference, or your violation of any law or the rights of a third-party.SECTION 15 - SEVERABILITY
In the event that any provision of these Terms of Service is determined to be unlawful, void or unenforceable, such provision shall nonetheless be enforceable to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, and the unenforceable portion shall be deemed to be severed from these Terms of Service, such determination shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any other remaining provisions.
The obligations and liabilities of the parties incurred prior to the termination date shall survive the termination of this agreement for all purposes.
These Terms of Service are effective unless and until terminated by either you or us. You may terminate these Terms of Service at any time by notifying us that you no longer wish to use our Services, or when you cease using our site.If in our sole judgment you fail, or we suspect that you have failed, to comply with any term or provision of these Terms of Service, we also may terminate this agreement at any time without notice and you will remain liable for all amounts due up to and including the date of termination; and/or accordingly may deny you access to our Services (or any part thereof).
The failure of us to exercise or enforce any right or provision of these Terms of Service shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision.
These Terms of Service and any policies or operating rules posted by us on this site or in respect to The Service constitutes the entire agreement and understanding between you and us and govern your use of the Service, superseding any prior or contemporaneous agreements, communications and proposals, whether oral or written, between you and us (including, but not limited to, any prior versions of the Terms of Service).Any ambiguities in the interpretation of these Terms of Service shall not be construed against the drafting party.
These Terms of Service and any separate agreements whereby we provide you Services shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the province of Ontario.
SECTION 19 - CHANGES TO TERMS OF SERVICE
You can review the most current version of the Terms of Service at any time at this page.
We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to update, change or replace any part of these Terms of Service by posting updates and changes to our website. It is your responsibility to check our website periodically for changes. Your continued use of or access to our website or the Service following the posting of any changes to these Terms of Service constitutes acceptance of those changes.
Questions about the Terms of Service should be sent to us at stacy@fridaythings.com.
This Privacy Policy describes how your personal information is collected, used, and shared when you visit or make a purchase from www.fridaythings.com (the \u201CSite\u201D).
When you visit the Site, we automatically collect certain information about your device, including information about your web browser, IP address, time zone, and some of the cookies that are installed on your device. Additionally, as you browse the Site, we collect information about the individual web pages or products that you view, what websites or search terms referred you to the Site, and information about how you interact with the Site. We refer to this automatically-collected information as \u201CDevice Information.\u201D
We collect Device Information using the following technologies:
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- \u201CWeb beacons,\u201D \u201Ctags,\u201D and \u201Cpixels\u201D are electronic files used to record information about how you browse the Site.
Additionally when you make a purchase or attempt to make a purchase through the Site, we collect certain information from you, including your name, billing address, shipping address, payment information (including credit card numbers), email address, and phone number. We refer to this information as \u201COrder Information.\u201D
When we talk about \u201CPersonal Information\u201D in this Privacy Policy, we are talking both about Device Information and Order Information.
We use the Order Information that we collect generally to fulfill any orders placed through the Site (including processing your payment information, arranging for shipping, and providing you with invoices and/or order confirmations). Additionally, we use this Order Information to:
Screen our orders for potential risk or fraud; and
When in line with the preferences you have shared with us, provide you with information or advertising relating to our products or services.
We use the Device Information that we collect to help us screen for potential risk and fraud (in particular, your IP address), and more generally to improve and optimize our Site (for example, by generating analytics about how our customers browse and interact with the Site, and to assess the success of our marketing and advertising campaigns).
We share your Personal Information with third parties to help us use your Personal Information, as described above. For example, we use Google Analytics to help us understand how our customers use the Site\u2014you can read more about how Google uses your Personal Information here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/ . You can also opt-out of Google Analytics here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout .
Finally, we may also share your Personal Information to comply with applicable laws and regulations, to respond to a subpoena, search warrant or other lawful request for information we receive, or to otherwise protect our rights.
As described above, we use your Personal Information to provide you with targeted advertisements or marketing communications we believe may be of interest to you. For more information about how targeted advertising works, you can visit the Network Advertising Initiative\u2019s (\u201CNAI\u201D) educational page at http://www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising/how-does-it-work .
You can opt out of targeted advertising on Facebook (here: https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=ads ) and Google (here: https://www.google.com/settings/ads/anonymous ).
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Please note that we do not alter our Site\u2019s data collection and use practices when we see a Do Not Track signal from your browser.
If you are a European resident, you have the right to access personal information we hold about you and to ask that your personal information be corrected, updated, or deleted. If you would like to exercise this right, please contact us through the contact information below.
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When you place an order through the Site, we will maintain your Order Information for our records unless and until you ask us to delete this information.
We may update this privacy policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our practices or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons.
For more information about our privacy practices, if you have questions, or if you would like to make a complaint, please contact us by e-mail at stacy@fridaythings.com or by mail at PO Box 73544 Wychwood PO, Toronto, ON, M6C 4A7, Canada.
I knew I was going to have to watch Best of the Best , Netflix’s new dance dramedy, the second the trailer started showing up on my social feeds. I mean: it’s set in the hyper-competitive world of intercollegiate South Asian dance competitions, explores themes of sisterhood, belonging and self-acceptance and a solid 75% of the jokes are plays on some funny-because-it’s-true diasporic foible. Also, while there are love interests in the mix, the most important relationship in the movie is between childhood besties. It was basically made for me—and definitely for the teenage version of me who watched and re-watched Centre Stage , Step Up and the criminally underrated Honey , convinced that I, too, could find myself, make new friends and, yes, cause some ultra-fit dance bro to fall in love with me through my brilliant grasp of pop-fusion choreography. (This… was a very generous interpretation of my dance ability, btw.)
But I didn’t know I was going to write about Best of the Best until this week, when clips of frat party dance-offs and star Maitreyi Ramakrishnan’s perfectly deadpan one-liners started giving way to posts about her Tamil Eelam identity, hinging on a 30-second snippet of dialogue in the movie. Literally. About 27 minutes into Best of the Best , Ramakrishnan’s Maya and the aforementioned bestie, Anjali (Priyanka Kedia), are meeting the various members of UCLA Agni, the South Asian dance team they’ve just successfully auditioned to join. She introduces herself to the resident white boy on the team by saying, “I'm Tamil, my family is from Sri Lanka.” It isn’t a scene with tons of emphasis or emotional weight, but that wording was very deliberate, Ramakrishnan later explained . “For those who a similar family as mine, who are also probably Tamil Eelam diaspora all over the word, they know exactly the distinction of saying ‘Tamil Sri Lankan’ versus ‘I’m Tamil; my family is from Sri Lanka,’” she said in an interview during the movie’s press tour.
That distinction ignited a wave of criticism, largely (maybe exclusively?) from Sinhalese Sri Lankans, who took offence at her rejection of a nationalistic sense of self. In fact, this group was so upset at Ramakrishnan’s description of her own identity that they did they only thing they could do: leave bad reviews of her movie. Okay, I’m being snarky, but there is actually something serious happening here. This relatively simple statement—one millions of people around the world could, and do, use to describe themselves—has inspired a coordinated campaign to tank Best of the Best using review bombing, a tactic that has often been leveraged against racialized women in an attempt to silence, shame and/or punish them. It’s worth thinking about why that’s happening and, perhaps more importantly, why now.
But first! Some history. (And I’ll just pause here with a caveat that I’m not an expert, just a person who reads a lot, so consider this a starting point.) Okay, so: the Sri Lanka is a South Asian island nation largely made up of a Sinhalese ethnic majority, which today constitutes about 74% of the population, and a Tamil ethnic minority, which makes up about 12%, per the country’s most recent census . During Britain’s occupation of Sri Lanka, the colonizing government favoured Tamils, according to a 2020 article in the Harvard International Review , a dynamic that sowed the seeds for conflict between the two groups. So, when Sri Lanka gained its independence in 1948, the newly independent, and majority Sinhalese, government enacted policy that was ostensibly intended to undo the long-running disenfranchisement of Sinhalese people, but simultaneously resulted in discrimination against Tamils . And it wasn’t only unfair policies. Within a decade of independence, Sinhalese mobs began carrying out organized pogroms against Tamils, with major riots taking place in 1956, 1958, 1977, 1981 and 1983. (If this all sounds familiar, it’s because this is the playbook for oppression of minority groups in general; a similar system preceded the Rwandan genocide .)
According to a 2023 Al Jazeera op-ed by two members of People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), a human rights non-profit that promotes justice and self-determination for Eelam Tamils, during that last pogrom, which became known as Black July, “Sinhalese mobs killed several hundred Tamils, according to government numbers, though activists have long insisted that the evidence suggests the true death toll was in the thousands. The mobs also destroyed Tamil businesses and displaced tens of thousands of Tamils. The violence was targeted and intentional, while police and government officials either failed to stop the violence or actively encouraged it.”
This triggered a 26-year civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the militant group better known as the Tamil Tigers, that wanted to create an independent Tamil state in northeastern Sri Lanka. The human cost of this war was profound: the United Nations estimates the death toll was between 80,000 and 100,000 people, plus thousands more who were ‘disappeared’ and hundreds of thousands who were displaced. And while it has not officially classified the Sri Lankan government’s actions as genocide, other experts have made compelling arguments to do so, including University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle and a panel of international judges belonging to the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, a human rights organization based in Bologna, Italy. The Sri Lankan government rejects this accusation , obviously.
This is just the barest synopsis of 70-plus years of history, but I think it helps illustrate why Sinhalese Sri Lankans are so upset with Ramakrishnan—who, I must note, is a popular, young and outspoken celebrity with a platform in the millions. That is, she is not only rejecting the nationalistic and oversimplified narrative of Sri Lanka as a unified nation that has overcome past turmoil, she’s normalizing and mainstreaming a conversation that they have, for years, tried to suppress. (For more on that, see the Sept. 24 episode of CBC’s Commotion . Culture critic and guest host Radheyan Simonpillai tackled the Best of the Best backlash with guests Nedra Rodrigo, the founder of the Tamil Studies Symposium at York University, and Joyita Sengupta, a journalist at CBC, and I found the conversation offered some really helpful context.)
At first glance, leaving bad reviews on a Netflix dance movie as a form of genocide denialism comes off as kind of… silly. But as with most pop culture news cycles, what’s happening under the surface is worth paying attention to. The practice of review bombing actually started as a form of customer complaint; in the 2010s, video game fans began coordinating to post negative reviews of games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim , Nier: Automata and Crusader Kings II over mostly legitimate complaints. (In these specific cases: the introduction of paid mods, or putting player-created game modifications behind a paywall; demands from Chinese fans for a translation of the game; price hikes.) But it didn’t take long for the tactic to take on ideological importance; in 2013, Total War: Rome II was the subject of a review bombing campaign over the addition of historically inaccurate characters, namely female generals. In 2018, a Facebook group called Down With Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and its Fanboys tried to sabotage the ratings for Black Panther and harassed Star Wars actor Kelly Marie Tran off social media. And in 2020 (and again in 2025, sigh), The Last of Us was review bombed over “social justice warrior” themes and a focus on queer relationships ( though not its Zionism ). In that context, it’s not surprising that Ramakrishnan’s critics would try a similar tactic.
Notably, this type of review bombing doesn’t usually accomplish the bombers’ stated goals—just look at author Cait Corran , who in 2023 created fake personas to review bomb her rivals’ books and inflate her own profile. Her publisher ended up cancelling the publication of her next book, and her agent fired her as a client. That’s an extreme example of review bombing backfiring, but even in less dramatic cases, nothing really happens as a result of these attacks. Disney didn’t fire Tran, and Netflix isn’t going to ignore Best of the Best ’s strong streaming numbers because 1,000 people used ChatGPT to leave poorly-written reviews on IMDb.
But that’s because the actual goal isn’t forcing a company to respond, is it? It’s, as I mentioned earlier, to silence, shame and punish, especially those who belong to historically marginalized groups and have the audacity to step into the spotlight. In fact, “review bombing is often targeted at media aimed at and made by women, people of colour, and the LGBTIQ+ community,” academic Claire Whitley wrote in a 2020 article for The Conversation. And that’s why ineffectiveness isn’t actually a defence, as Whitley goes on to explain: “It’s tempting to dismiss review bombing as a desperate act that occurs in an echo chamber and ultimately has no effect. However, its significance is clear—particularly in an increasingly online world. Ultimately, it serves as another obstacle for marginalised artists and reinforces longstanding hierarchies of power in the industry.”
Here's some bits from Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Hasan Minhaj, navigating that Tamil identity through dance and storytelling in Best of the Best. https://t.co/4rmxt9lbzd pic.twitter.com/91uklRVym3
That’s why I think it’s important to look at the attacks on Ramakrishnan this week. Importantly, while allegations of genocide have been raised against the Sri Lankan government, she is not using that language. She is not directly criticizing anyone . She’s literally only saying how she identifies, and even that is being perceived as a threat.
A couple of years ago, I met up with her at a hotel in downtown Toronto to interview her for a magazine profile. We chatted for way longer than we were supposed to, mostly because she was so thoughtful, and had so much to say, about politics and world events. She made the connection between the oppression her community has faced with that of other groups, including Palestinians and Indigenous people in Canada, spoke passionately about the need for strong labour protections and was refreshingly down to earth about the nature of celebrity—perspectives that were already starting to feel like potential liabilities, especially for young female celebrities. How I felt after that conversation was remarkably similar to writer Kylie Cheung’s feelings after attending Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields festival over the summer: “I found myself most awestruck by the cultural implications of the biggest Gen Z pop star in the industry not just paying lip service or being coy about her political views, but stepping into her power as a feminist icon,” Cheung wrote back in August . “Embracing feminism. Reclaiming it as not just urgent and essential, but cool, fun, and celebratory at a time when too many young women and girls are being implicitly and explicitly told that feminism is cringe.”
There were maybe seven halcyon years were feminism was cool, but recently, it has become less and less common for young, female public figures to share real political viewpoints, for a variety of reasons ranging from self-protection to the demonization of ‘woke 1.’ I’m f orever torn on the usefulness of celebrity advocacy , but on a deeply personal level, I just really love seeing a young, racialized woman use her platform in this way, and I don’t want to see her silenced.
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