An inside joke about a TikTok meme among a group of friends on Twitter became a little riddle on social media before it turned into a fundraiser for anti-racism purposes. Yes, that could be the 2020 sentence I've written so far.
On Thursday, the eye-mouth-eye emoji meme popped up in people's Twitter handles, and the buzz of what it all meant began almost immediately. Gizmodo reported. At TikTok, the meme is usually used to express shocks or embarrassments. Soon one itiseyemoutheye Twitter handle then appeared his website was featured on Product Hunt (though there is no current product), which led to discussions about Reddit and media coverage before the group showed up in a post late Friday.
"A group of us changed their Twitter names to" (the emoji) "because we thought it was a fun trend from TikTok. People noticed the change in their schedules and especially noticed the creepiness of the emojis. " the post says. "For a short while, everyone who added the emojis to their names was added to a huge Twitter group conversation."
The group describes himself as a "diverse, ragged group of young technologists who are tired of the status quo-tech industry", "possessed by exclusive social apps that regularly ignore or even ignore the real needs of marginalized people around the world to silence". and exclude these people from the building process. "
All you know is "monetized", "starting round", "growth hack" like "relax". You've never had fun online while vibrating with your friends and donating to the Okra project
– it is what it is (@itiseyemoutheye) June 27, 2020
When the group found that they had some momentum, they decided to turn their hype into a donation tool for groups working for racial justice Loveland Foundation Therapy fund, The Okra project, and The innocent project among other. Regynald Augustin, one of the organizers of It Is What It Is, says they received over $ 60,000 from different donors on Saturday night, $ 135,000 from two anonymous donors (one gave $ 60,000 and the other $ 75,000 Dollars) and have collected about $ 10,000 in merchandise sales. An initial matching donation of $ 50,000 has been increased to $ 60,000. As the group said in its statement, "It's what it is: a meme that took advantage of the relentless hype of exclusive apps and redirected it to a critical social need."
Update June 27, 7:18 p.m. ET: Added new details about the amount of money collected.
