Junk Explained: Why Is Everyone Angry At Celebrities Who Instagrammed A Trip To Saudi Arabia?
"The dark side of influencer culture is that it really is the ultimate expression of capitalism. Money over human lives."
Celebrities including Armie Hammer, Ryan Phillippe and model Joan Smalls have been slammed for posting “shameless” and “profoundly disappointing” Instagram posts of a government-paid trip to a music festival in Saudi Arabia.
Across Instagram, a series of gushing posts appeared from a slew of actors, models and influencers across the weekend. The mass visit centred on MDL Beast, a three-day mega festival in Riyadh headlined by EDM heroes David Guetta and Steve Aoki.
Posts celebrated the event, with Hammer even calling it a “cultural shift” and “revolution” comparable to Woodstock ’69.
“What I just witnessed was truly special,” he wrote. “…I was able to be a part of felt like one giant seed of growth. The people there throwing themselves into the experience will lead a cultural revolution that we all need to get behind and support.”
He’s right in that it is part of a shift, at least.
In September, the country pivoted to becoming a tourist destination by offering new visas for non-religious visitors and permitting unmarried foreign couples to stay in the same hotel rooms. Female travellers would be able to book hotel rooms alone, and are exempt from wearing an all-covering abaya robe, but are expected to “dress modestly”.
In the past year and a half, Saudi Arabian women have been allowed to drive, travel without male permission, and book hotels alone. Just this month, it was announced that restaurants will not longer have to divide seating by gender.
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced the tourist changes just days after the UN criticised its human rights record. The country imprisons and tortures women’s rights activists, executes LGBTIQ+ people, and last year murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Kashoggi, in an act believed by the CIA to be under the orders of Saudi’s Crown Prince.
Today, Saudi Arabia has sentenced five people to death over Kashoggi’s murder, in wake of revived interest in the murder.
This context, of course, was not included in any of the influencers’ posts, with the like of Ed Westwick, Alessandro Ambrosio, Winnie Harlow and many more snapping pretty pictures of Saudi Arabia and the festival.
As per The Verge, people such as Teyana Taylor and Abrosio included hashtags like #mdlbeastambassador and #mdlbeastpartner, establishing the post as branded content, as required by Instagram.
Condé Nast publication Glamour UK also partnered with the music festival for Instagram promotional posts. The Washington Post global opinions editor Karen Attiah expressed her deep disappointment in the partnership online, given she’d previously talked at a Glamour summit about Khashoggi’s murder.
“The dark side of influencer culture is that it really is the ultimate expression of capitalism. Money over human lives,” she wrote. “What good is your platform if you overlook Saudi regime’s murder and torture for a few bucks? These influencers are just for-hire human billboards.”
A year later, I come to see that @CondeNast’s @GlamourMagUK has accepted a paid social media sponsorship with Saudi Arabia’s @MDLBeast festival on Instagram.
I don’t really have the words. pic.twitter.com/2DqLYGVmwL
— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) December 22, 2019
Journalist, writer and podcaster Aminatou Sow called the mass promotion — largely un-tagged as a paid ad — ‘shameless nonsense’, while former Teen Vogue and Out editor Phillip Picardi said he was “extremely, profoundly disappointed” by those in the fashion industry taking money from the Saudi Arabian government.
The posts surrounding MDL Beast gained widespread attention once they were criticised by Instagram account diet_prada, which has amassed 1.6m followers for calling out designers and models for plagiarism, cultural appropriation and other ethical issues.
They report that six-figure sums were offered to influencers to attend and geo-tag posts, and published a statement from model Emily Ratajkowski, who declined the offer.
“It is very important to me to make clear my support for the rights of women, the LGBTQ community, freedom of expression and the right to a free press,” she wrote. “I hope coming forward on this brings more attention to the injustices happening there.”
In response to criticism, several models have made their profiles private, and actor Ryan Phillipe has defended his choice to attend the festival, calling people who criticised him in Instagram comments “morons”.
The country previously invited influencers to visit this September, all of whom were widely criticised for similar atrocity-ignoring reasons, with people pointing out the country you see on a state-sanctioned trip is not the reality.
Combined, the posts by influencers and celebrities surrounding MDL Beast have raked in tens of millions of likes.
A gay Saudi Arabian journalist and his partner were recently released from Australia’s Villawood detention centre, where they were held for two months despite advocacy group’s concerns for their safety. In an interview with Time Magazine, the journalist expressed his deep disappointment in our country.
“Although I’ve been threatened, intimidated and bullied in Saudi Arabia, I was never thrown in a jail cell without charge,” he said. “That didn’t happen to us until we came to Australia.”