Twitter storm against "Redskins"

As Super Sunday dawned, a lot of people were talking about Proud to Be, the NCAI's Redskins video:

Anti-Redskins logo commercial making waves on Internet

The Best Ad You’ll See This Super Bowl Weekend

The NFL Would Never Let This Ad Air On The Super Bowl, So We're Gonna Show You It. It's Important.

The Upworthy posting was noteworthy because it's one of the biggest sites--perhaps the biggest--for page views. If Upworthy posts your video, a lot of people will see it.

Adrienne Keene of Native Appropriations also endorsed the video, although she noted a few problems with it:

“Proud to Be”: NCAI’s answer to the R-word mascot debate

Super Bowl protest

I wondered if people were going to protest outside the Super Bowl in New Jersey. Apparently not, but a group called Change the Name Now did propose a Twitter campaign:We've agreed on a hashtag for the Super Bowl!

First things first: If you're going to join in the tweet storm, the official hashtag is ‪#‎NotYourMascot‬. We had used ‪#‎changethename‬ last time, and it worked like a charm, but the spamming on it last weekend make it basically impossible to use if we're going to try to officially trend.

In addition to #NotYourMascot, use ‪#‎SuperBowl‬ and ‪#‎Seahawks‬ and ‪#‎Broncos‬, too. The idea is to spread the message as far and wide as possible and directly compete with the NFL's biggest show of the year, and the best way to do that on Twitter is to associate what we're doing with said biggest show of the year.

Here's an example tweet: During #SuperBowl ‪#‎Natives‬ say #NotYourMascot @nflcommish @nfl @Redskins.

We'll post official times to participate on Sunday as we get closer, but feel free to test it out a little bit beforehand.

What's the point?

#SuperBowl is definitely going to trend on Sunday. So will #Seahawks and #Broncos. There aren't many bigger stories in the United States than each year's Super Bowl, and Twitter is going to be absolutely buzzing with it. So what we want to do is get #NotYourMascot to trend, too, so that we can show a large, significant body of people who want to #changethename!

Even if we don't trend, by using the #SuperBowl and team name hashtags, we'll ensure that literally millions of people will see the #NotYourMascot message, and that's important, too!

Want to take part, but you don't know Twitter? Here's a good how-to from WikiHow. You can also ask questions in the comments, and those of us who are Twitter veterans can help you out.The outcome

I joined in the fun, tweeting or retweeting 14 times with the #NotYourMascot hashtag.

Apparently the activity had an effect. Change the Name Now posted this update:‪#‎NotYourMascot‬ is currently trending on Twitter. Hop on, join the fun and keep it going until "I'm going to Disney World!" Remember to tweet on that hashtag, plus ‪#‎SuperBowl‬ ‪#‎Broncos‬ and ‪#‎Seahawks‬, and tweet @nflcommish and @Redskins as much as possible. MAKE THEM FEEL OUR POWER!An image on Facebook suggested that #NotYourMascot was no. 8 among trending hashtags on Twitter.



I don't know if the trending list is complete. Or if "trending" is the same as "most popular." Still, it's a tremendous accomplishment. Between the Super Bowl and the death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, anti-mascot activists made themselves heard. If the Washington Redskins think this protest is going away, they're sadly mistaken.