Shut Up Gringo: The Roleplay Controversy Explained

2023-12-13 16:17:38

Almost two years ago, the hashtag “#ShutUpGringo“became a trend after the Latin American community on Twitter came together to defend a Japanese artist who had published an illustration from the Disney film, “Charm“. Unfortunately, her visual received negative comments from Americans (or “gringos”, as they are often called by Latinos), who stated that “the skin tone was too white” and “Latin Americans were not respected“.

On social networks there are usually people who feel they have the right to “get angry at others,” but in reality the gringos had no right to speak for the Latin American public or “represent” them. Unfortunately, the Japanese artist did not know this, so he ended up giving in to pressure and removing his art, which led to the anger of Latin Americans and the massive spread of the hashtag in question.

Now that we have given you the context, it turns out that the hashtag became a trend again, although in a somewhat different way. On Twitter the term “ShutUpGringoRP“, involving a community with a less prominent presence but that definitely has quite a few members: the roleplay community, and again involving Latin America.

According to everything that has been gathered in this regard, It turns out that “the gringos” wanted to take down, through mass reporting, an account in Spanish of a user who pretended to be Adolf Hitler on Twitterarguing that they considered it offensive and that, in some way, Latin Americans “supported Hitler” by following this account.

The curious thing, however, is that the “Hitler roleplay on Twitter” is not something exclusive to the Spanish language, since there is also a roleplay account of this type in English. But what the heck does “roleplay” mean? Well, it is the action of impersonating a character or personality. In this case, the person behind Hitler’s account made posts as if the Führer himself were alive and using this social network.

This whole controversy was started by Twitter user “@legacyvictim” (who made his account private after everyone came down on him). A Latin user tried to explain that roleplaying Adolf Hitler does not automatically mean praising said character, but that it is just a means of black humor that is probably difficult for some to understand.

Anyway, since this person refused to understand this, Eventually the situation escalated to the point where the Latin American roleplay community came together to make a “Shut Up Gringo” go viral again.. Let’s review some posts:

«Asshole gringos (with all the desire to offend)».
«Dude, I can’t believe the English speaking community is so sensitive to roleplay knowing they do the exact same thing.».
«Fucking gringos, they only ruin the things that others love».
«Long, gringo friends, no one asked you for unnecessary intervention in something that doesn’t even belong to your community. It’s humor, our humor, and if you don’t like it, why are you talking? Stay in your community, the roleplay there is even murkier».
«Shitty gringos do shit on chile. Some, but seriously, it’s just a roleplay account and there’s no need to do the shit of asking for a ban and suspending the account. Neither that they were the saints of wars, nor that they were a good country».
«The gringo behind all this controversy is surely capable of calling someone “Latinx” on purpose.».
«Of course, if it were a gimmick account of some genocidal gringo or school shootings, it would be funny for the people of the United States, but since it’s the guy with the funny mustache, they feel the need to complain. Fuck you, your roleplaying community is much shadier.».
«How fucking gringos take our Twitter posts out of context, believing that we are the bad guys in all this, not to mention how hypocritical they are knowing that there are worse roleplay accounts on the Anglo-Saxon side. If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all!».
«Oh no… Let me guess. Did they call someone “Latinx” and they are making it fun? Or are just the gringos saying whatever nonsense again to look good or bad with the Latinos? In the end, it doesn’t matter anyway, a normal day on Twitter».