Taco Bell Black Lives Matter Controversy / #RIPTacoBell

Overview

Taco Bell Black Lives Matter Controversy / #RIPTacoBell refers to a viral video of Michigan Taco Bell employee Denzel Skinner getting fired for wearing a Black Lives Matter mask to work in June 2020. The video was shared on Facebook and Twitter causing the hashtags #RIPTacoBell and #TacoBellIsOverParty to trend.

Background

On June 8th, 2020, Facebook user Denzel Skinner went live and recorded himself speaking with his boss about being fired over his mask. The video captioned, "I’m getting fired from my job because i have a black lives matter mask on #TacoBell 3551 Belmont ave pls share" gained over 32,000 views in 10 days (shown below).

Spread

On June 18th, 2020, a shortend clip of the video was reposted to Twitter by @elijahdaniel with the captioned, "Taco Bell manager firing an employee for supporting BLM :/ #RIPTacoBell" (shown below). The video accumulated over 1.3 million views, 42,100 likes and 18,800 retweets in a day.

That day, the video caused the hashtag #RIPTacoBell to trend. Twitter user @theogpaps^[1] posted screenshots of TacoBell's statement regarding the George Floyd protests and captioned it "Hey @tacobell nice PR move but you’re as fake as they come #RIPTacoBell" (shown below, left). The tweet garnered over 4,600 likes and 1,500 retweets in a day. Other Twitter users used the hashtag to post Taco Bell recipes. Twitter user @THEPIL0TZ^[2] posted a recipe for Baja Blast and recieved over 18,000 likes and 4,700 retweets in a day (shown below, right). Distractify^[3] and Newsweek^[4] published articles on the trending hashtag.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References