An Indigenous woman has unleashed a scathing tirade against social media users who mocked Aboriginal Australians in a ‘disgusting’ TikTok trend.
Indigenous woman Ali Boaza slammed the prank as ‘racist’ towards First Nations people after it went viral on the social media platform this week.
The prank involves a person using a picture of an Indigenous man’s face as their own while they Facetime an unsuspecting friend, family member or partner.
TikTok has since been flooded with thousands of videos from users around the world taking part in the prank.
Ms Boaza, who lives in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, shared her outrage in a video posted to TikTok on Monday.
‘I’m always down for a funny ‘ha ha ha’ trend but the trend where you guys use a random Aboriginal man to prank call someone on Facetime is f***ed,’ she said.
Ms Boaza then singled out American TikTok users for taking part in the trend, labelling them the ‘dumbest’ people in the world.
‘There’s literally people in America doing this trend with random Aboriginal men pranking their family and friends,’ she continued.
‘I’ve literally lived in America and they are some of the dumbest f***ing people in the world. They don’t even know that Aboriginal people were the native people. They just thought that Aboriginal people were a class of people who migrated to Australia.
‘So thanks a lot. You’ve pretty much handed this f***ing trend over to them, the stupidest f***ing people on earth.’
Ms Boaza said people’s reactions when they see the Aboriginal man’s face highlighted the racism shown towards First Nations people.
‘The way some of these people react, their faces, the disgust they have immediately as soon as they see an Indigenous man on their screen, I know it’s unexpected, I know it’s a f***ing prank, but the disgust is instant,’ she said.
‘It’s f***ing disgusting. It’s not cute, it’s not funny, it’s not trendy.
‘It’s f***ing racist. So stop.’
Aussie social media stars have also been called out for taking part in the trend.
Model Jeff Francis Kissubi said the prank was ‘dehumanising’ and ‘perpetuated harmful stereotypes’ in a TikTok video with over six million views.
Indigenous woman Ali Boaza (pictured) slammed the viral TikTok trend which uses an Indigenous man’s face as part of a Facetime prank as ‘f***ing disgusting’ and ‘racist’
Mr Kissubi called out an Aussie comedy duo for posting a now-deleted video of the Facetime prank.
Social media users also called out an Aussie influencer couple taking part in the trend.
The couple has since deleted their video and issued an apology in the comments under Mr Kissubi’s video.
‘I can see how it could be taken the wrong way,’ the couple wrote.
‘I honestly didn’t mean any harm, just thought it was a harmless prank, but I get now how it was inappropriate.
‘It was never about the person’s race or features, it was about someone random calling my phone.
‘I’ve apologised and removed the video because I see how it could hurt.’
Mr Kissubi, who lived in France before moving to Australia in 2016, uses his platform to raise awareness of the issues facing people of colour.
In a video shared on Monday, Mr Kissubi explained he had seen the trend popping up on his TikTok ‘For You’ page and had decided to weigh in.
‘For some it might be harmless but for many it just exposes another aspect of how indigenous people are always vilified for entertainment purposes and never compensated,’ the model said.
‘This is not a gimmick. This is not a joke, this is a real person we’re talking about that has a life, a history, a story, and obviously an identity.
‘This trend is currently going viral and millions of these TikTok users are garnering millions of views whilst they dehumanise and put down an indigenous person for them to make views off it and obviously make a prank out of it.
‘It just exposes this idea of reducing the life of an individual as a punchline, perpetuating harmful stereotypes and normalising exploitive behaviour of using marginalised communities for views.’
