The OA fans' #SaveTheOA campaign has been using playbooks of actual protesters

The Ringer

There have been petitions, flash mobs and at least one hunger strike. The OA fans have also studied the playbooks of past "Save Our Show" campaigns, mailing feathers and mustard packets to Netflix like Roswell fans did when they sent Tabasco sauce to the The WB in 2000. "If any show deserves an overly baroque dance tribute performed in complete sincerity, it’s The OA, which is literally about how dancing herky-jerky with earnest passion and a complete disregard for how ridiculous you look can save the world," says Kate Knibbs. "The over-the-top goofiness is a fitting tribute to the most over-the-top Netflix Original. And while it’s hard to see a flash mob as anything beyond whimsical, other elements of the #SaveTheOA campaign have been startling in how directly they have culled from the playbooks of actual protesters. The level of organization is so impressive it made me momentarily glum that such a formidably coordinated call to direct action was in service of a wildly uneven two-season Netflix Original series and not, well, something else—clean drinking water in Flint or the abolition of concentration camps in the United States, for example. This is not to criticize these fans for their efforts; after all, a person can agitate for the renewal of their favorite show and also pay attention to plenty of other worthy causes. But the way that the #SaveTheOA campaign conflates activism and fandom to an unprecedented degree is as wild as any plot on the show. Whether or not this campaign works, it has taken the stakes of the clashes among fandoms, artists, and industry into a strange and shaky territory." Knibbs adds: "The campaign is so organized, so loud, and so stunt-driven that one couldn’t be blamed for suspecting what the #SaveTheOA group once did—that Netflix is behind it all, pulling the strings for PR. But as time has gone on—and because a company crowdfunding a movement directed at itself might very well be illegal—it’s become clear that not even the streamer would go to lengths like this."

ALSO:

• The #SaveTheOA movement is about more than a TV show
• The OA hunger striker Emperial Young: "Because this hunger strike is a combination of not just about the TV show but also about the iniquities of capitalism and the inadequate social support structures in our country, there kind of isn’t anything more important"