Roblox players take part in digital pro-Palestine rallies
Roblox players, unable to protest Israel’s occupation of Palestine in person, have taken to the game’s digital streets to make their voices heard.
A user-created experience on the platform called “(PALESTINE) Dataran tanjung mas“ (written in Malay) has provided young gamers with an online space where they can get actively involved. The description says: “This card is made for solidarity with Palestine.”
The experience appears to be user-created cikguzyd, a Malaysian gamer who has around 200,000 followers on TikTok. Videos posted on X and TikTok show large groups of players carrying Palestinian flags gathering during the game, led by Cikguzyd chanting in Arabic, in prayer and protest.
The experience has been visited more than 27,000 times since its launch on October 14th. When players enter the digital space, they can choose whether to wear the flag of Malaysia or Palestine. A large Palestinian flag hangs at the entrance and floats on a moat surrounding a community square. Large letters in the water mean: “We love Palestine.” Large banners in the square read “Solidarity untukmu Palestine” or “Solidarity for you Palestine” with the date October 21, 2023.
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A donation board lists the players and the amounts they have donated, although it is unclear who the recipient of the donations is. The largest donor in October donated 2,250 Robux, or about $28. Most donations are much smaller amounts of 10 and 50 Robux.
The tweet may have been deleted
The tweet may have been deleted
Some have speculated that the participants were children due to Roblox’s reputation as a children’s game. Players appear on the platform as avatars and no personal information such as age, gender or location is listed in their profiles. user Inability to drive discouraged her from personal activism.
But Roblox’s core user base is getting older, meaning many participants were also likely in their teens or early twenties. In 2022 there will be an average of 67 million people I logged into Roblox every day and 22 percent of them were between 17 and 24 years old, the platform’s fastest growing target group.
