Pride Month Ends on a High Despite Backlash Over Parades, Events
"unprecedented" backlash in 2023 according to a leading advocacy group GLAAD. The month began with Human Rights Campaign (HRC) declaring a "state of emergency" for the LGBTQ+ community over a record number of bills introduced across state legislatures in the United States viewed as hostile to the community.While things have often seemed bleak for those celebrating Pride Month, with businesses facing boycotts over their ties to the LGBTQ+ community, event organizers have found success in social media support.Looking at the social media metrics for the official @Pride accounts, there's been a significant rise in followers, suggesting support for the cause is rising despite the perceived backlash.The Instagram account for @Pride saw the most success with 17,160 people hitting the 'Follow' button, an increase of 1.45 percent across the month, according to social media stats aggregator Social Blade.
However, the increase in Instagram followers appears to be much smaller than last year's rise during the same month. Social Blade figures show that on May 27, 2022, the account had 1,191,016 followers, rising to 1,262,613 by June 28, 2022—an increase of around 6 percent.TikTok was a more successful platform for @Pride in 2023, with a major rise in followers both in the last 30 days, and year over year.
The follower count rose by 65,400 to a total of 250,700 across June 2023.On a platform where it's just as easy to lose followers as it is to gain them, @Pride's Twitter follower count rose by just 1,206 (around 0.4 percent).
However, according to Social Blade, this represents a significant drop in new followers compared to June 2022 when the account saw a monthly gain of 82,118, suggesting Pride Month 2022 was more successful in.
