- Some unvaccinated people are calling themselves “purebloods” on TikTok.
- People have been using the hashtags #purebloods and #unvaxxed, declaring they want to be known by the former term.
- The term comes from the “Harry Potter” series and refers to families with an unmixed wizarding ancestry.
In a nod to the “Harry Potter” series, some unvaccinated people are calling themselves “purebloods” on TikTok.
People have started using the hashtags #purebloods and #unvaxxed on the sharing platform and saying they want to be known by the former term. In J.K. Rowling’s books, the word “pureblood” is used to refer to wizard families with a “pure” bloodline, or an unmixed ancestry that has never intermarried with non-magical people. It also comes with a darker connotation of superiority over those whose bloodlines are a mix of magical and non-magical ancestries.
One prominent TikToker, conservative influencer Lyndsey Marie, posted a video last week with the hashtags appended.
“From now on, I refuse to be referred to as unvaccinated. I want everyone to now call me pureblood,” wrote Marie, who has 27,900 TikTok followers.
Another TikTok user with the ID “drakapuffdaddy” expressed his admiration for the term in a video of his own.
“Man, are you pureblood? Yeah, I’m pureblood,” he said in the video. “No more ‘unvaxxed’ – pureblood!”
Other TikTok users simply superimposed the word “pureblood” over videos of themselves.
The Tiktok users who called themselves “purebloods” in the TikTok videos above did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider.
The darker connotations of the word ‘pureblood’
Warner Bros. Pictures
In the “Harry Potter” series, prominent “pureblood” families like the Malfoys and Lestranges aligned themselves with Lord Voldemort and exacted a reign of terror on the wizarding world.
The connotation of non-“purebloods” being perceived as lesser was also made clear in a famous exchange between Harry Potter and his childhood nemesis, “pureblood” scion Draco Malfoy.
During the exchange, Malfoy calls Potter’s friend, Hermione Granger, a “filthy little Mudblood,” a derogatory slur for descendants of non-wizards.
Rowling’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider on the use of the word “pureblood” to describe the unvaccinated.
The trend is surfacing at a time when America is grappling with a surge in COVID-19 infections and more contagious variants of the virus, like Delta and Mu.
A new study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that unvaccinated Americans were 11 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than vaccinated Americans. The CDC also found that unvaccinated people accounted for 84% of the deaths recorded in the US from June to July this year. This study’s results support a statement made by CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky in July, when she called COVID-19 a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
According to The New York Times’ COVID-19 vaccine tracker, at least 63% of people eligible to take the vaccine in the US have received one dose. Only 54% of the vaccine-eligible American population has been fully inoculated.