#wait. p1harmony was on trevor noah????????????????????? how did THAT happen?????

[sanstropfremir]

The ask mentioning variety shows and fans screaming about the “mistreatment” of idols has me wondering what you think of the larger trend of that. Obviously the group under discussion probably gets that the most since their fans can be……rabid…….at times, and have zero sense of nuance in the slightest. But they’re definitely not the only fandom like that. In recent weeks I’ve seen fans complaining about how Itzy is being “mistreated” for the venue sizes on their us tour (and txt got the same); bts plus p1harmony apparently were both “mistreated” for a 3 minute comedy bit on the daily show with Trevor Noah; bts has been “mistreated” by the western media for calling it a hiatus (which their official subtitles apparently did!). It’s getting kind of insane. Western artist fans do this sometimes too, but a decent number of very vocal kpop fans seem to infantilize their groups to a much stronger level and take issue with just about everything.

Obviously none of these are mistreatment in any classic definition, and if someone was legitimately being mistreated that’s a bigger deal (and probably a legal one too). But it feels like these claims:

1. Mask any real criticism or concerns that should be voiced, much like the boy who cried wolf fable. It’s hard to take any of it seriously at this point.

2. Make it really difficult to do anything creative because of the blowback. Like yes, there are reasonable lines in the sand (like please stop making minors do things that really should only be for adults….or maybe stop debuting minors…), but the pushback has gone so far past the reasonable line that it’s no longer in sight.

We’ve already seen western tv and movies cave to the demands of fans, usually at the expense of the creative vision of the original creators. What kind of effect do you think this pushback is having in kpop and will have in kpop moving forward? Should we be concerned?

i agree with you on the whole, it absolutely does mask real criticism, but to be honest i'm not actually sure it's going to creatively affect kpop that much. fan interactivity has been built into kpop from the very beginning and it's part of the reason why it functions the way that it does. kpop has, for better or worse, sort of a system that shields everyone except the idols from a public presenting front. obviously you can go looking for the names of the people involved in things like choreo and styling etc etc and you'll find them, but they don't get full billing and they aren't gonna be noticed by people who aren't looking. AND you can't look for staff via their faces, because everyone gets blurred in extra content. there's an understanding that these people are not there to be in front of the camera, their work is what is meant to be in front of the camera. fans can't really actively harass the true creative staff, all they can usually do is harass the company, and (for better and for worse) it's debatable if that actually even does anything. the reason we've been seeing shit go down with western media in the last couple of years is because western media is overwhelmingly not made for fan interaction. there's no company protecting them in the same way, so you can easily find and access staff and creatives directly. fan culture was the quiet part of western media consumption for DECADES, and up until recently (read: social media) fan circles stayed in fan circles and artists stayed in artist circles. but now that the internet enveloped everyone in this free for all and so much of the new media that's being produced is recycled old media, there's nothing stopping fans from actively engaging with the people who directly make the work. and when you're a creative that's a lot of overwhelming engagement that you aren't prepared for. and when you have a lot of people that like a thing that you made, there is a part of you that wants to please them. and when, in western media's case, the fan conglomerate gets so big and loud that it's affecting business decisions and as well as smaller creative ones, that's becomes a much more pressing problem for media creation.

tldr: kpop isn't engaged with the same as western film and tv is, so it's not likely to change that much.