Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Today’s Ask Asian Junkie centers around a question that I think stems primarily from differing terminology in popular cultures.
How much power do netizens have over celebrities? It seems like they can force anyone to apologize for whatever they did that is “wrong”. Jonghyun and Shin Se Kyung’s dating for example.
Why do they have such power? Aren’t netizen comments just regular posted comments on a news article?
I see similar questions asked all around the Internet, so I figured this would be a good one to address.
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To keep things short and simple, netizens have significant power because they represent the public.
As such, when media outlets inject netizen quotes into articles, the point of that is to attempt to summarize the public’s general feeling on the issue. If they do it correctly, then that’s why it seems like netizens hold so much power, because what they really represent is how society at large feels about the issue at hand.
Of course, that’s why context is important, because when netizen quotes are used incorrectly, it just comes off ridiculous, as I pointed out to Soompi recently.
We are all prone to forget this from time to time, but remember that everybody is a netizen. You, me, everybody who uses the Internet.
I simply point it out when there are individuals who are acting dumb as fuck or when I think they’re wrong as a whole.
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I have nothing better to do, so send me your questions here: Ask Asian Junkie.
I’m guessing that SK’s size matters quite a bit too. Catching a train to a part of Seoul is, I imagine, far easier/cheaper/less time-consuming than catching a flight to another part of the US.
Didn’t the girl who poisoned Yunho do that? Netizens even pose greater physical threats in SK, unfortunately.
Never thought of that angle, actually.
Yeah, guess they would be easier to follow.
I always thought it was related to SK being such a wired country. The Korean netizens seem to be a large portion of the Korean people, so that’s why they represent.
It doesn’t seem to be as strong in other countries where not so many people have access to the Internet or simply don’t care about it. Here there’s no such thing as “some user at some internet board wrote that…”. This has been changing though, specially because of Twitter and its trending topics.
That part is because the media isn’t total shit.
Sometimes I wish Soompi or allkpop would highlight the comments I make about KPOP. They’re neglecting us 1%-ers! :-(
But, seriously, Korean internet is insanely fast and cheap. I’d be surprised if everyone and their grandma weren’t commenting online at least once a week.
That wouldn’t be accurate either though, since that’s not what they are trying to capture.
True, but it would be rather amusing for, like you say, one of them to be taken out of context.
Well, the sad part is that the out of context shit would be the smart, rational ones.
Yeah its about the internet and the insane extent it is involved in korean lives..Way more than anything ive seen elsewhere.
If someone writes a bad piece about someone on pann, EVERYONE knows..EVERYONE reads that shit. Their family, friends, fuck buddies, managers, the old lady in the kimbab shop etc..
Thats one issue i have with the kpop news sites, this one included, especially the comments sections :o there seems to be a disconnect between the perception of ‘netizens’ and the reality. Everyone is a netizen, they arent just some minority of crazy people.They are normal folks and theres fucking loads of them. We ourselves, by commenting here are netizens. In those articles, they use the word netizen to refer to ‘some dude online who wrote something’..not a member of some scary underground hate group.
I honestly don’t think it’s that out of line though, as far as when they quote the netizen comments on articles.
You go to the top comments on Nate or something and they are generally what they cite.
I dont mean that so much, just that ‘netizens’ are portrayed as a specific group of miscreants. Like they are some organised group..Whereas the reality is they are just normal people, the comments are just from the average kim on the street.
Yeah, that’s true. International netizens seem to think they’re not netizens.