Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Eunjung has recently spoken up about their old popularity and how T-ara is unlikely to return to its past glories.
“While I want to return to [T-ara’s popularity in] the past, I know very well that we can’t return. While it’s upsetting, there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s reality, which we can’t resent anyone for. If we work hard, I believe that one day people will look favorably on us. Anything more than that, I’ll think about after we have first changed people’s perception to a positive one.”
The responses to that are pretty standard, because despite whatever refutations that came out, the narrative everybody developed still spread too far and too fast.
1. [+13,811, -367] It’s because you lack the determination~~
2. [+9,112, -265] Of course ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
3. [+7,425, -240] At least she’s clean about admitting it;;
4. [+5,538, -181] It’s not that it’s not easy, it’s that it’s impossible. Don’t overestimate yourself.
5. [+1,575, -54] T-ara just feels like they’re a bunch of separate people stuck in a group ㅋㅋ but oh yeah, they band together amazingly well when it comes time to bully someone ㅋㅋ
That’s the reality of a lot of people’s opinions, especially those in the mainstream who don’t really care much about K-pop but attached themselves to this issue cause it’s a hot-button thing.
While I certainly can’t do anything about perceptions in Korea, at least internationally I can point out how hilariously things have changed in three years. As more and more people have been faced to confront the actual evidence at hand, the comments have slowly evolved.
Here are the two top-voted comments on Netizen Buzz now, after basically everything was debunked, even by Netizen Buzz herself:
Here were the top three comments at Netizen Buzz back when the so-called evidence of T-ara bullying reached its fever pitch:
Slight change, right?
As I said in a previous article, many netizens are now basically reduced to saying, “Well, they should’ve handled it internally.” Right, but to dislike them because of that would basically mean you can never like a K-pop idol group considering how almost all have fucked up to a similar stupid degree at one point or another.
Besides, that particular reasoning for why T-ara’s career should be ruined is especially amusing given how SNSD/Jessica get zero public criticism along these lines despite the kicked out member actually speaking up about being “forced out” by the “eight others” and described being “distraught” unlike Hwayoung, and months later both were still openly shading each other on social media and shit. And I’m not even gonna go into details about the 2PM bullying Jay Park shit and why they SOMEHOW don’t get the same backlash (situations are pretty identical in terms of shitty rumors/speculation) and have rehabbed their image despite stuff like Nichkhun trying to kill people in his car (seriously, imagine the reaction to Hyomin running down somebody while drunk). And that’s not even to speak of the idol groups or celebrities out there who do actual fucked up shit and suffer little consequences.
So given the level of initial hate T-ara got in comparison, and given how it’s firmly embedded with most, it only makes sense for Eunjung to come to terms with the fact that people are morons who basically can’t change even when confronted by the truth (that’s science, bitch).
Refuting claims of an MMR/autism link successfully reduced misperceptions that vaccines cause autism but nonetheless decreased intent to vaccinate among parents who had the least favorable vaccine attitudes.
The same phenomena applies here, where some can slowly walk back their harshness towards T-ara and can even acknowledge that they weren’t actually bullies … but in the end, the situation must still be framed in a way where they were still right about T-ara being shitty.
Would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.
