Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Even as far as fandom messes are concerned this one by iKON‘s was impressive. Not just because they did it but because they actually got caught doing it, which is actually somewhat rare even though these types of things sorta go on all the time.
As the story goes, an iKON fansite in Korea made a group chat to devise ways to systematically spread hate about WINNER. They tried to turn public opinion against WINNER by spreading rumors that tried way too hard on Pann, which multiple times made it into the Korean media (because the entertainment media is thorough, you see). They essentially banked on people being too stupid to figure it out, and they were right more often than not.
The cherry on top? After somebody outed them, they posed as WINNER fans trying to do exactly what they were actually doing and tried to demand an apology from WINNER fans under the guise that everything was fabricated to attack iKON.
– You have to pretend to be other fans at times
– You know that, right?
– You have to be a variety of people
– Also like a non-fan
– Non-fan doesn’t work
– Act like non-fan, other fan, Winner fan, and etc
– One has to put a picture of the info
– Say it like, “Hul… Winner fans also manipulated a lot of stuff”
– Let’s pretend to be non-fans first
Unfortunately for them, the jig is up, and after eight months of basically running an astroturfing campaign against WINNER, they released an apology since they don’t want it to fuck up iKON’s impending comeback.
– Their apology is late because they couldn’t identify the people in the group chat
– They had posted a clarification post in response to the Winner fans on Pann
– They admit that the staffs in the chat had manipulated top comments on Pann posts
– The group chat is now deleted and a similar incident will not happen again
I don’t have the receipts for all they did, but the rumor about WINNER giving away their concert tickets cause they couldn’t sell was one, and one commenter has quite the laundry list of offenses committed.
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As I said to start, though, perhaps the most amazing thing is that they were caught. While I’m not saying fandoms do this type of coordinated and purposeful maliciousness regularly, coordinated witch-hunts are not exactly rare or anything new.
So this is just another reason to question anything that originates from Pann and the motivations of the people making comments on these entertainment articles. Do you REALLY think well-adjusted Korean adults, because of their CULTURE and SOCIETY, actually give a fuck about some random idol not dancing hard enough or having a resting bitch face on stage? No? Then follow the cookie crumbs to an obvious conclusion about how much it actually matters for once.
