Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Okay, so I’ve made the horrible mistake of reading some comments from international netizens (I know how Korean netizens see it already) on the FIFTY FIFTY contract mess after the members revealed the extent of their health issues, and I’m posting about it cause I feel like I’m going insane.
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Let’s start from some understandable stuff and get more deranged from there.
Is this not because The Givers were effectively contractors for ATTRAKT? They don’t have a contract with The Givers as far as I know, and the members seem to see them as part of ATTRAKT, so I’m not sure what relevance this point has. They’re in enough shit as it is, not sure what starting a war on two fronts is gonna do when there’s nothing to gain there for them. The Givers and SIAHN themselves have been established as corrupt liars and abusive, so anybody calling them out is obviously valid, but it’s also not unreasonable to want to wait for confirmation that tampering was involved.
The funny thing about people saying this article was biased towards FIFTY FIFTY? It’s mainly just summarizing a Dispatch article, which had FIFTY FIFTY fans busy calling me biased against them for using it as a source at all (also, my analysis was right, but I digress). So which is it? Literally all that article does is explain the corporate structure that The Givers indeed worked for ATTRAKT but handled FIFTY FIFTY the most directly. That seems like undisputed information in all this mess.
But the stuff they have to go through is also wrong? Sorry, are we defending the industry norms here? Do you or do you not want your faves to be abused so some suit can make exponentially more return than your fave ever will? I’m unclear.
Sorry, I feel like this is just a sociopathic lack of empathy for obvious health problems.
It’s like not feeling sorry for an athlete who gets injured because they knew the risks or something. Like are you insane? What the fuck are we doing here? And for what? Some fucking company? The shield? Not even sure people getting paid to side with the industry would act like this. Holy shit.
When we speak of bias, are we also not speaking of being primed to think one thing or another because of shit like 10 lightly upvoted comments on Nate Pann, a site with like 1% reach in Korean online communities? Like not just on this, but any issue, in general. It’s comical.
I know we’re being unserious here because fandoms create literal ‘official’ protests and send trucks to companies over members not getting enough lines or not getting enough parts or … uh, dating. Am I to seriously believe that if any Big 4 group (or anybody remotely established) revealed these types of health issues, even not in the context of a lawsuit, that there wouldn’t be an overwhelming outpouring of support and industry/company criticism? Like most of the rest of the comments on there are basically nitpicking their health issues, saying stuff like “well they’re overdramatizing things”, but then they’ll turn around next week and see a group performing with the flu, act like it’s the end of the world, and ask people to burn down the company building, so which one is it? What is the standard? I’m just asking for any semblance of consistency here.
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It’s insane to me that the site’s coverage is apparently considered radical and biased for FIFTY FIFTY due to the stance that I think what happened to their health is horrible, their company should have to answer questions about it, and their CEO’s PR campaign off the back of this is weird as hell, while also acknowledging that FIFTY FIFTY still might be legally wrong in terms of their contract case since I don’t know where that’ll end up yet and there’s still a lot to shake out on that front. Unless they are like just fabricating medical papers, which there’s no evidence of or accusations of (and ATTRAKT admitted there were health issues before), I’m not sure how that isn’t just the most reasonable reaction to this shit coming out. I’m not locked into any position, I’m just taking the information as it comes, but quite frankly I think it’s netizens who aren’t willing to be as open-minded.
What is neutral to these people? Mindlessly joining in on some witch-hunt that FIFTY FIFTY are evil masterminds and deserve whatever happens to them no matter what, despite this primarily being a dispute between executives with a ton of experience? How does one reconcile the general acceptance by international K-pop fans that the industry is a toxic, unfair place where they frequently abuse children and don’t care about well-being of those who make the money for executives, with mocking teenage girls who are suffering from serious health issues as a result of said industry? I don’t get that part at the very least.
