Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
So there was a recent Pann post about Seolhyun that gained traction among Korean netizens, and it also got the attention of international netizens after Netizen Buzz translated it.
The gist of it is that Seolhyun’s popularity is all fake and that her rise was all hype, and the inability for her to get more than 10 people to show up for her Hazzy’s fansign event was evidence of that.
“The funny thing about the fan signing was that I bought a ticket today and it was still in the single digits. I think more people came from getting free tickets through SNS ㅋㅋ”
“I think there’s barely 10 people at the fan signing here so hurry up and come guys”
“About 100 free tickets were given out for people who bought Hazzys products but apparently the people who actually bought tickets to the fan signing were in the single digits, less than 10 people actually.”
This Pann post generated from random forum comments with no receipts of course sent Korean and international netizens off into a whirling dervish of shitting on Seolhyun and patting themselves on the back about how female fans are necessary.
1. [+176, -12] I saw that Hazzys recently gave out 100 free tickets, and if barely 10 came, she’s just not popular… I swear, there’s no use in being popular in male community sites because none of them are actually going to go to any events for you ㅋㅋ Being popular with male fans is pointless, they just stay on their keyboards
11. [+55, -3] This is why people say all the time that there’s no point in being popular with male fans. If you want to survive, you have to grab the female fans. Female fans are the ones who take DSLR photos for you, edit them, gif them, etc to get new fans to join. Female fans are the ones who will go to all the lengths for you. There’s a reason that girl groups start out appealing to male fans before switching to getting female fans.
14. [+40, -0] Whether she’s all media play or not, you need female fans in the end. Male fans are only there to look at your pretty face until the next pretty face comes along and they leave ㅠㅠ Sad to think how embarrassed she must’ve felt.
It’s funny, actually. They’re essentially trying to compliment each other on their own necessity, but what’s truly being said is that female fans dominate the K-pop fandom (which is true) mainly because they are more frequently psychotically obsessed with idols. So they’ll admit that in this context, but god forbid somebody points out that 90% of K-pop panders to that exact demo for that exact same reason or that female idols get dragged all the time in witch hunts because of internalized misogyny. Oop.
But I digress.
The most important thing is that this Pann post was rebutted by somebody that brought receipts.
“I usually don’t like writing article in the place where majority can see (my writing), like in DC. Noona Seohyun hazzys fansign was done 100 times, (the ticket number distribution was given to the winner in the order of the day, so it’s 100 times in total—cmiiw, I’m a bit confused to translate this part). I never wanted to reveal the picture taken in the spot for it’s a private collection, but I can’t stand seeing my baby (Seolhyun) being bullied. I even put my Insta ID (in the pict OP posted)
Keyboard warriors wanted to believe that 100 people didn’t show up ㅠㅠ really pitiful. Wasting energy to attack someone right away, Keyboard warriors isn’t your life so pitiful? If you collect all that energy, you may even make a nuclear fusion. You guys too, don’t feed and give endless reaction to those keyboard warriors.”
Unless there’s anything else out there, basically what happened is that Seolhyun and Hazzy’s held a small fansign event for 100 people and 100 people showed up for it, along with a load of observers and media.
So I guess somebody just decided to fabricate a story, and that narrative they sold fed into what people already wanted to believe about her as well as their own self-importance, so it quickly just became the truth.
—–
The actual important thing to take away from this, though, is that people are delusional. Even if nobody attended this random fansigning, what does it actually matter? By the measurement that actually matters most in K-pop (endorsement money), Seolhyun is fucking everywhere according to people who are actually in Korea. Companies aren’t going to dish out six-figure (or seven) contracts based on paper tiger popularity, so all those ads would be odd to see if nobody actually liked Seolhyun or she couldn’t sell products.
Is her popularity due to die out sooner rather than later? Don’t know and don’t care, but I do know that the people desperately trying to deny her relevancy in Korea right now are delusional and rather pathetic.
