Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Oh boy, if you would’ve told me years and years ago that K-pop would be mentioned in mainstream news and getting injected into American politics, I would’ve thought you were insane. Now though, after recent events of K-pop stans participating by serving as disruptors, that’s exactly what has happened.
Amusingly at times, it results in things like this, where the American media’s lack of fluency in anything regarding K-pop, much less fandoms, becomes painfully clear.
HELL YES K-POP OPPARS ARE HERE TO SLAYYY
Or whatever.
Just seeing that is wrinkling my brain.
Then there’s TXT on a local FOX affiliate being asked about this mess, and it was just awkward as fuck.
Obviously a shitty question from somebody who clearly doesn’t know anything, definitely.
Though something that is increasingly likely to happen more often as K-pop gets more mainstream attention for political involvement, especially when K-pop is portrayed as this monolith think tank or something by these people, yet as we know it’s unlikely the artists themselves are involved with much if any of this. It has potential to get messy.
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Speaking of that, there’s definitely a disconnect at the moment for me. On one hand, I do think K-pop is a lot of fun and I’ve met a lot of great people over the years in various fandoms, which is why I’ve stuck around for so long. On the other hand, I do understand those who see the monolith praising of K-pop fandoms is irksome, especially as it gets more mainstream and more disturbingly toxic.
Thinking it’s just BTS stans or just EXO stans or just big group stans or just whatever stans is also naive, though. It happens essentially everywhere, just most of the time they aren’t big enough accounts involved so we don’t hear about the mess. And that’s the actual problem, right?
I mean, it was always around and people were always stupid about K-pop (that’s why this site exists, after all), but I dunno, man. I’ve loved K-pop for a long time and I remember being mocked for it, so I admittedly enjoy (maybe more than I should) positive attention, and honestly I wanted this post just to be a fun post mocking American news for being so dumb about K-pop. But also at the same time, I stumbled upon the disgusting side of it. And some of those with the biggest platforms do seem to ignore the toxic shit within K-pop more than they should, and at some point they have to reflect on whether it only provides cover for the worst parts of the fandom.
