Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
During a livestream on Weverse, TXT member Yeonjun expressed why he was hesitant to participate in the popular dance challenge for “Smoke“ — created by Bada Lee from Street Woman Fighter 2 — despite fans requesting that he do it. The reason being essentially that K-pop stans are weirdos, and instead of just enjoying the collaboration or the dancing on display, they instead immediately use it to compare to others like they’re in a talent show.
“It’d be … how do I say this? It’d be nice to dance to it, but I don’t know, I feel like the meaning of dance challenges has changed a lot these days. It puts me in a dilemma. Of course our MOAs would like it, but not everyone leaves kind comments. Not just about me, if I were to actually post it, but it goes for other people too. … At some point, these challenges have become some sort of battle, like ‘Who did it better? Who’s doing it better?’ It’d be nice to just watch and enjoy it, but I’ve honestly seen a lot of comments that go ‘this person did better, this person did that’.”
“I don’t pay much attention to it, but I hate those kind a things, and I feel like (the meaning of the challenges) has deteriorated a lot these days.”
It’s always been about content to some extent, and it’s inevitable that fandoms turn everything into a competition, but he’s right that doing these challenges have never been more cynical and toxic, and I’m glad whenever an idol says stuff like this out loud. At least in this case it was made for a dancer-centric show*, but most challenges (and the impact it has on the actual music) became tiresome a long time ago.
*Guys, did you know professional dancers are better at dancing than idols? I had no idea, personally. What a revelation. Thank you Twitter and TikTok.
👤“yeon-moke, let’s go” (= yeonjun smoke challenge)
— TXT Translations 💬 (@translatingTXT) September 25, 2023
🦊 hmm it’d be..how do i say this? it’d be nice to dance to it but i don’t know, i feel like the meaning of dance challenges has changed a lot these days
🦊 it puts me in a dilemma…of course our moas would like it but not… pic.twitter.com/ux5zBjNZpE
