Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Some have been asking me (or angrily confronting me) about why I don’t take netizen-led conspiracy stuff seriously without like some kind of credible corroboration, this despite the fact that I’m willing to take stuff that’s emerged from the HYBE/ADOR fallout seriously if there’s evidence. Well — other than my experience with T-ara and many other netizen-led witch hunts — things like the batshit logic being used in LE SSERAFIM‘s latest mess is a red flag to me for things being in the insane bandwagon territory because of how insane it would look to outside people.
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So basically, everything HYBE-related is being hyper-scrutinized at the moment, and LE SSERAFIM in particular has been a punching bag. They basically single-handedly launched the vocals discourse over the past few months, and in the fallout from the HYBE/ADOR conflict, everything from a “hidden” Japanese flag to utilizing kintsugi to their Coachella set having a rising sun “inspired” graphic (?) is being criticized. However, one piece of “evidence” stood out as particularly insane.
If you’re normal, you’re probably confused right now.
But to some conspiracy-minded netizens, they connected the closing shot of LE SSERAFIM’s “Burn The Bridge” video (the teaser for their “UNFORGIVEN” comeback) to the contested islands of Dokdo. Yes, that’s right, they’re saying that Sakura‘s face and chest emerging out of the water are meant to appeal to right-wing Japanese nationalists and serve as propaganda claiming the islands.
So yeah … that’s a thing.
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Really though, the point of covering this is more to just give you a taste of the clusterfuck going on right now with regards to this issue. It’s … something. Ideally people would be normal and stick to attacking the companies and execs profiting off idols instead of the idols themselves, but that was always wishful thinking, I suppose.
