BIGBANG’s Taeyang gets harassed by some BTS stans for making a plainly true and uncontroversial statement to CNN

During CNN’s New Year’s Eve coverage, reporter Hanako Montgomery did a hit on BIGBANG‘s Taeyang where she got a brief interview with the star about his impact and his future activities.

To a normal person, it was a completely innocuous piece that sorta just gave a quick update on him from a quasi-fangirl perspective. Of course, the K-pop fandom is anything but normal, and while I’ve stayed away from fandom mess coverage more and more, I found this particular meltdown to be weirdly amusing in how unhinged it is.

#TAEYANG in #CNN
[Full Intro & Interview]

(Let's wait for the 20th anniversary fellow VIPs 🥹💛
–
Shared from yb_vip@instagram pic.twitter.com/bHeH5pF4Xl

— BigBang M.VIP Family (@BigBangMVIPFami) January 2, 2025

So that’s the whole interview, apparently.

The interviewer praised his impact, and he said he’s glad to have played a part (emphasis mine) in opening doors. That’s just … true? If anything, he even edited her words to downplay his role, probably cause he felt the mass of insanity building at his door.

Well, you can guess which fandom took offense to that, as some BTS fans started spamming Taeyang’s Instagram with “BTS paved the way” and were being deranged on Twitter as well. Mind you, he didn’t say BIGBANG/Taeyang paved the way or that they paved the way for BTS, but even if he did, it would just be saying similar to what BTS members have expressed themselves.

SUGA: it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that BIGBANG practically made BTS

wow i can feel how much he really admires TAEYANG and BB 😮 pic.twitter.com/M8LD5ZqMie

— springkies (@jekkibby2) January 18, 2023

And that doesn’t mean BTS didn’t take things even further for other groups after them, it just means BTS themselves aren’t shitheads like their fans and know the reality of how the industry wasn’t built up to that point overnight, much like BIGBANG and other second generation groups will pay tribute to their forerunners as well.

This is like K-Pop 101 stuff, man. I would say fans need to get a grip, but I’ve long lost any hope of fandoms being reasonable ever, it’s just this was such a bizarre thing to get mad about. Like a two-minute thing on CNN where he tried to downplay his impact, that’s it.

Okay, I feel better now, got back to the roots of the site with this one. Congrats, psychos.