u/Miserable-Elephant-3

First of all no speculation? From the crowd who have been dooming about JYP only binning Gunil because they want to sabotage and the girlfriend being an evil saesang who ‘set him up‘ and have so throughly exhausted reality to the point where they’re setting up tarot readings to tell them exactly what they want to hear. No speculation huh?

It’s the way people have spent days going ‘I don’t care that he said slurs I would have said worse’ and ‘if you have a problem with him insulting fans with misogynistic language you’re a saesang lover who doesn’t understand what it means to be stalked’ suddenly making wild about faces (without actually apologising mind you) and now twisting themselves into believing they’re being nuanced.

In this case nuanced means believing all those evil women forced him into being a misogynist, that he wouldn’t have said all of that if he wasnt at his breaking point, that it’s women’s fault that a 28 year old man was loose lipped on the phone to a woman he clearly did not respect and used all the slurs that denote deep discrimination.

And it wasn’t even about saesangs! Thats what really gets me. The entire recording was all about how he thought fans were 씨발년들 and 씨발년 who wanted to slap. No differentation being saesang or disrespectful or everyone else nothing (brb the fact that he lied about that in his statement along with a few other things is why I personally cant trust him as much as i wanted to). I’ve always stated that people refuse to acknowledge that bit because while I did see some out of pocket things said about him in Xscape it really isn’t beyond the pail of things ifans have done and if people acknowledged that they think that wow maybe he’s talking about me. People always think of saesangs as a specifically foreign phenomenon inherent to the experience of being an Asian fan as if ifans don’t regularly prove that they can be just as invasive and criminal as anyone.

I wonder if all this ‘you’re speculating if you talk about the fact that maybe he’s going down the red pill route’ is not to hide the fact that if he is it’d be harder to defend him. It’d be harder to blame his woes on women who don’t look like you and who you consider far away from your person. He’d have to take accountability and maybe fix himself instead of using the genuine turmoil he was in as an excuse to throw slurs at women as a collective. You’d have to acknowledge that maybe like all men (even ones with ’woke’ opinions on one thing like immigration) he had some toxic views on women inside all this time that he let out once he thought he was safe and his targets were women he hated. The wildest thing is that I could believe he’s doing that right now but his fans actively make him look worse.

Given how little people wanted to acknowledge that maybe Junhan was getting his race scientists beliefs from unsavoury maybe even red pilled sources I’m not surprised that fans refuse to see the pipelines and want to make this repeated deeply disturbing rhetoric into an isolated incident you can blame on stress and everyone but him but still.

Anyway I’ve always known that the ‘we’re holding him accountable’ line was something only said by cowards who don’t even do the required slagging off before going right back into defending their boy anymore but doubly now.

In the wake of Gunil’s removal from Xdinary Heroes and subsequent statement I’m seeing a lot of gnashing of teeth about how unfair it is that he got removed from his group just for venting about evil saesangs and whether or not its misogynist to call an evil woman a bitch and whether or not we should care if a man is misogynistic to an evil woman and threaten to hit them etc.

Unfortunley he was not calling saesangs bitches in this moment. I’m sure he has before but not in this case. The recording is now a bit hard to find but every summary of it places it right after the Inspire Arena concert and exclusively about that concert and how fans were acting online about it.

More specifically his [statement](https://www.reddit.com/r/kpop/comments/1vnb6qa/former\_xdinary\_heroes\_gunil\_shares\_personal/), so praised for being so honest and transparent, does a really sneaky trick.

First he talks about the issue with saesangs and it does sound really harrowing. Then seamlessly it transitions to talking about the Inspire Arena concert which went poorly and to anyone reading it becomes clear that this is what the recording he was apologising for was about. Key word reading because the trick is that fans will be so focused on the saesang story that they will ignore the actual meat of the recording is not about people who put gps trackers under his car but ’disrespectful‘ fans complaining about the setlist of a concert and how that made him feel. And later he stresses that him saying that fans were 씨발련 and threatening to slap them were not about regular fans but people who ‘hid behind anonymity while recklessly attacking us online and invading our privacy’ but like these two people are clearly different groups of people and the former was the one he was talking about but fans already thinking that it’s all about the saesangs are meant to think it’s the latter.

Now do I think we can have a conversation about how those fans while having their god given right to have critiques of a product served to them in form of a concert could go too far and start insulting the members when they definitely didnt need to and how Gunil is allowed to be angry about that? Yes. Do i believe Gunil when he says that dealing with saesangs exasperated his emotions and it just piled on top of him and that’s why he said what he said? Yes. But its clear that villians are willing to pretend it’s all about saesangs and not about the fans at Inspire Arena because they want to make him a clear good guy who was done dirty and the only way to do that about a guy who said something violently misogynistic is to make the recipient of those slurs an extremely evil criminal so it becomes worth it.

And if what he said was aimed at people who were annoying and pushy about how Xdinary Heroes is performing on twitter, well who does that sound like? Sounds like a fan you know and can relate to? Doesn’t it sound like he doesn’t like you either?

Then again people don’t really need an excuse to handwave away misogynistic insults if it’s done by a man they like.

It sounds as if this was the final straw for Gunil and I do ultimately hope he finds peace away from all the stressors that had been plaguing him for a while now. I mean if you’re out there ranting on the phone to a date you met a few weeks ago because you felt as if you couldn’t tell anyone you actually knew about your feelings you’re not doing well. It’s just can we stop lying about shit please.

To make a long story slightly shorter, Leehan from Boynextdoor [did](https://www.reddit.com/r/kpopthoughts/comments/1ukqqh7/is\_it\_disrespectful\_to\_look\_uninterested\_in/) a dance challenge video with Baekseung from Epex in which it went viral for his seeming lack of effort in it. Lots of hate comments towards Leehan ensued and quickly went too far with body shaming sexual harassment calling him evil and a hannam etc you know how kpop stans regularly do things take what could be real criticism and completely go overboard. Baekseung got a lot of attention and sympathy and knetz started going to his fancams and praising (but mostly in relation to Leehan) him.

Fast forward to a month later and Baekseung starts a youtube channel with fellow member Mu in an attempt to ride the wave of newfound popularity. Okay fine that’s what you should be doing especially in this post Rescene world where that tactic worked. Unfortunately the introduction video immediately started things off the wrongest of feet because the thumbnail of it was a YouTube comment translating to

‘if you (baekseung) make a YouTube channel you will crush Leehan immediately’

Leehan was blurred out but literally why bother everyone knew what it was.

And so it started kicking off from there. KOnedoors immediately found evidence on Baekseung constantly bringing up the incident in barely coded words in fromn messages and especially a controversial Weibo live, talking about how he happily cries to all the comments of his new fancams when they’re exclusively filled with Leehan hate of the variety of ‘you’re so much better than him,‘ and the second video on his channel is a teaser for a video of him canoeing. If you didn’t know there’s an idiom in Korea that roughly translates to ’riding the waves of a bad situation’ and that idiom was plastered all over the thumbnail of that video too. So konedoors started filling up his comment section too with special emphasis that as doing this move as Senior to Leehan was extra tacky.

C9 changed the thumbnail barely a few hours ago a day after it had all blown up, locked the comments and put out a statement restating their commitment to artist respect and claiming they will delete any unrelated comments which was immediately mocked because their whole new marketing strategy was to disrespect another artist and their comment sections have been for a month swarmed with nary a mention until it was their artist being targeted for stuff C9 did.

What makes this even more of an own goal is that KOnedoors were actively not really defending Leehan that much. They were like ‘okay fine he deserves his licks for this’ and the only reason they started going hard on Baekseung was because of the thumbnail stunt. Which is why the ‘toxic onedoors bully poor nugu’ thing the few outlets (Pann, Koreaboo) reported on is very funny. Like if it was just to stop the ‘deserved‘ hate on their husbando they would have hated on Baekseung this hard a month.

C9’s love of controversy marketing has often bitten them on the behind. Never forget that Epex debuted with a tasteless mental health concept and did a comeback with a nazi concept and sung lyrics about kristalnacht until the backlash was too strong to ignore but I do feel like they bit off more than they could chew by using the hate train of a way more popular idol with more fans than them in order to grift off sympathy. ATP the drama side of me would on board if Baekseung told us about how Leehan was totally rude behind the scenes or something because at least being aggrieved would be a more human response than what it looks like which is cynically trying to ride someone’s else hate train at the expense of a junior idol that had already been going through it for the crime of not dancing hard enough for clout and a few clicks.

This is also just a terrible way to try and get new fans in general. Baekseung and C9 (I don’t know how much of this Baekseung is here for as opposed to just fully C9‘s doing but most fans think it’s not an insignificant amount is why a lot of this is aimed at him) seem to think that the people who are crapping on Leehan in favour of Baekseung are actually becoming fans of him instead of just using him to troll and hate on another person and is not about to stick around to buy albums or stream songs the moment they forget about this. In fact even some kfans of Epex were getting sick of this tactic. I found out about this whole saga because I saw a viral tweet from a kzenith who complained that he was disrespecting his original fans by pandering so hard on the toxic johnny come latelys at the expense of his real fans for example. And like wouldnt you? Does my wholesome support and love of you mean less than getting attention for youtube trolls? While there were pushback in the qrts many zeniths agreed so we have a case where Epex might actually lose real fans because of this tackines).

The sad thing is that it is by no means a new strategy that has never worked in kpop before. Remember after Le Sserafim’s Coachella performance when there was suddenly a whole wave of ‘live performances’ from rival groups. And like JYP when they pulled the ‘audio suddenly messes up and Nmixx sings a perfect acapella’ trick that had been planned, all it takes is one overzealous company to expose the lot. C9 is just straight stupid always has been always will be.

Anyway what do you think?

They did this with Jay, they’re doing this with Jungwon. Right now in order to cope Ot7s are claiming all Jungwon said was to stop fighting even putting out wrong translations to muddle the waters. This puts the blame equally on ot6s (who while can obviously go too far is not the people being called out here by Jungwon) and is used to shut down any pushback to their contiuning delusion. “You’re using Jungwon’s words against me when he said not to fight”

All to ignore from the fact that Jungwon considers the act of saying ‘Enhypen is 7‘ to be a conflict starter said by people he does not consider Engenes. He said this while saying ‘let me clear’ because he knew those people would twist these words because he saw it happening daily ever since March 10. Accept that a member of a group you claim to be fighting for considers you and your stance to be that of antis and do some introspection as why? Gain empathy?

I know I’m preaching to the choir here but i did get mad.

Debuts mean a lot. It is often the most promoted part of a group’s life as there’s a need to get their faces out there, get fans etc. There’s a saying that you only get one first impression in this world and it’s a saying that holds true here

So why are debut songs treated like an afterthought now? What happened to debuting with a bang not a whimper? What happened to making everyone pay attention to you with a turbobanger? A debut song shouldn’t be the best song in an idol’s career but it sure as hell should be a good start. It’s not as if there haven’t been bad or forgettable debut songs in the past but the way that both fans and companies treat them as a free space before the first comeback is something new i feel, a trial run that is allowed to be bad or unpresentative of the group’s strengths because wait for the next one.

This really affects nugu groups. There’s been a pattern lately where a nugu group debuts with a whimpery song that sheds off the majority of predebut fans they might have gotten and then their next comeback is really good but now no one cares and there’s zero hype for it because the company wasted their budget on the debut and then it spirals from there.

I suspect this is the fault of ‘prerelease’ culture where it’s actively bad for them to be great because it makes the real title look worse in comparison but still. Dislike it.

disclaimer i was bullied severally from primary to high school. i did not find catharsis in this. in fact if i had watched this when i was going through then i probably would very annoyed at the smug way they pretend that their method of violence is easy and a real solution.

i know this sub is in complete love with this show and not only do i disagree with that opinion i'm actively kind of worried that the reaction to this is the exact kind of bloodthirsty near orgasmic 'yah these coddled kids are finally getting what's coming to themselves please can the ERPB be in my school next' that leads to so much wrong in this world. yes it's just a fictional show but when its fans only talk about how it made them feel and demand the show become reality thats when i have to say stop. Whenever its time to praise the show its fans appeal to how realistic it is how its spreading the truth and how anyone who doesn’t like it clearly doesnt know how bad bullying gets in Korea but when anyone decides to criticise it based on those attibutes suddenly its just fiction and its not that deep. I find that dishonest and untrue.

A short list of some of my issues with this show.

1. The ERPB is never allowed to be wrong. This actively affects the show because there is never any moment where our protagonists grapple with the idea that maybe they are wrong and go through any kind of character development. no they are always right and the only conflict is that every person against the ERPB is either an annoying liberal, the annoying media or a cackling villain who is Being paid to fight against something clearly good for humanity. The ERPB is cool and the only problem is that they're not allowed to be even more cool don't question it. Not even when our protagonist is deliberately setting a classroom on fire to make the bully learn about empathy or whatever his excuse is.
2. For all the claims that the ERPB inspectors only hits when needed and it’s a good disciplinary tactic, our officers especially our mc Hwajin clearly loves hitting children and will come up with any excuse to do so. While I’ve already brought up the fire setting scene in again ep 1, I found the scene in episode 2 where he is beating random students for not writing down notes fast enough because they dare to be victims of the episode's antagonist even more galling. The first episode ended hilariously unrealistic this form of abuse is sadly very reminiscent of the kind of stories that got corporal punishment banned in the first place and yet the show clearly thinks it’s funny and fine and our protagonist actually helping because how is beating up students up for not being fast enough at writing supposed to make them immune to the seductive calls of a life of crime? Hwajin's big smug grin on his face whenever he's hurting someone or setting up a scheme that inevitably leads to someone being hurt got me to dislike him in record time especially as that's his only notable personality trait beyond boring kdrama action heroisms and movie trailer ass lines.
3. Episode 3. Just episode 3. I nearly quit the show first time around. Not only is our villain is the most stereotypical shill caricature of a teenage girl always on her dang phone in a show where no one is particularly written with any nuance but the ‘protagonists’ clearly know what she’s done the moment they get there and allow her to try and ruin the teacher's life in order to twist her arm and get the teacher to hit her complete her character arc. not to mention their solution to the problem of ‘these darn evil girls are always accusing their enemies of SA’ is that they are going to get the government to take down any post defaming a teacher and we all clap. not only is it the kind of easy solutions written by someone who doesn't know diddly squat about the internet but how is the government supposed to know which allegation is misinformation and what is just a real accusation of teacher misconduct. Am I supposed to believe that the government of a country famously lax on SAers and currently punishes victims harder for defamation will get that right? The multiple cases this episode claims to be based on can attest to the fact that it's never that easy to prove. The show never brings that up because the show doesn't care about exploring its solutions and lowkey doesn't care about women the most notable female character is Hanrim who is portrayed as token girl on the squad at best and a shrill joke who constantly needs saving at worst. In a ten episode run this show mentions SA (a major problem in the korean schools this show claims to be saving) a few scant times and never in anything more than cowardly euphemism. Our female characters are occasioned menaced and there's some tasteless jokes in the scared straight episode but other than that nothing. In Episode 6 they actively swerve away from dealing with SA to do another story about drugs (a good 30% of the episodes is about drug use) that would have been laughed out a DARE PSA from the 1980s for being so misinformed about how drugs work. Needless to say being less misogynistic than a webtoon where one of the arcs was about a cabal of evil feminist teachers teaching boys to hate themselves doesn't mean theres no misogyny left there.
4. This show has a nasty ‘personal responsibility’ streak which mostly manifests in blaming victims for their issues. The episode in which teens are blamed for their gambling addiction because they’re too weak is very obvious in this messaging (only stopping to put blame on pop up ads on illegal webtoon sites for some reason???) but i felt as if the final episode in which we learn how the indicting incident for the entire show happened also goes out of its way to blame the teacher for her fate. She is often portrayed as annoying naive fool for even trying to help a troubled student because he is clearly evil and can’t be saved (as we all know children are born evil) and also this 16 year old student is vaguely framed as being seductive which is very uncomfortable.
5. The tone is just off. For a show praised for realism and harshness it gets goofy in record time mostly when it comes to violence inflicted by Hwajin and the ERPB (and on Deputy Bong apparently bullying is bad except when it’s on your possibly neurodivergent colleague) which we are invited to cheer at. It's going for dark comedy but it ends up in this uncomfortable zone where the comedy is trash and not funny and the darkness ends up accidentally funny due to how over the top it is. The bullies being to a one stupid enough to fall for every single obvious trap our protagonists set and leave all their plans out is chuckle worthy enough i guess but not enough for 10 episodes of it. Its action scenes are filmed like trash too but i suspect this is a netflix thing given how muddy and incomprehensive its kdrama action scenes have gotten lately. Some gags belong on Study Group a far better show but just clashes in this stone faced joyless mess.
6. a thing definitely taken from the webtoon if accidentally (which speaks to how systematic the sexism of this show is) is that the show loves to blame mothers exclusively for their children’ problems. all the evil parents in this show are various evil mother stereotypes and the worst a father gets if mentioned at all is that he goes along with the scheme but ultimately the mother is the main evil or that he straight up isnt there. If you want to get even more political with it this show's main theme is 'teachers' rights vs parents right' which is defaulted to being mothers
7. The solution is always hitting. The ERPB may try to do more psychological investigations but in the end the start and end of these kids not being evil is a good smack. again very boomer 'i got hit as a kid and i'm totally fine' psychotics. This is where i have to bring up the webtoon's most infamous moment because ultimately calling your black caricature bully the n word to get him to back off from you and it working is kind of taking that logic to its most extreme. Violence is the solution the person who inflicts the most violence wins and the loser inevitably backs down because the strength is too mighty to fight back on.

And that's ultimately my big problem. I do not feel any urge to rise up and fight for teachers rights after this show. I just feel like I watched a completely hopeless tv show, that is good for a cheap pop and nothing more. This is what's convincing people to bring back corporal punishment to schools? Right wing art can be entertaining and a call to action but this is neither. It's a slog, a borderline deep into the mcu take on the bullying power fantasy kdrama genre which ends up looking worse for its inclusion that gives me nothing but notes to complain about. It’s insanely smarmy and pleased with itself. If it was the least bit self aware of its role as cheap power fantasy it’d be one thing but it’s also convinced it’s important and has real wisdom and solutions to impart on the real world as per the end of episodes speeches that make it read even more like a violent episode of a cheesy PSA.

The director claimed that they took great sensitivity to bring the story to life without any of the controversial parts and that he signed onto the show because the premise was near to his heart and important. I would suggest that in order to take out the controversial parts he'd need to throw the entire script away and start over. A mild attempt of sanitization and a convenient name change doesn't stop this adaption of Get Schooled from stinking just as much as its more honest forefather.

I’ve noticed that in the fandom if you like one of these guys you hate the other and refuse to admit they’re basically on the same boat in terms of being controversial. This is not a new problem by any means (I know I was making posts calling this out as far back as episode 4 of boy planet even) and I do feel like picking one of these guys to defend but not the other speaks somewhat to what a person can and won’t defend but it has definitely gotten more polarised since Geonwoo‘s continuing scandal. At least internationally Leoz were often on the front lines in calling him out, both on Twitter and Reddit, which Byeols gleefully exploited to score points on.

Personally I don’t really get it. It’s really a ‘homeless man calling another homeless man a broke add’ situation imo and I don’t understand the gnashing of teeth that happens when people compare these two groupmates with scandals. I suppose there is something to be said about Leo’s misogynistic rap never being repeated again vs Geonwoo constantly getting into character ruining scandal after scandal but also Leo has barely spoken two words about the concept of women since the scandal and has barely done any of the work to prove he isn’t a misogynist anymore. While this makes him a better idol than a guy who swore at someone on a hot mic five seconds after he debuted does that make him a better person? I don’t know but I do feel like it’s fair game to discuss especially when it comes to nonfans’ perception of ALD1 as ‘the group with the bully and the misogynist’ and the reaction Wakeone has to both of them as opposed to how they used to treat scandal riddled artists accused of the same.

Also can’t stress enough about how both fandoms act and defend their idols the exact same way, viciously, annoyingly and in ways that often lean towards the disrespectful. Never beating the allegations.

So basically I’ve noticed a new sound a lot of the boy groups have been doing in the last year but I could never fully describe it properly. All I knew were the basic elements that added up to songs that sounded like they came from the same nexus. Here they are

• vaguely retro 90s rap production
• random retro 90s rap sound effects that sound louder than the song itself (e.g air horns, record scratches
• chant choruses that make the group sound bored
• pretty singing that doesn’t really fit over retro rap production
• choruses that slow the beat down to a crawl

I’m calling this sound Boytude for now because idntt really is the group I associate with this genre(?) now but I’m not saying this is a ‘people who copy idntt’ situation, given how close these songs released to each other it’s clearly more of a case of modhaus releasing their songs first than coming up with the concept. And then again i think they didn’t even do that im sure there are songs before theirs. Also Boytude just fits as a name, given that most of the groups using this sound have the concept of ‘just being boys enjoying themselves and having youthful attitudes’

songs I think fit this description

• idntt unevermet - boytude
• idntt unevermet - you never met
• idntt - pretty boy swag
• idntt yesweare - yea we are
• close your eyes - pose
• alpha drive one - freak alarm
• alpha drive one - omg
• keyvitup - keyvitup
• idid - fly
• idid - step it up
• lngshot - saucin’

this is by no means an exhaustive list so sound off in the comments about what other songs you think fit the description.

anyway am I going insane? is this even a genre? am i a rube who doesn’t know genre? should i hang out at rym more?

The ‘group’ easea was promoted in all the ways you’d expect for a new group. Interesting teaser, a video teasing something, a ‘release’ date, hell even an ’album preview’. It was also promoted on the pedigree of the names behind it, in this case ex and current ADOR employees, which is often the secret sauce behind most predebut stannings. It was with these things that kpop stans took and ran with. Predebut fan accounts started popping up everywhere, people were in a frenzy trying to claim ‘stanned for day one’ tag, claiming this group was a ‘sister group‘ to all their faves, already starting fanwars in their name etc…

Yeah so it turns out easea is a skincare brand. It wasn’t even that hard to find this out, everything to do with their website and trademarks is under beauty. The ‘group members’ are models and not like ex models trying to make it in the kpop industry we’re talking commercial models who are still booking gigs right now. The ’album preview’ had *not for sale but wait for surprise* on it. The teaser video had a new song over it but the vocals were not from any of the ’members’ but from indie artist (and fun fact daughter of kpop producer Hitchhiker) Zin Choi a fact that was very not hard to find given that she reposted the video. And easea just opened their mailing list.

To be tricked by this close approximation of a kpop rollout by people who if nothing else know how to market is not a crime. It’s the reaction to the tricking that’s interesting to me. Not just because the predebut stan machine was so effortlessly followed through but because people so refused to believe that they had been tricked once more and more evidence started coming out. They hounded anyone who was saying ‘hey this doesn’t seem like a real group’ and are still coping as of right now as to not have to rebrand again. As of right now they’re ’here for the music’ which I guess is fair as far as we know there is a song coming out next week but also if it was really for the music they could just listen to Zin Choi‘s songs which are similar to the Coco teaser as to make it clear that they wanted the marketing scheme version.

Predebut stans have been around for years now and it’s at best a recipe for a disappointment. These stans are here for pretty colors, the feeling of being a detective by crawling through social media accounts to find baby photos or a clue about the true personalities of these unborn members and as bragging rights. I was first, I was here from day one. And yet despite that they are willing to drop said group if the debut isn’t to their tastes. It’s so easy to. After all despite the feverishness stanning they aren’t actually attached to the group in the way a real established groups makes you.

In many ways predebut stans are stanning what many fans and companies wish idols were, where the music doesn’t matter because it doesn’t exist in the public eye yet and the idols don’t matter because they haven’t been allowed to show any form of personality yet. It’s all about the concept, the theme which is the only thing kpop fans seem to engage with these days.

I’ll end this with my own tale of predebut standom just so I don’t seem like I’m going ‘ha ha look at these stupid person who predebut stan couldn’t be me’. In February 2021 when I was a baby stan three new groups with interesting concepts were debuting a week apart from each other; (now The) Kingdom, Pixy and Tri.be. I was all in on predebut stanning, preordering their albums creating sns accounts for them telling everyone how excited i was. By March I had dropped Pixy and Tri.be because I really didn’t care for their debuts and I’ve only intermittently gone back to their work since. I lasted one more comeback with Kingdom but a sophomore slump and my bias Chiwoo leaving led me to drop them too. 5 years on I have waited until I’ve heard the music before even beginning to follow a group.

So bravo easea. Whether deliberately a social experiment or just a byproduct of wanting to sell some eye masks you’ve revealed what we’ve all secretly known but never spoken outloud. That predebut stanning is the most degraded form of liking and loving kpop.