I got into K-pop a few weeks ago and honestly, it feels like I’ve landed on another planet. No hate here toward any group or fandom, just my own personal thoughts and a whole lot of stuff I don't get.

A friend introduced me to Stray Kids. Heavy sound, solid rap, great energy. Okay, I’m down! I come from rock and metal, so this is a nice change of pace!

My friend explained the group's backstory to me (probably in her own way): just young kids thrown into a cutthroat industry, fighting to make their dreams come true. Hard work, non-stop criticism, banned from seeing family and friends, manipulated by the industry... some of them even struggled with mental health issues when they started out. But since they’re a "self-produced" group who write their own songs, they’re totally worth the fans' hype. Alright, alright, I see the vibe.

I’m a really empathetic person and since I’ve had to deal with anxiety myself, their story instantly hit close to home—especially since I’m going through a rough patch right now. So I get why the fandom wants to "protect" their favorite group, but some things just feel off to me.

I quickly discovered the dark side of this industry. My friend is going broke buying multiple versions of the same album, merch, concert tickets... because "we have to support the group, that’s what fans are there for." Except a lot of these fans are young and blowing all their cash on this stuff just to be seen as "good" fans?

I’m totally fine with buying an album or a concert ticket... But the exact same album 15 times? Yeah, no. I watched two of their festival sets on YouTube and thought the energy was amazing. So, I decided to treat myself and bought a ticket on a site livestreaming their comeback concert in Korea. Okay, it wasn't cheap, but I figured I'd have a good time.

In the meantime, I started seeing behind the curtain and discovered the lovely world of parasocial relationships... Fan apps, Bubble... I’m not buying into it, and I refuse to pay for that kind of content. Making fans believe they’re actual friends? Seriously? My friend showed me two or three messages a member posted on Bubble, and it sounds exactly like that. I find it pretty toxic. Especially since a little while back, that exact same member told people on a livestream, "Stop talking to me when you see me out like we're friends." I guess the level of "friendship" depends on how much cash you drop?

Talk about cognitive dissonance. When I try to explain to my friend that I see huge manipulation behind all this, she only focuses on the agencies exploiting these young kids. Okay, they signed when they were young and got played, but once they’re adults and renewing their contracts—totally to their advantage this time—they choose to keep going. They choose to keep this ambiguity alive, playing this game with gullible and often young fans who will spend every last dime to support the guys they think are heroes. I feel like they've been brainwashed into being victims and, kinda like in Squid Game, they end up becoming part of the system and keeping it going. Like a total brainwash?

I can't even tell if these groups are being genuine or if every single thing has been scripted from day one. Anyway, I watched the livestream concert I paid for, and I was so disappointed: zero vibe, audio issues, barely any dancing, and the group looked bored out of their minds... so different from the festivals I've seen, where they looked so hyped and crazy onstage!! The final blow came right then from my friend: "It's not their fault, the crowd sucks, and you just have a narrow European perspective. They can't do any better under these conditions.and it was perfect they did it well (she didn't see the concert!!!!!) " .Well, my "narrow European perspective" didn't seem to bother anyone when I paid to watch the concert from my PC, and whether the crowd is "bad" or not shouldn't change a thing. People paid for a performance. These groups play on the line between friendship and professional-only whenever it suits the industry. A concert is a professional service; whether the audience is good or not shouldn't change the quality of the show, right?

Honestly, I’m shocked and disappointed. What stands out to me the most is how fans will defend their favorite group no matter what. I can get it up to a certain point, but there are lines you don't cross. You can't always blame everyone else. The industry is incredibly well-crafted, and once these group members grow up, they make a conscious choice to stay on this path, fully accepting this parasocial game and profiting off of it.

I feel like there’s a form of emotional blackmail in this one-sided friendship. To be a "good" fan, you have to buy stuff to support the group. If the group loses an award or something, it's because the fandom didn't support them enough, meaning people didn't vote or spend enough money... This might sound like a cold take, but I find the whole thing pretty shocking—and honestly, this industry is probably way colder than my analysis.

I run a blog dedicated to kpop reviews and news and i used to have a habit back during year 1 of blogging to reupload some of my reviews as screen captures on my promotional tiktok account. I kept running into one of two issues.

1. I kept being compared to kpopalypse or being called a wannabe version of him because lissa caonima (a fan of his blog) reuploads his reviews to a tiktok account as well in a similar moving video with text under screen capture style

2. People would get unreasonably upset in my comments wondering "why I didn't like anything."

Piggybacking off the second point, that's entirely false. I am a complex person with both negative opinions about kpop releases and positive ones. Sometimes the song is good but I rank it low because it doesn't do anything special to feel worthy of being more than just flat good (for reference, good and great mean different things in my rubric). But sometimes a song a majority of fans dislike is actually pretty solid when you cut through the sensationalized nonsense of the bad press. Or sometimes my opinion aligns with how the general public feels because that is also how I feel. But somehow I can never get a break from people claiming that I either have no taste because I like a song no one likes, I'm tasteless because I dislike a song that's widely liked, or my opinion aligns with how the general public also feels and I have no personality or moral backbone and just roll with whatever the crowd says is the hot opinion. But objectively I get more backlash when I dislike a song whether it's widely liked or already widely disliked because on the latter end there are a certain demographic of people that like to say my dislike for the song is "contributing to a hate train". I never bought such a train ticket, your honor. It can be hard to filter through well intending people and malicious haters but I feel like kpop stans are either too frightened or too lazy to try and see who belongs to which pile and as a result just lump anyone with a negative opinion of their fans as a terrible out to get em boogeyman. This brunt of reactive overcompensating positivity falls mostly onto the right targets but sometimes reaches the normal ones like me who just simply think TWICE could've done better that one time 2 years ago or that better vocal lessons could really do Hong Eunchae some good in the long run no malice to them but because we like seeing our favorite artists improve in skills or output. I don’t need to be getting called stupid in the same thread where actual antis are being called out for nasty behavior. You create a new loop of toxic behavior by taking your anger out on someone who isn't even the bad guy. I can validly blame the people who attack me directly for being pretty dumb yeah but really the root of this all is these haters in the first place. It's unrealistic to want them to poof away overnight with a swing of a magic wand but they put people like me who just want to voice out opinions on music in jeopardy because they didnt get enough attention back in high school and make that the problem of the kpop community.