#followers and it was so lame and they were always toxic af anyways!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

allthislove · 7 years

Text

Dis Kpop rant bout to be real unappealing to most of my followers lol

But bear with me, y’all. If I go long, I’ll make a jump.

Y’all, I’m old. Okay? Like, let me tell you how old. I’ve been a K-pop stan for 10 years, no exaggeration. Literally, my first introduction to K-pop was one of my friends when I was a teenager sending me a BoA song because he thought I’d like her. This was literally 2007 (or maybe even 2006??? IDK) I have my biases from over the years, but also, I know pretty much who were the hottest groups/solo artists at the time. Like, when time passes and you get a little more removed from your biases, you can report honestly (I also just so happened to stan a couple of the hottest, but that’s par for the course. They’re the hottest for reasons.)

So, literally, when I see newer K-pop fans say artists like BIGBANG, EXO, Super Junior, and SHINee were irrelevant, or are currently, I get a little dumbfounded. Literally at some point, or even now, these were the hottest boybands in Korea. Many of them, in much of Asia.

Wait, let me clear one thing up. I’m K-pop Rip Van Winkle. That’s a story about a man who falls asleep for a very long time, and wakes up to a very different world. So, my long sleep was college. For a while, while I was in college, I stanned K-pop hard, still. I even went to concerts when I had time off from classes, traded photocards with friends, downloaded songs on iTunes... Then, school got more serious when I started in my major. I had almost no free time outside of it (theatre major = death lol), and so I stanned online very little. I still sometimes watched YouTube videos or downloaded songs I liked, but my fandom became very casual. And y’all, this is a big deal for me. I mean, I was THAT fangirl. I had all the merch, spammed all the comments sections, wrote all the fanfiction, saved money so I could fly across the country to go to concerts, ran stan twitters and tumblrs, like, I was an all-in fan. By somewhere around 2014/15, I had no choice but to chill on that. It was either that, or, like, not have perfect grades, and perfect grades were my LIFE. No joke.

So, in December of 2016, I graduated from college (university, for non-Americans), and I was ECSTATIC, and I’ve been doing well, having been accepted to grad school and done all this fun shit. So, of course, I went back to stanning. But, yenno, I just went back to stanning Marvel hard online, at first. (Did I mention Marvel? Yeah, I was a k-pop and Marvel fangirl, lol. Real man-catching shit. It’s why they’re always in my DMs, amirite?) Occasionally, I’d check back in with K-pop when something cool happened with a group I loved. Or something fuckING SAD AS FUCK, like 2NE1 FUCKING DISBANDING WTF YG???

But I noticed something. This newer group that I sorta liked when I checked out of K-pop standom had blown up. But, with their newfound fame and success came a new, horrible group of stans. Y’all might get mad, I remember Kpop savagery... but that group is BTS.

Don’t get me wrong. K-pop been like this. Fanwars are like... ubiquitous with K-pop. It’s really funny, when you’ve been far removed from K-pop for a prolonged period of time. Like, the rose-colored glasses come off and you see the shit for what it is, and it’s just dumb as fuck. Like, everyone who isn’t a k-pop stan thinks k-pop is dumb as fuck, or either irrelevant, and everyone who is a k-pop stan thinks all other k-pop is dumb as fuck or irrelevant other than who they stan. It’s counter-productive, crab-in-a-barrel shit.

And like, I’ve been heavy in black tumblr/twitter during my K-hiatus, too, and like, I’m so used to the positivity shit, like supporting other black women/woc and supporting black-owned business and also feminist twitter/tumblr, like sisterhood and supporting and uplifting each other. So, seeing people essentially on the same team literally tearing each other down and saying how lame/ugly/untalented/irrelevant/whatever the fuck the other thing is, it’s like jarring AF now.

(Also, K-pop... itself, and often the fandom, it’s just toxic in many ways. Racially... like, the weird racial shit still happens in 2017, and many kpop fans write that shit off. Also, with queer shit, like... the weird, fetishy way people act about queerness vs the straight up homophobic way people react to the idea of legitimate queerness in kpop, and like... lot’s of shit, but that’s a topic for another rant.)

But anyway, BTS stans. Listen, I liked BTS back in like 2014 or whatever, right before I checked out, for school. At the time, they were relatively new (rookies, even), and they had a growing fandom, but yenno, that’s normal for pretty much every newer idol group. My point is: I thought BTS were cool. That “American Hustle Life” or whatever it was was fun to watch, if mildly problematic, but eh, everything hip-hop in Korea is mildly problematic.

So, when I came back and saw them thriving, I was kinda happy. I knew they had increasing fans (many of my classmates who liked K-pop liked BTS, among other groups... often including the earlier ones I mentioned, and then shit like Monsta X and Ikon.), but I had no idea they were like... competitive with EXO until I really had this free time to stan again.

Going long, so it’s under a cut, if you GAF. I write a lot (I’m literally a writer, and writing a lot is beautiful, ask Alexander Hamilton, ask Leo Tolstoy, ask ya mama).

But then the Armys. Mostly on twitter, like, I don’t really see y’all on tumblr. I don’t follow a ton of K-pop twitters, on this blog. (I have an old stan tumblr that I sorta forgot the password to, so IDK.)

IDK, like I said, I’m old. So maybe this is a teenager thing? But there’s this obsession with calling everyone, literally every idol group outside of BTS, irrelevant.

Also, there’s this obsession with believing BTS is the only idol group to make it alone (going platinum with no features!) or, basically, without a Big 3 label to back them. OR, that none of the other idol groups struggled to gain their positions.

Both things are silly, and to me, say you’re not a k-pop fan. Which is fine. I “wasn’t a k-pop fan” for probably the last two years. I was pretty much just watching for 2NE1 updates, or BIGBANG news via alerts on my phone, and whatnot.

But, if you are a K-pop fan, and you consider yourself a K-pop fan (like I was, pre-2015), you ought to really know better. I consider myself a bit of a k-pop historian. No, seriously, my concentration in college was pretty much performance studies/dramaturgy; which if you know what that means, it means I’m the nerd that wants to know how performers in Renaissance Italy got costumes, and what connection the play Hamlet has to Shakespeare’s relationship with his own son, Hamnet. So, when I obsessed over K-pop, I literally STUDIED it. Like, I read actual books and journal articles about hallyu, that’s the kind of nerd I am. So, here it what I know that I know about K-pop.

You do have idol groups who benefited from the level of fame their Big 3 label gave them, and especially the big idol groups that label had before them (that’s kinda... Ikon, Winner, EXO... not that they didn’t have their own journeys, but the BIGBANG, Suju/SHINee bump really benefited those groups.)

But then you have BIGBANG, and Block B. BIGBANG is a group that literally started out flopping. They began in a time when YG was a hip-hop label, and the idea of them putting out an idol group was laughable. The most similar thing YG had at the time was 1Tym, and that wasn’t an idol group, but a hip-hop group. BIGBANG was an experiment, for Yang Hyun Suk. He wanted to bring a different flavor to idol groups, who at the time, were essentially Korean versions of the Backstreet Boys. Mind you, this was around 2005, when the decision was made. So, he took his kid rappers G-Dragon and Taeyang, and his kid singer Daesung, and he brought in underground rapper T.O.P, former SM trainee/reality TV contestant Seungri, and another kid he had as a trainee, Hyunseung. Some of them were not happy that they were going to be in an idol group, as they had joined YG because it was a hip-hop label and they wanted to be rappers. (Yes, Taeyang was a rapper. He became the main singer of the group because Teddy and them thought he had a nice singing voice. Mind you, they were still very young, at this time.) Hyunseung actually got cut, and eventually went on to be a Troublemaker (lol).

BIGBANG debuted to mix reviews. They were weird, ugly (compared to other idols), and people didn’t really get them. They had some fans, but again, that’s not what idol groups were. Idol groups were, well, TVXQ.

Then, G-Dragon happened. YG let GD play around with music a lot, and he wrote these two songs. YG liked them, so he told GD that BIGBANG would record them. GD wasn’t happy about that, either. He thought they’d be his solos. But, it was still a big opportunity for a kid his age to get their songs produced (again, at THIS time, idols did not write their own songs. Idols barely had autonomy at all, back then. These days, a lot of idols write songs.)

Those songs were “Lies” and “Haru Haru”. Both were smash hits. I’m talking, burn up the charts, blow up, K-pop-will-never-be-the-same hits.

Let me remind you, I was actually a k-pop fan, by then. I literally remember the shift. I was stanning Rain, at the time, because he was different than all the other idols.... who were still mostly doing cutesy shit, and a lot of ballad.

When BIGBANG blew up (I wasn’t their fan, yet), other companies followed suit, and started changing up their boyband format. The first was probably 2PM (I DID stan them... because, yenno, Rain was JYP, and so were 2PM.). That sorta hip-hop slant to k-pop groups, it was added largely because BIGBANG changed the game. Don’t get me wrong, those guys were already JYP trainees, for the most part (Jay Park was actually a JYP trainee at the same time that GD and Taeyang were YG trainees; y’all probably know the story about YG and JYP planning to make them a trio.) But, I still say most of the hip-hop style in k-pop, specifically, came from BIGBANG. Obviously, there were already hip-hop groups, but they were hip-hop, and the genre wasn’t really crossing with K-pop in a significant way.

Yadda yadda, Heartbreaker, Alive, GD&TOP, the rest is history, IDK.

Now, Block B. My in-depth knowledge of them isn’t as great, but I know their story.

Block B was another project-group. Cho PD, also, wanted to make a hip-hop idol group. But his idea, I guess, was to go more of a pure hip-hop direction than BIGBANG. (As you probably know, BIGBANG are genre chameleons, while Block B lean much more heavily hip-hop than BIGBANG. This isn’t commenting on anyone’s ability. Block B can cross genres well, and the hip-hop members of BIGBANG do it well, too.)

So, Block B comes out, and you know, they have kind of a smash debut (not on like a MONSTER ROOKIES level, but they did damn good.) But also, immediately, they have controversy... mostly over dumb shit like “you copied BIGBANG!” (Which is also really funny, because Cho PD and Yang Goon actually had beef of some sort. Which also made it awkward, because Block B members actively tried not to mention BIGBANG, even though several of them like BIGBANG. And I think vice versa.)

But, Block B can’t be held down. Like, no. Seriously. So, the thrived, until the fire nation attacked. There was controversy over statements made, over their song contents, all this shit. It seemed like Block B was going to end before they started, which was tragic because there’s a lot of talent there, and nobody wanted to lose them.

Then, just as things started to look up, again, Block B had had enough with their label, Brand New Stardom (or just Stardom). They straight up weren’t getting paid. They were literally hungry, having to scrounge or ask their parents for food, transportation, etc. It was a mess. So, eventually, they left Stardom, and the CEO committed suicide. It got really ugly.

It really, again, seemed like Block B might be over before they even started. Which was a shame, because honestly Zico. Zico was a talent that didn’t need to be wasted (this is not shade to the other members, but seriously. Zico was their GD, he’s the Zion.T, he’s the Tablo, and if you’re a kpop fan, you SHOULD know what that means, and what kind of musician he is.)

But again. Block B can’t be held down. They rose, once again. Triumphantly. They came out with “Very Good”, which, like, GOT THEM ON BILLBOARD, and one them their first music show award, and like, blew them up.

And I don’t think you guys understand how much we all cried when “Be The Light” came out.

And, yenno, lot’s of good things, the rest is history, yadda yadda.

These are just two stories, but yea, no, BTS isn’t the first, or last, to claw their way up from nothing, from obscurity, from relative doom. (I didn’t even talk about all the career-ending scandals that both of these groups had, that they survived and overcame. Seriously, BIGBANG almost legitimately ended in 2011. Why do you think they came out with ALIVE in 2012?)

“But, random old-head kpop fan,” you might be thinking, “nobody did for hallyu what MY BIAS-”

but let me stop you right there, see, because that’s cRAZY, to me. Hallyu been poppin since, like, IDK 2002 or 2003.

Like, who are the Hallyu Kings? DBSK/TVXQ. That’s just Kpop 101. They are practically the reason for Hallyu.

Let me give you some major Hallyu players from the past, eh, 15 or so years. DBSK, HOT, Rain, Se7en, BoA, Super Junior, SNSD/Girl’s Generation, Wonder Girls, BIGBANG, 2NE1, SHINee, EXO. Are there other realllly popular idol groups? Sure. Infinite, VIXX, BAP, f(x), just to name a few. But if you really get down to it, who was leading Hallyu all those years? These are the major players. These are the people whose music, style, popularity, made the world look at K-pop. I PROMISE you. I mean, look up Stephen Colbert’s rivalry with Rain. Look up Cassies record in Guinness for largest fan club in the world. Look up BoA’s dance chart topping US debut. Look up these people’s fame in Japan. In China. In South America. These names WERE k-pop, some still are. (Big daddy Rain/Bi has Hollywood movies, for fucks sake. Don’t you talk to me about Hallyu!)

“But, old lady,” you say to me, “I never heard of them, then!”

I know. And plenty of people, today, haven’t heard of K-pop, outside of Korea and regions where the idols are mainstream. But, yeah, the fact that a lil black girl in North Carolina in 2007 could be listening to BoA, before we had stan twitter and tumblr and YouTube was a baby that only had random uploads and when all my k-pop updates had to come from forums.... that just further proves that hallyu was already a thing. Also, my dear, I bet you’re a LOT younger than me. You could’ve been, like, 5, in 2007. I was in high school. I’m in my mid-20s, many of you are teenagers. That’s also really lovely. I love that K-pop is continuing through the generations, and didn’t burn out as a fad (which is what people have been saying ever since I bought my first Rain album.)

So, what I’m saying is... even if it’s uncomfortable for you to admit... your faves, whether that’s BTS, or Monsta X, or Ikon, or Black Pink, or whatever, ABSOLUTELY owe their success to the HUGE Hallyu strides made by: DBSK, HOT, Rain, Se7en, BoA, Super Junior, SNSD, Wonder Girls, BIGBANG, 2NE1, SHINee, and EXO. THERE WOULD NOT BE ACCESS TO KPOP OUTSIDE OF KOREA if it wasn’t for OUR presence back then. Us, in the US and Canada, and Europe, and South America, who struggled in forums just to get morsels of BoA or Rain music, who tediously translated variety shows featuring BIGBANG and Suju before there were official uploads, who made our faves SO POPULAR that shit like KCON, allkpop, and soompi were created to give us better access to them, who made such a loud impact that companies started making official twitters and YouTube channels for their idols.

I literally watched ALL OF THAT unfold. It all unfolded before my eyes in the last 10 years. It’s INCREDIBLY RIDICULOUS to suggest that shit didn’t emerge because of hallyu; because hallyu was emerging. That’s why you were even able to FIND small idol groups that didn’t come from big companies. In 2007, if you were an idol group from a small company, you’d better pray you got good variety slots to garner interest. Now, it’s par for the course for them to easily connect with fans through shit like YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram (even shit like weibo, which isn’t Korean, but to reach other Asian fans.)

I’m not even going to get into skill, talent, and respect for position because of these things (because that’s a deeper convo, and look where we are already, son and daughter!)

Just... even if you never want to pick up a SHINee album, or watch a BIGBANG MV, let’s not resign ourselves to some foolish notion that every newer idol group owes not their very existence to these cats. This is not a commentary on talent, effort, or anything else. But realistically, you likely wouldn’t have even found them. They also may have never been formed (the influx of foreign fans also brought on an influx of new idol groups. That’s why there are literally hundreds of idol groups, now, versus when, say BIGBANG debuted. There’s so much pie, that everyone is jumping at the chance to get a slice. If there were only fans in Korea, new bands would still emerge, but way fewer, and less frequently.)

Also: it is entirely possible to stan your bias group AND acknowledge the impact that seniors had on them. Wanna see me do it? BIGBANG is my bias group, but they would NOT exist without 1Tym, or DBSK. DBSK is THE boy band model. Yes, there are earlier idol groups, and ones just as big (OMG I LEFT OUT SHINHWA, WHICH IS BLASPHEMY), but DBSK CHANGED the fucking GAME, for K-pop idol bands. They’re the blueprint. 1Tym is literally the styling for every hip-hop influence group in Korea (them and Epik High, but BIGBANG is more directly styled after 1Tym). Besides that, 1Tym is the band that bore Teddy Park, who gave BIGBANG much of their early sound, and to this day helps write many YG artists’ music. If 1TYM or DBSK had never existed, there’s a large chance BIGBANG never would’ve existed.

And, if DBSK didn’t blow up so hard, there’s a large chance BIGBANG would’ve never gotten as much international interest, especially in the early days. (The same could be said for their connection to 1Tym, who actually introduced them in the States at an early YG Concert.)

**small amendment: BIGBANG also owe a lot to Se7en, who was their big bro when they needed it most, and also fixed their names right on up. (I believe he named several members, and saved them from Yang Goon’s terrible naming. Seriously, TOP was gonna be Mark. Which is fine, if your name is Mark, but his name is Seunghyun, and YG just liked the name Mark for some reason. Se7en saved TOP’s life.)

So, can y’all soothe my old ass heart and at least pretend to understand the history of the genre you claim to love? Is that alright? Can that be a thing?

No? Y’all hate me, now? Okay...

Till next time, K-poppers!

#aka the history of korean entertainment as told by raven #bigbang #bts #exo #shinee #super junior #monsta x #black pink #2ne1 #dbsk #idk i mentioned a lot of y'all faves #is this a can of worms?#or did i just save kpop?#just call me raesus #alright read this long ass shit or move on #one rule #DO NOT REPLY IF YOU DID NOT READ TO COMPLETION #mostly because i hate repeating myself

3 notes · View notes