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Aka âwhy you should always take the hate/criticism posts Pannchoa translates with a grain of saltâ.
(Disclaimer: This post is somewhat long, because I tried to go into as much detail as I could. Thereâs a TDLR summary at the bottom, but please give this a read if you can. Iâm sure a lot of fandoms here have had at least one experience with Pannchoa and Pann hate posts skewing peopleâs opinions about their bias groups, so I wanted to explain more clearly why this shouldnât be allowed to happen any more).
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I feel like many people already have an idea about how unreliable of a source Pann Nate (a major online Korean fan community) is, but many still continue to rely on its translation sites like Pannchoa for information, issues, and gossip that is popular amongst knetizens nowadays. Pannchoa has even admitted themselves in the past that Pann is unreliable, yet they continue to translate posts from there for clout - and international fans continue to blindly support them and believe in the information they spread from Pann. Even now, Pannchoa has almost 100k followers on Twitter, and many of their posts often go viral with thousands of retweets.
Iâm involved in several Korean communities Iâve had a lot of experience with Pann up to now, and I wanted to shed light on how that community works, so non-Korean speaking fans can get an idea of just how toxic and manipulative it is. If you think a place like stan Twitter is bad, multiply that by fifty, and youâll have what Pann is like nowadays.
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An overall breakdown of how the Pann system works:
Itâs similar to the Reddit system, in that you can upvote/downvote both posts and comments
The MAJOR difference that probably feeds most of the toxicity in Pann is that all users are completely anonymous. This means that there is no way to check a userâs post or comment history, and thus, there is no way to verify if a person is a fan of a certain group, a non-fan, an anti, a âmuggleâ (aka someone who doesnât stan any idols at all), etc. This also means you canât see if someone comments multiple times on one post, so itâs easy for one commenter to pretend to be more than one user at a time.
To counteract the issue of anonymity and how it prevents users from immediately verifying whose fan someone is, people will often post âpicture proofâ such as their affinity percentages for an artist on Melon (this shows how much you have listened to or liked the songs of that artist) to prove that they are/arenât a fan of someone. This is often seen in posts where non-fans praise or defend a group they donât stan, because otherwise, such users will be accused of acting like non-fans to make the group they like look good.
Enter-talk vs. Fan-talk: Different fandoms operate in their own âtalkâ forums (itâs like how Reddit has different subs for different groups). Enter-talk is the main general forum where everyone can see what is posted there. The posts here are the ones that rise on the trends (and Pannchoa generally translates these posts). Fans will often promote their idols to non-fans here in the hopes to get their post on the siteâs trending ranks so a wider audience will see them - but it also works the other way around. Antis will post things called ęšę¸ (basically a âcriticism/bashing postâ) in Enter-Talk, then try to mass-promote that post in order to make it trend and make more people see it.
In regards to Pannâs trending system: Posts are ranked in a daily/weekly/etc. âtrending listâ, based on how many views, upvotes, and comments they get (trending posts get marked with a âthumbs upâ like here - this is a completely random post I just picked as an example btw) However, it is very easy to send a post to the realtime and daily trending ranks. For instance, Iâve seen posts with only 20-ish comments and 50-100 upvotes go to the realtime trends in a short amount of time. Once they go onto the realtime trending ranks (even with a smaller number of views and comments), they immediately reach a wider audience, and then their views/comments/votes will often start to skyrocket (especially when these are hate posts with clickbait titles). Once they reach a certain amount of views, they will rank on a more general trending list where posts can maintain visibility for a longer amount of time. At this point, theyâve essentially gone âviralâ on Pann.
Antis will often take advantage of this easy trending system to organize smear campaigns against certain idols, by mass-commenting and upvoting these hate posts all at the same time. These posts donât trend just based on unique viewers - one person clicking on the same post 20 times by themselves will contribute 20 views, and help the post to trend faster. And because the commenting system is completely anonymous, antis can comment on hate posts multiple times by themselves to make it look like many people are agreeing with them. Antis will also often upvote each otherâs comments to make them the top comments on the post (top comments are marked on the post with a red label, and will show up first when you scroll to the bottom of the post).
Essentially, the main takeaway here is that itâs extremely easy for anti-fans to make trending hate posts, then also mass-comment to make it seem like the general public opinion is in agreement with them. If you look at these sorts of hate posts, the âtop commentsâ will usually be from antis. But if you look at all the comments, the majority of more recent comments will often be from normal fans and non-fans defending the idols being hated on, or calling out the antis on trying to pass off their hate comments as the âmajority agreementâ. Fans will often also try to counteract these hate posts by writing positive or defensive comments and sending them to each other to upvote, to try to make them rank higher and become more visible than the hate comments.
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Other online Korean communities that are connected with Pann:
- DC Inside (aka DC Gall) - The worst of them all, even moreso than Pann. Honestly, DC is a much bigger monster than Pann is and I wish I could explain how it works as well, but I personally couldnât bring myself to stay on there for long due to how messed up it is. Itâs already gained a lot of notoriety for how badly moderated it is, and how it allows a myriad of toxic communities to operate freely. Even the official wiki article for this site equates it to 4chan, which will give you a good idea about how bad it is. Some terms often used to refer to DC and its users are ę°¤ë (insulting slang for DC users), and ěŹě°ę°¤ or ë¨ě°ę°¤ (specific galleries that are notorious for organizing hate campaigns against idols, then trying to spread that hate to other communities). Itâs an open secret on Pann that a lot of hate/slander campaigns start on here, then DC users will bring them over to other sites like Pann to try to make them reach a wider audience. Because Pann is not a closed community like other sites, itâs the easiest target for DC antis. Especially nowadays, it seems like DC users have been taking over Pann and making it worse than it was before.
(Edit: Another user with more knowledge about how DC Inside works commented below an in-depth explanation here, if anyone is interested. I really recommend reading it as well, because it puts into perspective just how DC communities organize the hate attacks against the celebrities they often target.)
(Edit 2: This recent case is a good example that specifically shows how some of these DC anti galleries work - Iâd recommend reading through the comments to get some more insight as well)
- Instiz, TheQoo, etc. - These are not as bad as Pann or DC, because they are more like âgated communitiesâ. New users are only able to register during certain times (aka: randomly decided registration periods), or if they receive/pay for an invitation. Users on these sites are also usually anonymous, but they are much more strictly moderated and because they require invitations to join, it is much more difficult for anti-communities to gather and fabricate âpublic opinionâ. This also means that intentionally malicious posts are filtered out more easily. If an issue (ex: an idolâs âpersonality issueâ) is spread on DC and Pann, but fails to gain traction in Instiz or TheQoo as well, itâs usually a red flag that the âissueâ was fabricated or exaggerated by antis, and normal knetz donât really care about it and know that itâs not really true.
(Edit: I also wanted to add that these two sites do not have upvote/downvote systems for comments, so antis arenât able to manipulate those either. Comments here are generally ranked by the chronological order with which they were posted. The post ranking system that decides which posts âtrendâ or become popular on these sites is related to the views and number of comments as well, but they do not depend on the same kind of upvote/downvote system as Pann. This isnât to say that these sites canât be used to spread fabricated rumors/issues as well, because that has happened in the past - but it is significantly more difficult to manipulate them in the same way that Pann often is)
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Some specific examples of how this has worked out in real life (I did not mention any of the specific idolsâ names here, but if youâre curious about who Iâm talking about, feel free to message me privately)
A recent example is an instance with a couple of certain idols that have been gaining more popularity recently. They were invited onto a major variety show recently and there were basically no issues at all. General public comments on places like Youtube, Naver, Twitter, etc. were all positive. These idols even trended high on Naver searches during the show. But immediately afterwards, multiple hate posts talking about these idols âbehaving rudelyâ, âlooking boredâ, and other posts hating on their looks, talents, etc. popped up on Pann. At least three of these posts made it to the realtime trends in a matter of hours as well. Many of the top comments (the ones marked in red that show up first) were also negative comments agreeing with the hate posts, so at first glance, it mightâve seemed like there really was a problem...
But if you took a closer look at all the comments, youâd see that many of these top hate comments were downvoted, and the majority of top ranking comments after those were all positive/defense comments debunking the hate and criticism made by the antis who wrote the post in the first place. Non-fans even wrote various posts praising those idols and came into their fandomâs specific fan-talk forums to sympathize with the fans who were upset about those trending hate posts. Normal Pann users noted while watching the comments/views/upvotes on these hate posts rise extremely fast in realtime, that it seemed like antis had made an organized effort to fabricate a fake issue and make them trend to make it seem like they were true. Other users also mentioned later that they saw DC users in the ěŹě°ę°¤ community hating on these idols amongst themselves during the show, then they all migrated over to Pann immediately afterwards to spread a mass hate campaign. If you checked out the response on other fan communities like Instiz, TheQoo, Korean stan Twitter, etc. - not a single one mentioned these same âissuesâ that were being talked about on Pann and DC. I even checked on Instiz later on, and it was full of posts praising those idols during/after the show.
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If something is genuinely an issue amongst the idol fan community, then multiple fan community sites will definitely be talking about it. If the âissueâ is only contained within places like Pann and DC, it is most likely something that was intentionally made to look like it was a bigger problem than it actually is. Pann has essentially become a slander machine that is easily manipulated by anti-fans to disseminate hate and defamation campaigns to a wider audience.
This is a big issue for international fans as well because they give Pannchoaâs translations so much readership, yet theyâre often basically being fooled by these fabricated or exaggerated hate campaigns that are made to look like actual Korean peopleâs opinions. There are some issues that genuinely become trending topics amongst knetz, and those usually do end up becoming translated as well - but because Pannchoa focuses on the trending posts to translate, a lot of incorrect information and fake opinions also get caught up in that, and they are then spread to international fans who will accept them more easily because they do not understand Korean themselves.
Not to mention, Pannchoa themselves is known to often cherry-pick amongst even the top trending posts and comments to translate (a specific example that comes to mind is how they translated all the top posts about several certain idolsâ rumored controversies, but they didnât translate any of the clarification posts that popped up later that debunked those controversies. Most of these clarification posts trended for a very long time on Pann as well, so any regular Pann user wouldnât have been able to miss them)
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TDLR; Pann is an extremely unreliable and toxic community where itâs very easy to spread hate/fake information and manipulate the trends to make it seem like that is the truth, as well as the âgeneral public opinionâ. So if a post bashing a certain idol or suddenly making a random issue about them ever pops up and is shared by Pannchoa, you honestly shouldnât immediately accept it as the truth. If there is a genuine issue, then it will spread amongst actual knetz and be talked about in all communities, including places like Naver and Twitter (and at this point, you will not have to rely on a source as unreliable as Pann or Pannchoa to understand the majority of Korean peopleâs opinions).
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