It’s probably not even limited to just the kpop community, but that’s where I’m noticing it the most.

The situations with Soojin/Shin-ae and Mina/Jimin should be serving as immediate reminders that we don’t really have all the information, at any given time. Commentary channels and commenters are in such a hurry to hand out judgements and die-hard fans (despite their best efforts) do not know everything—if for no other reason than Korean press doing a better job of keeping their celebrities’ secrets than Hollywood. It doesn’t seem like kpop stars bounce back quite as well as American pop stars—these misunderstandings are harmful.

I don’t actually have strong opinions about Jae himself, but I have been wincing at some of the hair-trigger responses to speculative posts that emerged early in this controversy and that got me thinking about this. As a general rule, people should be checking up on everything everyone says and checking facts. Cancel him (if that’s what you’re into) once you’re sure you actually know what’s going on. (It bears mentioning that I genuinely don’t care about what happens with Jae—I don’t think I could name a single Day6 song and I don’t know much about him…I just know the controversies that kick-started this shitstorm smell fishy to me)

There’s also a difference between “wow, that person seems super lame” and actively trying to prevent them from ever working again.

Have other people noticed this? What’s the cause? How do we address it?

Edit: I originally mentioned the situation with Irene and the stylist—it was a situation that snowballed into something very dramatic, before people ultimately concluded that perhaps this wasn’t actually a norm for Irene. I removed it from where it was in my post, because that’s not necessarily clear. My point isn’t to say people shouldn’t discuss bad behavior, when they see it—it’s that k-pop fans make a lot of really specific leaps to different conclusions, when a scandal breaks. We don’t always have a complete picture and being more tempered in response isn’t a bad thing.