In honor of Twitter looking somewhat normal again, it just made me remember old k-pop stan twt pre-Elon. So many new fans, or even ones who were just too young at the time, have no idea how much the algorithm changed for the 2024 election, and how that’s led to the nasty environment today. First off, there used to be no FYP. You just saw tweets from people you followed, and what they liked & retweeted. That was largely it. It was a much more personal endeavor. If you wanted to see the nasty shit, you largely had to go looking.
After Elon’s changes in 2023, people were complaining about what tweets were showing up on their FYP, and Elon released exactly how the algorithm worked. It heavily favored initial engagement. So now people could just make group chats, Discord servers, or actually pay for bots to “yola” any tweet to the top of everyone’s FYP. The more hateful it was, the more early engagement it got, which stuck it at the top of everyone’s feeds for eternity. It made small moments suddenly explode into discourse for days, weeks. There was a year of transition, but by the end of 2023 into 2024, it was cemented. The bad guys were getting rewarded with actual money, or attention/influence, while the rest couldn’t even defend without becoming a part of the problem. This coincided with most Americans adopting TikTok as a primary app rather than some passing fad. Algorithms now ruled everything, and Twitter’s high engagement drove others to follow suit. Even Reddit today is almost unrecognizable! You used to have to seek things out, now posts from 14 days ago are randomly forced down your throat.
So much of the NewJeans x illit x LSF drama was incited because of these algorithm shifts. Maybe a super hot take, but I think that’s largely why NewJeans members, MHJ, and their families were so confident in their decisions when it largely didn’t make any sense to outside adults. It’s why they were reaching out to people like TalyTokki because if she was real, then what she was saying was real, which made their decisions valid. They fell for the echo chamber too. It’s also why I don’t think we’ll see a hate train as pervasive as LSF’s. They were going through the hype-correction phase, like most groups do after being heavily debut-stanned, but it just got picked up and taken to places it never should have gone because of shitty timing. Stans looking for a way to elevate their favorites were like literal hyenas- the Mys & Blinks of that time were feral alt-right creatures. Sorry if that offends, but there is no rewriting history on my watch. I remember!!!!!!
I say all of this because I had been a casual NewJeans/LSF fan from debut. I didn’t participate in any stan shit, but would keep up with their releases as well as BP, Twice, and RedVelvet. I was at Lolla 2023 for Lana, and luckily NewJeans had a set with no conflicting performances, so I was even able to see OT5 live which was cute. However, while the algorithm changed, it became hard to avoid the increased dramatics online, even as a non-stan on my own personal Twitter account. I saw the Blinks and Mys sling hate to NewJeans & LSF for months and didn’t really know what to believe.
I watched the Coachella livestream with a group of friends like I do every year, none of which were k-pop stans. I even prefaced LSF’s set by saying that the group was widely known for being overhyped and having a weak performance, so to brace for mediocrity. Sure, some weak moments, but clearly nerves. No backtrack, no audio fixes, no huge stage production…everyone was impressed. So to watch them get destroyed over it, and not just stan destroyed, but internationally destroyed…I felt like I was on another planet. I have genuinely never seen an overreaction quite like that.
Anyway, Crazy was a career saver. The instrumental is insane. The MV is one of my favorite of all time. I come back to it a few times a year and it’s just so fun, I hope it’s as fun for them to perform as I imagine it is. Honestly it’s wild we didn’t lose any members. I know people say they pivoted to brain rot music, but that’s IMO the echo chamber still talking. They really have told their story through most of their releases. Pearlies is very representative of that “Is this real?” mindset so many of us had. Spaghetti was beyond an apt release for them if you actually understand it. PF maybe had some misses, Boompala is my least favorite release, but, it all still tells their story and mindset, which not many other groups can say the same.
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