Having been around the block for a while in K-Pop fandom, one of the better practices I’ve tried to adopt that I think more people could do better with is realizing bias. By that, I obviously don’t mean the K-Pop colloquial term of favorite artists in a group or act, but the dictionary definition.
Specifically, the groups and acts you follow in K-Pop, along with their popularity relative to the industry, inevitably bias your opinions about said industry. Speaking for myself, I’m not generally a follower of artists from the big 4, with a couple exceptions. I tend to favor acts that are in the middle tier or lower. That’s not because I have disdain for big 4 acts or hugely popular music, but moreso that the small to upper-mid tier of K-Pop for me, tend to work more experimentally, which I like. There’s also lending support to an act that might need every fan they can get, rather than one assumed to have a baseline of sustainability. I want to make it clear this doesn’t make me better than a fan who only follows big 4 acts – only that this is my situation and this is why I follow who I do.
But I also realize that when I have an opinion about something in K-Pop – concerts/tours, music quality, markers for success, etc. – that my following of small to mid tier acts biases my opinions about those topics. For example, the dialogue that I have found surrounding ITZY, one of the big 4 exceptions I follow, seems baffling to me. The posts wondering if an artist (even measured against the others in similar companies) is a “flop” when they have sold 6.7 million cumulatively and close to 500k just this year is so wild to me. By any appreciable metric to me, they’re just fine. Yet the dialogue continues. But that’s my bias towards what I consider to be successful, driven by the fact that the biggest K-Pop act I follow is a 100k seller.
I do think more people need to take a step back and realize how much their opinions are biased by who they are fans of and how popular they are. I see it in topics that debate concert performance, tour logistics, streaming numbers, line distribution, pretty much anything I can think of in K-Pop. Look for any post that expresses an opinion about how something should be and then see which groups they follow and you’ll start to see where they’re coming from and how that biases opinion – sometimes without them even realizing it.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but I think the judgmentalism that accompanies evaluating success or what is and isn’t possible for a group to be more successful gets unfairly weighted at times by fans one way or the other depending on whether they follow big or small acts. If more people looked at the bigger picture and realized what works for one group isn’t going to work for another, we’d probably see more nuanced, thoughtful views in K-Pop.
submitted by /u/dresdenologist
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