I know the easiest answer boils down to ‘my favourite is better than yours’ in whatever context out there (sales, streams, tour, CFs/ambassadorships, social media following, MV views, income, beauty/height, charting, awards, music show awards, whatever else one can think of) mentality. However, what I, until now, still cannot fully comprehend is how an artist from the same company is pitted against another artist of the very same company. While we have the whole NJ vs everyone else mentioned in their whole drama, we also have Stay vs Once drama that seem endless and intense (I am deep into the fandom space and while I block A LOT, this still leaks). I know fanwars exist everywhere and sometimes it is just a small part of the whole fandom. I also do know that the bigger the fandom is, the louder the toxicity is. While I am never in camp ‘I support all artist coming from the same company’ because I just am not, I also do not see why 2 completely different artist fandoms will fight over the stupidest things and spread lies everywhere that it even got so intense that it became a huge thing back in 2023 when SKZ was accused of fraud for their first number 1 charting on Billboard US 200 (which ironically other groups also manage to attain but no one is accusing them of fraud, not that I want anyone to be accused of fraud for goddamned no reason) that it trended number 1, freaking number one, on Twitter. For almost a day! That Billboard has to even make a formal announcement about it. So here is the list of things I can possibly think of why people like to fight over stupidies and silliest thing in kpop and please feel free to share: Feeling of superiority - we feel like our idols are superior in whatever ways then other idols - mind you, it is not our achievements, it is the idols’ but alas, we will use this as a weapon to look down on other groups. Our favs will always be number one. The rest is in the pits. Or nugu. Or carried by fandom. Or the distance is distancing (my recent favourite). Feeling of unfairness - we feel like only our idols should get all the benefits out there, the company should not give any benefits to other idols nor debut new groups because whatever the company is giving to other idols is taking away benefits to ours. One of the oft use sentence is - ‘A is using B’s money for promotion’. There is more - X gets more than Y when both gets different sort of promotion and lacks certain part compared to other companies but yeah, lets have a We-Have-Less Olympic. Oh and mistreatment. Lets not forget that our idols are always mistreated compared to others. Feeling of suspicions towards others - this is the best because according to toxic stans, our idols are the most ‘organic’ while others have ‘payola’ or ‘big 4 benefits’. So whatever success/achievements our idols get is purely because of the idols and whatever success/achievement others got are fake due to company buying their way through, farm stream, playlisting, bulkbuying, closing venue sections, mediaplay or whatnot. Oh lets not forget free-falling - another kpop favourite phrases. My favourite makes real music and we are here for it, not for the charts - funny, because when your favs are not charting, they use this reasoning, but when they are suddenly their favs are making the best album/song of the year. And if the others are not charting or doing as well, lets make posts after posts about how this and that group is fading away into nothingness. But when we post about charting and sales and tours, now we are accused of liking groups because of numbers. Now we cannot even celebrate achievements because we are not fans of their music, but the numbers! Do I get these right? Do you guys have more to share? Kpop is very interesting. I used to go from Soompi to OH to AKP forums to now Reddit and I find it interesting that 20 years have passed and not much has changed. submitted by /u/Many-Ad-9007 [link] [comments]
