This is just monetising incels, isn’t it?
Yes, but this is happening in the states too yet we don’t have this kind of insanity. For example, onlyfans is basically a website dedicated to monetizing incels. But there’s an implicit understanding that those actresses have their own lives. For some reason, in S.Korea they’re not allowed to have their own lives. It’s bizarre no matter how you look at it.
Not really.
Onlyfans is more or less a strip club. It is not (just) about seeing titties. It is about “the fantasy”. Ask any stripper and the best possible “gimmick” is to be “working my way through (grad/law/nursing/whatever) school” since that lets clients feel like they are “saving” you.
And, on a surface level, that is similar. Pop Idol better not have a boyfriend because she is a permanent virgin and blah blah blah.
But that is where it ends. Because the guy who starts getting overly possessive of a stripper/sex worker/OF model/whatever? We, as a society, think they have issues and there is usually a support structure to get them away from the person they are going to stalk.
Whereas with k-pop (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, j-pop and the like): The support structure encourages that mindset and punishes the performer for daring to ruin “the fantasy”. And, as can be seen here and every other time this happens, “society” encourages that.
And… South Korea is so fucked that it makes Japan look like a good place to be a woman. Like, it is a genuine problem to the point that voice actresses have gotten “cancelled” because someone thought they made a rude gesture that insults men.
TBH, the strippers I’ve known IRL were actually doing that. One of them got a degree from a pricey art school and now is a VP at an advertising firm (she started as a photographer, moved up to graphic design, then art direction…). I’m acquainted with one that has a day job as an attorney and does it because she both enjoys it, and it pays better than most legal jobs.
Yeah. One of my best friends literally stripped her way through law school.
But it is also just a bog standard thing to say during a lap dance or whatever. “oh, I’m just doing this until I get through veterinary school” and so forth.
I mean there are a lot of dudes who do not have this “implicit understanding.” the difference is more in how normalized it is.
No, not just incels but hardcore fans and lonely people in general. The marketing strategy of pretending to be single with the goal of seeming somehow available is not gender or country specific and is used in pop music a lot. It´s all about creating a projection screen for fantasies and dreams to increase sales. Just think of boy bands in the 90s.
Wait. You’re telling me I don’t actually have a shot with Joey Fatone?!?!
Sure you do. Joey is an absolute ho.
Her “fans” are deranged and she should feel unsafe around them.
The whole idol culture is fucked up and unhealthy to say that least.
Hyper capitalist emotional exploitation.
Take a normal human emotion, feed it through a system optimized to wring out profit, this is what is left.
Yes clearly there are no biological reasons why a person would want to have sex with someone else who is attractive
I’m not sure I follow your meaning.
“Wanting to have sex with someone else who is attractive” is “a normal human emotion,” as the commenter above you acknowledged. I don’t think anyone would deny that there’s a fundamental biological mechanism at work there.
Being outraged that a performer you’ve never met (who has no personal obligation to you) is in a relationship, and then having your outrage justified by an apology? That’s not the same. That’s not just biology. That’s culture. It’s the result of taking the “biological reason” - or “normal human emotion” - and wringing it through a targeted marketing campaign and culture of idolatry designed to cultivate unhealthy parasocial relationships for the sole purpose of extracting profit.
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That’s the difference between the East and the West “idol” culture.
Tay Swift would just tell those guys to go suck a big one.
The Korea’s idol industry treat their stars like livestock. Milking them for every penny they can. No doubt she was forced to apologize by her management company.
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smh why the kpop folk be trippin like they all weird as shit
I hereby apologize to all women for being married and off the market these last 17 years. Don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything special.
You know theirs people actually like that but… Why are people this obsessed over another human? It’s unhealthy.
Why are people this obsessed over another human?
Because enormous sums of money are spent marketing this individual as a form of paid parasocial relationship. You get (fake) emails from her. You get (fake) social media interactions with her. You get a deluge of media telling you that she’s available and interested and looking to meet a guy just like you. You spend hours in line to get tickets to a sold out show. You wait with baited breath for every new media release, which is inevitably a song or movie or other material about her falling in love with a stranger who follows her from afar. This, combined with the endless peer pressure on other women to become this iconic individual.
Idol culture is the social equivalent of playing the lottery. And finding out your idol is “taken” is like hearing you got sold a ticket to a prize that’s already been awarded to someone else.
Incels ruin everything
I mean a lot of idols (or rather, their management companies) try to appeal to incels, so if anything, they’re the reason why these idols are so famous in the first place.
I mean, its a kind-of vicious cycle. I can’t help but think someone fixating on a celebrity that hard hurts their prospects in the dating pool.
