does anyone know whats happening with lu dinghao??
So about a month ago, Banana Culture released a statement on their official Weibo account:
Because TANGRAM member Lu Dinghao’s personal actions have severely affected the progress of the group, the company has decided to indefinitely halt his group activities. TANGRAM will continue activities as 6 members with Lin Chaoze, Jiang Jingzuo, Qiu Zhixie, Bei Honglin, Li Ruotian, and Gao Maotong. The company will also continue to give TANGRAM our utmost support. We are grateful for the fans who have continually given us attention and love. The company and the members will give back in full and repay everyone with better mindsets and works. Thank you.
(translation: TANGRAMSubs)
There are people who have mistranslated “personal actions” (个人行为) as “behavioural issues” to get retweets and afterwards blocked people who have tried to correct them. Do note that this is a mistranslation - there has never been, nor will there ever be, explicit confirmation from anyone that Dinghao was suspended from TGM for behaviour problems.
What has been confirmed, though, is that Dinghao is no longer a member of TGM. He removed the TGM- prefix from his Weibo handle and changed his bio from “TANGRAM 男团成员” (member of boy group TANGRAM) to “香蕉娱乐旗下艺人” (artist under Banana Culture Entertainment).
Anything from here on are fan-spread rumours on Weibo - just know that nothing is confirmed and use your own judgement when reading them.
Dinghao’s fans (Milus) believe that because Banana has not been explicitly promoting TGM the same way other groups that came out of Idol Producer do (e.g. Nine Percent and ONER having advertisements for products everywhere), Dinghao has not been able to reach his full potential. They believe that as a result of Banana not promoting TGM, Dinghao was forced into signing contracts privately outside of his contract with Banana (rumours say that this was a contract with L’Oreal) in order to maintain his popularity. Because of this breach of contract (the “personal actions” referred to in the statement), Banana removed Dinghao from TGM and are ‘putting him in the freezer’.
There are also speculations that Dinghao broke his contract because he was confident that another company would be able to buy him out, but because that deal fell through, he’s ‘stuck’ in Banana’s ‘freezer’.
Do take note that these speculations are from solo fans have been clamouring for Dinghao to go solo since Idol Producer ended - they believe that he is too good/popular for any group. They attend TGM events to support Dinghao and only Dinghao, and look down on the other six members and their fans. Their main intention is to paint Dinghao in the most innocent light they can, so remember to take that bias factor into account. Use your judgement as to how much of their reasoning you want to take seriously.
There are also speculations that this happened before Lunar New Year and that Dinghao and Banana have been in legal negotiations for a while; the only reason why this statement was made was because TGM was preparing their spring comeback and Banana needed a way to explain why TGM was coming back as six.
So those are the rumours as to what happened with Dinghao. Below is what has been happening since then.
There mostly have been two main reactions to TGM coming back as six - the fans who are angry at Banana and the fans who intend to continue supporting the remaining six members.
The fans who are angry at Banana are mostly angry at the fact that since there was a breach of contract, Banana will be unlikely to promote Dinghao with TGM until legal issues are cleared. Which, to me, is ironic because Dinghao was the one who broke the contract in the first place. (Although it can be argued that Banana’s promotion strategy (or lack thereof) forced him into breaking the contract, it’s also worth pointing out that none of the other members who have been offered private contracts broke their contracts.) Either way, because of this, these fans refuse to support TGM’s comeback because Dinghao isn’t in it. Understandably, a large portion of these fans are Dinghao’s solo stans. This segment does not just comprise Weibo fans - there are plenty of international fans on Twitter and Youtube who share the same sentiment.
This surge in anger at Banana correlates with a surge in Weibo hate comments against TGM. In the weeks after Banana announced that TGM would come back as six without Dinghao, there were more and more Weibo posts and comments insulting a six-membered TGM as well as accounts that posted death wishes towards the six members themselves. These peaked after Dinghao changed his profile picture to unnecessarily dramatic fanart of him looking beaten up, which most of his impressionable and defensive fans read into as Dinghao being ‘bullied’. Of course, correlation does not imply causation, so think of this what you will.
There are, of course, many other fans who continue to support a six-membered TGM, and a segment of these fans will also support both TGM and Dinghao in whatever path he ends up on.
Anyway, stream Stay With You (eng subs here).
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