This TaeKey situation is so messed up. Like, I don't blame people for being upset, or hurt, and wanting to let the guys know that the things they say can affect others negatively... but at the same time the way this is going down is wild. I never thought I'd see shawols react to them like this.
The number of people(some of them that I've been following for a while, who always seemed mature and level headed) who were positively gleeful talking about Taemin and Key "getting their lashings". Calling them disgusting, saying they deserve what's coming to them, they don't want to see anything from them unless it's an apology "with tears" and all the other generally insulting things that people have been saying about their appearances and them as people.
It's like people were just waiting for their moment to turn. Or they're so desperate to show that they're "good" and they're not one of "those" fans that puts idols on a pedestal that they've gone tol far in the opposite direction and just gotten nasty.
Like, maybe I'm stupid, maybe I am one of those fans that's putting them on a pedestal but I'd like to think that Taekey are generally good kind people who always do their best to be respectful. Of course they're gonna fuck up every so often. There isn't a person alive who doesn't have some kind of internal bias about something, whether they're aware of it or not. But when someone I care about screws up, I would think the best course of action would be to say "hey, I know you probably didn't mean it maliciously, but the connotations of what you said are kind of shitty. Especially to people with darker skin tones and I hope you can consider that going forward" my first thought wouldnt be to call them disgusting and essentially get a megaphone to announce their fuckup all over social media so as many people as possible can see it and join the hate train.
I just hate this so much. And now stupid sm is just editing the video and the members probably have no clue about it and the people who are angry are getting even angrier and even more nasty.
I wish Taekey could address this but unfortunately I really don't see it happening and then it's like,where do we go from here?
Where do we go from here? A good question.
I think that where we don't go, but it's too late because it's already happening, is commenting on Taemin's IG that he should collaborate with Morgan Wallen. How is that helpful? It's disingenuous.
As someone from Canada, TaeKey's words were gross and not cool. But I also understand that they aren't from my culture, and because I watch a lot of Korean content, I know what is seen as acceptable there. That doesn't mean it's acceptable to me personally.
They deserve fans telling them how they feel honestly. And I think in the majority of cases that has happened. But like you say, some people are taking this extremely far and turning it into an excuse to be nasty, when I don't think TaeKey meant anything other than childish/ignorant making fun. That doesn't mean what they said was okay or should be overlooked, but intention and someone's character does count for something, does it not?
People keep leaving all sorts of remarks on IG, WeVerse, Twitter etc so I would say at this point, they should be aware there's a large swathe of the fandom unhappy. I did put my thoughts on WeVerse and Bubble - but I did that once and let it be. I'm not harassing people.
SM editing the video makes it worse because clearly management or at least the YouTube team know about the issue. But from what I heard, they didn't edit it well, and I think that speaks to the lack of knowledge around this issue. The staff members likely don't understand fully what the issue is and how it makes fans from certain areas feel, so they guessed at how to make it better and mostly failed.
Cultural exchange is full of this kind of uncomfortable stuff. It's easier when it's on a personal level, because then we can have a conversation with the person/people directly. We can't exactly do that, but fans have social media to use, which they are.
