imo this is another reason it’s so frustrating to have these young idk ~20 year old type “content creator” shills treating this entire thing like it’s some z-list western youtuber vs youtuber drama blasting no-context and misinfo out buckshot to their extremely impressionable young audience. when you look at their social medias their entire online life revolves around this specific game company and playing their games and posting about their games and making “content” about their games and following other kids who post about their games and play their games and post about their games etc. - essentially consumption of this media has become a central facet of their personality, and any slight on the product is now a slight on them personally. there’s also a growing cult of personality around the director that fosters another type of parasocial relationship. I’ve never witnessed “fandom” spaces for an extended period of time like this so it’s been surprising to me just how extreme all of this gets. But when something threatens the media that these fans have tied so closely to their sense of self they are going to be easily manipulated into placing the blame on a particular group or separating into an Us vs Them mentality. In this case so many of them have been laser focused on exonerating Project Moon that they’re slandering and putting targets on artists who do not deserve to be harassed and groups that are genuinely helping victims of feminist ideological verification in South Korea. at some point the short-sightedness of this becomes obscene.
I don’t think any of these kids and young adults (not saying this to demean you, the typical age group is ~ 16-22) comprehend the severity of the systemic issue that Project Moon had (and has) put itself into. This isn’t My Side vs Your Side, this is about violent antifeminism, systemic misogyny and worker’s rights in South Korea. This is not about you as a fan of a videogame, especially if you do not live there. Again I genuinely do not think Project Moon superfans should be making posts about this issue if you are looking at it in the latter way and not the former. You see this as some “drama” or “event” that effects you and the fans as individuals and the words “vellmori left on her own” or “watch the video” will make people stop talking about it. You repeat this with no contextual knowledge of how any of the labor laws or defamation laws in South Korea work, you look at this case in the bubble of your video game and nothing else. No one serious is doing this tit for tat bullshit in South Korea. I’ve literally been following this case and similar cases for over a year now, you can scroll through this entire blog’s archive and see the landslide of similar feminist ideological verification cases that have taken place since Project Moon’s. PM 7/25 is still referenced as a significant event when newspapers publish articles about this issue. No one is waffling about if the artist left on her own, they understand the situation in their own country. The strange idea that has somehow spread in the English speaking community that KGCS is some grifter group is absolutely baffling. The posts in english “warning” not to donate to them were hilarious at best and extremely condescending at worst, you’re talking like this is some scam gofundme. They probably don’t even know you exist. They typically raise the money they need within a couple of hours, close the donation pool, and then refund anyone who asks. This group not only helped Studio Ppuri’s animator avoid being fired in an event that almost mirrored project moon’s, they raised money for her legal fees that she used to press criminal charges against her harassers and helped set up meetings with the animation directors to explain the “controversial” shots. This was one of the biggest cases of targeted attacks from incel men, it had the chickenshit company Nexon deleting Studio Ppuri’s videos and their studio name was removed from the credits in the Korean broadcast of Solo Leveling. you can search the studio ppuri tag on this blog to see it all, I’ve found an article that has a short interview with the animator that I’ll post later.
Needless to say this is a serious societal, systemic issue, it does not deserve some westerners butting their heads in because they don’t want to feel guilty about playing a videogame. It’s disturbing to see this treated like some drama you just want to be over. it’s gross to watch information twisted and used in pedantic tit for tat arguments you only care about the end product of - “winning” and stopping any further discussion or “drama”. Please get some perspective.
